In Braga!

So when the temperature went down yesterday evening we went exploring. The map our landlady gave us of the old quarter is relatively useless as all the print is so tiny that even with my reading glasses I can’t make out the name of streets. We wandered around, admiring the many churches, and of course the cathedral, and the lovely open squares. The general conclusion is that Braga is lovely but confusing. All old quarters are confusing! But we managed not to get totally lost and had a beer at a rather impressive looking place looking out on one of the squares. I may have to wait until I get back to a place with a reliable wifi before posting photos.

This morning I got up and showered and went on a reconnaissance for a place to have breakfast. I did not want to go to an obvious tourist-orientated place. Rather I was looking for somewhere clearly frequented by local people. Not far from our boarding house is an old gateway - O Arco - an archway dating back to a time when the old city was a walled place. Beyond the archway I found a cafe full of people who were just going about their business, maybe on their way to work. It had an impressive display of croissants and pastries. Oh, and a new way of paying … new to us anyway. At the till was a machine with a slot for notes and another for coins and a place where change was delivered. No cash was handled by the young lady at the till. I”ve never seen that before.

So I returned to our lodgings and reported my find to Phil. And eventually, off we went. As we arrived there, we saw a bunch of excited primary school children being encouraged. to jump up and down and cheer in a circle around their rucksacks. We drank our coffee - the best coffee we have had so far this visit to Portugal - and ate a  sticky almond croissants - not to self: order “croissants simples” tomorrow - while admiring yet another fine square. Outside a group of possibly Japanese tourists, all decked out in traditional portuguese skirts or aprons and wearing flower-bedecked straw hats, were excitedly taking selfies and group photos. 

We scouted out possible lunch venues for later and then set off to hunt for the bus stop to travel the several kilometres to the Bom Jesus monument. Our landlady must be as confused about the geography as we were. Her directions to the bus stop were completely wrong, or at least misleading. We found it, some ten minutes after the bus left. We waited 20 minutes for the next one, which didn’t show. We gave it another 15 minutes and gave up. But we had seen interesting sights in our searching.

We’ll try again after lunch as we have been told that the Bom Jesus monument is a “must see”!

Meanwhile…

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Leaving Ponte de Lima

Tuesday stuff.

This was the last day of the Ponte de Lima chess event. Phil decided not to play this last round. Had he won the day before he would have considered getting up to play chess at 9.30 in the morning. However, he did not and so he stayed in bed a little longer. 

I got up and ran one last time along the river and the avenue. I bought us fresh bread for breakfast and then we packed and tidied up ready to leave. The plan was that our Canadian companion Leon would join us for lunch after he finished off the morning”s opponent quickly. 

That didn’t happen.

We went out to lunch, leaving messages as to where we would be. He never materialised. Finally he sent a message that he was packing. Then that he was going to the prize giving as he had won prizes. We had to hand over the keys to the apartment at 2.00pm. Time was getting tight. He messaged us that he had left his keys on the table in the apartment. 

So we went back and met with the landlord who agreed that we could leave our luggage with him until our taxi turned up. No, we couldn’t wait in the apartment as he had to prep it for the next people. 

We went off to look for Canadian. He had just received his prize. We said our farewells and our see-you-next-times and waited for our taxi to go to the bus station. The bus station was confusing. Ticket offices closed until 3.00. Buses lined up with no indication where they were headed. A crowd of chess players of a range of nationalities, all confused by the bus station. But we sorted it out and finally bought our tickets to Braga - with a discount for being over 65! There are some benefits! 

Our new accommodation is a complete contrast - an old fashioned boarding house with dodgy wifi. So goodness knows when this will be posted. 

But we’re in the old which we will explore when it gets cooler. Much too hot on arrival! All part of the adventure. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Quiet Monday morning. The cradle of folklore The difficulty finding Sunday restaurants. Forgotten conflicts.

All was quiet on the alameda this morning. And considering how many stalls were there yesterday, there was remarkably little litter. Litter bins were full but that was to be expected. Street sweepers (of the manual kind with a large broom) were out and in some parts of the town there were mechanical road cleaners, spraying water around. 

