Sunday, 28 July 2013

Lisbon

The trip to Lisbon was incredible! The Portuguese are very hospitable, funny and generous. Lisbon is a beautiful city, with little surprises around every corner. We tried to see as much as possible in four days, but it's a very tall order...

The food is fantastic, but we had to be careful after the first dinner. Somebody recommended a restaurant, praising the sardines, something my sister was very keen to eat. We arrived and there were only a couple of people in the restaurant, and they didn't look very happy. There were no sardines. We ordered some prawn rissoles for starters and they were still frozen in the middle. We sent them back and ordered Bacalhau à Brás. It wasn't too bad, but we had better before... The only nice part of the meal were the desserts. We decided that from then on, we were going to check the atmosphere of the restaurants, watch people's faces, see if they were eating with gusto. All the other meals were really good, it proved to be a good system.

I took my camera, but, for some inexplicable reason, I left it at the hotel for the first two days. Some of the photos were taken with my sister's i-Phone.


We had to pose next to Fernando Pessoa, a great Portuguese poet


This guy's make-up gave him the appearance of rubber. 
He would stay suspended like this for hours...



Torre de Belem

The Jeronimos Monastery

We went to this expensive restaurant for some good food and fado. We got neither... 
The food was mediocre and the woman couldn't sing to save her life! 
The guys playing the guitars saved the evening.

Entrance to the Museu do Azulejo (The Portuguese make the most wonderful wall tiles)

We think they took some mind altering substances in the XVIth century... 
This panel is about the marriage  of a hen, organized my a load of monkeys!

The leopard hunt. Please note the second leopard, waiting to look in the mirror. 



Castelo de São Jorge

We also visited Sintra, about 40 minutes from Lisboa by train. The old kings of Portugal had their summer palaces there. The village is very beautiful and well preserved.






We took a tour on a very old jeep and went to Cascais to get the train back to Lisbon.

This  is Cabo da Roca. It's the westernmost place in Europe

Dora has a cheeky smile

The next three photos are of a place called Boca do Inferno (Hell's Mouth). We found it quite dramatic.




I was so impressed with the friendliness of the Portuguese, so taken with the beauty of the country, that I wouldn't mind moving to Portugal...

Sunday, 21 July 2013

Beauty

Amy sent us a very large collection of photos and I selected a few for this post.






I'm going to Lisbon tomorrow to meet my sister for a few days of gastronomic indulgence. We'll be back here on Friday the 26th and she'll spend a week with us.

See you soon!

Saturday, 20 July 2013

Creative plant containers

Here are some cool plant containers. I'm too hot to think of a more complicated post!








Friday, 19 July 2013

So sleepy...

My friend Dominique sent me this video. There are cute bits and funny bits, something for everyone!



Thursday, 18 July 2013

Dark in here

View sent us this joke, which is very nice after yesterday's post... Thank you, View.

A woman is having an affair during the day while her husband is at work. Her 9-year-old son comes home unexpectedly, sees them and hides in the bedroom closet to watch.

The woman's husband also comes home.

She puts her lover in the closet, not realizing that the little boy is in there already.

The little boy says, "Dark in here."

The man says, "Yes, it is."

Boy - "I have a baseball."


Man - "That's nice."

Boy - "Want to buy it?"

Man - "No, thanks."

Boy - "My dad's outside."

Man - "OK, how much?"

Boy - "$250"

In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the lover are in the closet together.

Boy - "Dark in here."

Man - "Yes, it is."

Boy - "I have a baseball glove."


The lover, remembering the last time, asks the boy, "How much?"

Boy - "$750"

Man - "Fine."

A few days later, the father says to the boy, "Grab your glove, let's go outside and have a game of catch." The boy says, "I can't, I sold my baseball and my glove."

The father asks, "How much did you sell them for?"

"$1,000"

The father says, "That's terrible to overcharge your friends like that... that is way more than those two things cost. I'm going to take you to church and make you confess."

They go to the church and the father makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and he closes the door.

The boy says, "Dark in here."


The priest says, "Don't start that sh*t again."