Passports, Sunshine and Dressing up.

Various sources tell me that blue passports will be available in the Uk from next month. Well, really available is not the right word. That makes it sound as though it’s optional. I quite like the idea of a choice of colours for your passport. I rather fancy a purple one myself. Oddly enough all the pictures of the blue passports show a bright blue, almost what my paintbox called royal blue, and yet all the old pre-EU passports that I have collected in a desk drawer (yes, I am that kind of hoarder!) are a dark navy blue. I think the nationalist freaks have short memories. I am really quite glad that my passport will not need to be renewed until 2016. The whole situation might be different by then.

Oh, and the blue passports will be made in Poland! We’ve taken back control! Evidently!

We wondered as we went through passport control at Porto airport on Friday, for the first time since we officially left the EU, if the electronic system would still work for us. Really there should be no problem as we are still going through the transition period. It worked fine for me but Phil had to go back to one of the manned gates. This has happened several times before. It must be the way he presents his passport to the machine.

It seems to me, from what I have heard and read about, that EU citizens going through passport control into the UK are having more problems than those of us going he other way. Over-zealous officials are stopping people and asking them why they are visiting the UK. It makes me quite ashamed to be British.

So does the rise in the number of cases I hear about of people being challenged on public transport, for instance, for speaking a language other than English. I wonder what language the challengers use when they holiday in Spain!

This morning, like yesterday morning, we woke to brilliant sunshine in Vigo, which is quite a relief. As I have watched weather maps over recent weeks the swirls of clouds seemed to cover Galicia as much as they did the northwest of England. Consequently running up the hill and round to the baker’s was quite a pleasant experience. Little seems to have changed here since our last visit. Various building projects along our street appear not to have made any progress at all. Maybe the builders don’t like working in the winter months.


We did not see the chatterbox lady on the bus to Vigo on Friday evening. So I have no idea which bus she caught to this fair city. She was definitely aiming for a bus as she loudly informed people that the bus took an hour to get to Vigo from Porto - it just seemed like two hours because of the time difference in Spain, she declared - which is a rather faster journey than we have ever done.

In the afternoon yesterday we walked to A Guía and admired the view from the chapel/lighthouse at the top. As we walked through Teis we saw a fair number of people in fancy dress. Our smallest granddaughter would have felt quite at home as she loves to dress up. Presumably some kind of “entroido” (carnival) event was going on somewhere. Teis, although part of greater Vigo, has a tendency to do its own thing as regards festivities. From the top,of A Guía we could hear what sounded like a procession of some sort but where it was taking place remains a mystery.

 I do hope the chatterbox lady managed to see some festivities in the centre of town.