The carpark in front of our accommodation, yesterday crammed to the gills with camper-vans, has almost emptied overnight. One of those remaining belongs to a Portuguese chess-playing friend who travels from tournament to tournament in his van. 

When we went out to lunch yesterday, there were even more stalls than when I was out and about earlier. One was set up by the Grupo Folclórico, with ladies in national costume (the gentlemen less so), models of farming implements, and large baskets of greens on sale, the kind that the Galicians call “grelos” and which are a quite important ingredient of “cocido”. Ponte de Lima calls itself ‘o berço do folklore’ - the cradle of folklore.m

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old town was heaving yesterday. There were queues outside all the restaurants we wanted to patronise. We did not relish the thought of standing in a a queue for thirty minutes in the heat. And it WAS hot. On the very edge of the old town we found a place with a few empty tables. They were running out of some menu items, a sign that they had been busy - indeed they still were busy, full of apparently local people. We had hake fillets served with what claimed to be chips but were in fact potato scallops. I really wanted a salad but, amazingly, they did not serve salad! 

There was so much food that once again we had to ask for a “takaway” - a foil container to carry our leftovers away with is. This seems to be standard procedure and appears on your bill as “um takaway” - €1.

So we had leftovers for lunch today. 

In the newspapers today, George Monbiot is warning us of the dangers of being conned into believing that livestock farming can be good for the environment. We are almost brainwashed as small children with stories of happy farms full of friendly animals, which are incidentally contributing to the carbon problems.

Elsewhere, journalist Nesrine Malik writes about the largely media-forgotten and media-ignored war in Sudan, her country. It has been pushed onto the background by events in Ukraine and, especially in the last 6 months, Gaza.

“One year ago today, Sudan descended into war. The toll so far is catastrophic. Thousands are dead, and millions are displaced, with hunger and disease ravaging all in the absence of aid. The UN has called the situation “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history”, afflicting about 25 million people. The Sudanese people are suffering what has become the largest displacement crisis in the world.

On a political level Sudan falls, and has always done, low on the list of priorities for power brokers in the west, who have few interests in the country. They either crudely isolated it through sanctions or, after the revolution, naively and hastily tried to marshal the two armed parties to agreement and a de-facto return to a militarised, centralised status quo.”

It’s easy to put things out of mind.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Things going on in the avenida. Flea markets. Continued chaos in the wider world.

There was a flea market on the tree-lined avenue this morning. 

The normally quiet and peaceful alameda has amused me on odd days with views of cyclists riding alongside each other spread over the breadth of the avenue and yesterday with a a bunch of young people and their organiser, possibly doing a bit of the Camino de Santiago. Their rucksacks were stacked to one side as they received instructions. And they all wore matching T-shirts with the slogan “Se faz o caminho ao caminhar” - you make the path by walking it. I was reminded of a poem by Antonio Machado, put to music by Spanish singer Juan Manuel Serrat, with a chorus of “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace el camino al andar” - same message: Wanderer, there is no route, you make the route as you walk. 

 

Anyway, this morning there was all the bustle of a huge flea market, everyone busy setting up their stalls. 

Everything from a wedding dress to weapons (well, antique pistols),

 

 

 from a sewing machine to sailboats. 

 

Displays of glassware sparkled in the sunlight. 

 

Whenever I see displays like that I am reminded of the scene in the film “Empire of the Sun” where they arrive at a sports stadium full of confiscated good - cars, chandeliers, luxury goods of all kinds.

 

When I got back to the apartment I noticed a small crowd gathered in one section of the carpark, being addressed by someone with a megaphone. Was it a political meeting, a religious meeting, some kind of ramblers association? I’ll never know. After some time they dispersed, got into their cars and drove off in convoy. Strange! 

Out in the wider world Iran has taken retaliatory steps against Israel. One commentary suggests that this is a warning measure, telling Israel to cease and desist. Let us hope that this does not escalate into a wider conflict!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone! 

Camper vans for the weekend. The Atlantic diet. And asking the dead to play music.,

Our accommodation here in Ponte de Lima is more or less opposite the exhibition centre which is the playing venue for the chess tournament Phil and our Canadian “flat mates” are playing in. It’s just a few hundred yards away across a big parking lot. When we arrived there were maybe two or three camper vans there. Yesterday it began to fill up. This morning it’s not quite chocker but there’s definitely less free space than there was when we arrived. And of course, this is because it’s the weekend. And the weather is beautiful. People (motor home owners anyway) are coming to enjoy the sunshine. 

Out running this morning I noticed that down by the river, close to the start of the tree-lined avenue, they were setting up a scruffy little market, selling clothes. I didn’t go close enough to investigate whether this was nw clothing or a sort of jumble sale, people getting rid of the clothes they no longer wanted or needed. 

In the Guardian online this morning I found this article about the benefits of the Atlantic diet, as eaten in most of Galicia. It is supposed to be marginally better for you even than the Mediterranean diet although it sounds as though the main difference is the fact that they eat fish at least three times a week. So basically, we should be very healthy. 

Oddly enough, here in Ponte de Lima we have been having difficulty locating restaurants serving good fish dishes at a reasonable price. I look at menus outside restaurants with fish dishes going for €20+, rather more than we have got used to paying when we visit Figueira da Foz.

Here’s an odd item I came across in social media:

“The organizers for the 2012 London Olympics ceremony asked the manager of The Who if drummer Keith Moon would be able to perform at the forthcoming London Olympics Games. The Who manager Bill Curbishley, told The Times how he responded to the request. 'I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to The Who's anthemic line 'I hope I die before I get old,' he said. 'If they have a round table, some glasses and candles, we might contact him.'”

It amused me anyway.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Running. Buying bread. A bit of history. Peace making. Sumo wrestlers. Accordion players.

 Another blue sky day in Ponte de Lima. I successfully found my way to the bread-shop to buy fresh bread for breakfast. Speaking Portuguese, I was taken for Spanish. Obviously I am not slurring my speech sufficiently but making my letter sounds clear and open, Spanish style.,

Running along the treelined avenue I am greeted with a cheery “bom dia” from almost everyone whose path I cross, pilgrims and locals alike. This is  quite different from Galicia, Spain, where it took the better part of a year for people I saw regularly on my morning run to acknowledge my presence with as much as a nod. As for greeting people whose path crossed ours during a walk in the  park, for example, well, we were looked at as if we were a strange species. Maybe the Portuguese are more like the Northern English (those who live in the South of England are a different kettle of fish); in our neck of the woods it is quite normal, indeed expected, to greet those you meet when out and about. Okay, town centres are a different matter, but you can’t have everything!

By the way, the tree lined avenue, I discovered this morning, is the “Avenida 5 Outubro”, no doubt remembering the 5 October 1910 revolution, when the centuries old Portuguese monarchy was overthrown and the first Portuguese Republic was established.

Today Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is going to Dublin to discuss with the Irish Taoiseach a joint plan to recognise Palestine as a nation state. Spain and Ireland, two countries which have known upheaval within their own countries, have apparently been the most pro-Palestine of the EU countries. Mind you, most of the rest have known the upheaval of World Wars and could well expected to be in favour of a ceasefire as soon as possible 

In the meantime, the killing in Gaza continues, despite moves to get people talking.

An odd piece of news attracted my attention yesterday. A Hawaiian-born sumo champion has died at the age of 54. The wrestler, who was born Chad Rowan in Hawaii, is regarded as a pioneer after he broke down cultural barriers in the centuries-old sport to become the first non-Japanese yokozuna grand champion in 1993. He changed his name to Akebono and was famous in the world of sumo wrestling. “When Akebono became the first-ever foreign-born grand champion … he opened the door for other foreign wrestlers to find success in the sport.” 

He was 6ft 8in tall and weighed 514 lb, (36, almost 37 stone) at his heaviest, so even if he lost some weight I cannot say I am surprised at his heart giving way.

In a Springsteen fan post on Facebook I found this, along with with a photo of the pope shaking hands with an accordion player:

“In breaking news, Pope Francis absolves all accordion players.  In a statement to the press, Pope Francis said, "It's time to forgive them for all the past suffering they have inflicted - as long as they play something cool, like Zydeco or Tex-Mex."  An official ceremony will be held at "Our Lady of Spain Catholic Church."”

Well! Well! I can think of large numbers of accordion players who have inflicted suffering on people sotting in cafes and restaurants, or even just strolling down the street. In particular, in San Sebastián we gave such an accordion player, a “mariachi”, a small contribution in the hope that he would move on. He did. So did we. It seemed he followed us to,the next place we stopped at. So it goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Wandering around old Ponte de Lima. Royal privilege. Presidential privilege.

Out and about this morning, on my way back from running along the river to the alameda and back, I finally located a proper padaria, aka a bread-shop. Perhaps I have just walked the wrong streets but it seems as though the old town has been filled with tourist related stuff: clothes shops, souvenir shops, bike hire places, shops selling crystals and dream catchers and other such stuff. There is a distinct dearth of small grocery stores and bread-shops.  However, as I said, I may just have walked in the wrong places. No doubt in greater Ponte de Lima, beyond the old quarter, there are the usual everyday goods shops, mini-supermarkets and the like.

The closest I’ve found to a small supermarket near our b&b, Mercado Camões, has an oddly limited range of goods, not quite as depletes as some of shops my friend Dee and I stuck our noses into when we went to Havana but rather more limited than our local co-op store in Delph, that I often moan about. When I asked if they had milk on my first visit, I was directed to a large room at the back, which I had assumed was a store room from which shelves were normally restocked. But no, this was where wine and beer and soft drinks and milk were stacked up, not in any kind of display but haphazardly, rather as I remember one of the first Aldi stores in Oldham almost 40 years ago. 

On the day we arrived here we made our first exploratory wander round the old town and located a delightful fruit and general grocery shop. It was small and crammed with tins and packets and jars - rice and dried pasta, cheese and honey and jam. We went in because the oranges on display outside looked so good. I had an odd, very tentative conversation in Portuguese with a young woman assistant who just kept talking and talking. The oranges were excellent, the best I’ve tasted all year, and I wanted more. Could I find the shop? No way! I must have exceeded my daily step goal just roaming the narrow old streets. Finally in the early evening we went out again and eventually located it, just as it was about to close. 

It must be a special feature of old towns that the ancient, narrow streets look similar enough to each other to confuse outsiders. And this is apparently the oldest town in Portugal. There are old buildings that once were part of the fortifications. Impressive!

Santiago de Compostela in Galicia is equally confusing in its old quarter. We talked about Santiago de Compostela with the chap in the fruit shop yesterday evening. This was because Ponte de Lima is on the Camino de Santiago. Indeed, every morning so far I have seen steady numbers of pilgrims striding or trudging along with their backpacks, not excessive numbers but enough to be noticeable. They must set out early!

Now, scanning the headlines of the Guardian online I came across a kind of “who’s king?” moment:

“Royal courtiers privately put pressure on the Welsh Government to ensure that King Charles could not be prosecuted for rural crimes under a new law that ministers had drawn up, documents reveal.

The elected minister in the Welsh government who is its chief legal adviser was “not happy” that the king was to be given the special exemption from prosecution but agreed to it last year.

A Buckingham Palace official phoned the Welsh government to secure the assurance under an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch to draft bills before they can be implemented.”

It seems that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, manipulated some laws in her own favour. Here’s a link to the whole article.

And then there’s Biden taking Israel’s side. But also, he’s been talking about the Julian Assange case apparently.

“Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the decade-long US push to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing a trove of American classified documents.

For years, Australia has called on the US to drop its prosecution against Assange, an Australian citizen who has fought American extradition efforts from prison in the UK. Asked about the request on Wednesday, as he hosted the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, for an official visit, Biden said: “We’re considering it.”

Biden’s comment is the latest indication that his administration may have cooled on the idea of putting Assange on trial, which could prove politically toxic in an election year. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration was exploring the possibility of allowing the WikiLeaks founder to cut a plea deal that would see him admit to a misdemeanor offense of mishandling classified documents in return for an early release.”

We’ll see where that goes.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!