Chaos and confusion at the school gates this morning! I have been back on my usual running route (which takes me past the school) in the morning since we came back to Vigo. I must admit that it was quite hard work getting back into that initial run up the San Joan do Monte hill but we humans are adaptable creatures. And now one section of my route is in the throes of some kind of road works. I think they are laying cables for something or other. The upshot is that bits of the road are restricted to narrow lanes and some are closed altogether.
Now, I had already noted that there seem to be far more parents taking their little darlings by car to the school behind us by than ever in the past. I had even thought of getting up earlier (not a very realistic option!) to be there before the stream of cars starts to flow past me. Today there was no flow at all. Odd!
I soon discovered why this was the case.
Because of one of the closed sections of road making it difficult for people who live along that stretch of one-way street to get out in their usual fashion, a few of them had decided to take unilateral action. They drove the wrong way along the road with the idea of getting out just beyond the school where it becomes two-directional again. A fairly typical Iberian decision in my experience! The problem was that the people coming in from the other end thought that this was still a one-way stretch. And so at a bend in the narrow road, two cars were facing in one direction (illegally) and about fifteen were facing in the other direction, trying to follow the rules.
As you might expect, it was total chaos. Horns were being hooted. Tempers were fraying. Some drivers were getting out of cars and walking along to see what was going on. Others were making frantic mobile phone calls. Lots of tutting was taking place and a fair amount of shaking of heads in disgusted amazement! I have no idea what happened in the end as I just wove my way through the stationary vehicles and continued on my way. Such fun!
Later, as I made my way into town, I heard a mournful sort of whistling, of the penny whistle variety. The same few bars were repeated over and over. Never was a whole tune completed. It was more than a little annoying. It's rather unusual to have buskers at our end of Calle Aragón but I thought briefly that someone might be practising prior to heading for the centre. And then I saw him: a chap with a bicycle, on the back of which there was a knife grinder's stone wheel. Some enterprising chap had decided that he would resurrect an old profession as a way of earning some money. Well, good for him I say!
Meanwhile, Vigo is gearing up for Christmas. Strings of Santas are climbing up ropes to get to balconies. This is odd as traditionally it should be the Three Kings who leave the presents on the balconies! A shop that sells fireplaces and stoves and so on has Santas coming out of, or possibly going into, their stove pipes. I have seen a number of people scuttling along with Christmas wreaths (and yet more Santas of various kinds) in carrier bags, clearly intending to embellish their houses.
In the centre a huge Christmas tree has been erected and close by is a sort of portacabin, making an appeal for people to give gifts to go on or under the tree, to be given to needy folk at Christmas itself. Jolly good!
Outside the art gallery two bubbles have been set up with strange red Christmas trees inside and artificial snow blowers - a kind of gigantic snowstorm scene such as my grandmother used to let us shake once in a while.
The shopping street, Príncipe, is full of huge poinsettia displays and pretend Christmas presents.
Even the fishermen at the bottom of Gran Vía seem to have caught Christmas baubles in their fishing nets. That must have been a surprise for them!
But the old chap who,has been living camped out in a shop doorway for the last couple of years on Calle Urzáiz seems to have disappeared. I just hope that someone has found a better place for him to live!
There should be photos to accompany this post but I have been having problems uploading them. Photos, like jam, tomorrow!
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
Getting out of Portugal.
So, as I said yesterday, here we are back in Vigo. It should have been an easy enough journey from Portugal. Neighbouring countries and all that sort of thing! Not entirely so!
Sunday morning, we were up bright and early for one last chess game (eventually lost but so it goes!), taking our suitcases to the venue for a prompt getaway. We had been told at the last minute about people who would be travelling to Galicia by car and who might be able to give us a lift. However, it turned out that they had full cars already so we went back to plan A: train from Figueira de Foz to Coimbra, another from Coimbra to Oporto and finally one from Oporto to Vigo.
After farewells and see-you-next-years, we had a quick lunch and off we went to the station. There we were offered a discount for being over 65. There are some benefits! €8.35 each got us tickets all the way to Oporto.
The first train must have stopped at fifteen or more stations, which is not bad for a journey of an hour and a quarter. Between stations, it crawled along past waterlogged fields, tall feathery grasses next to the track and those small Portuguese churches with a distinctive spiky tower.
Some of the names were oddly repeated: Fontela and Fontela A, one of which was a lovely old station straight out of an old film, and Lares and Bifurcação de Lares, sounding like a medical condition.
Eventually we alighted at Coimbra B, not Coimbra itself (there's another duplicate station name!), to wait for the next train. There an optimist was trying to collect his fare to Oporto by asking everyone at the station to give him a coin or two. Most people just shook there head at him but I saw a couple of people give him some money and one lady give him a piece of her mind. This did not deter him from asking new arrivals as they appeared on the platform.
Our second train was a superfast intercity, speeding through the dark to Oporto's Campanhà Station, huge by comparison with where we had come from. I practised my Portuguese some more by asking our way around and buying tickets for the train to Vigo, making sure we got our old dears' discount once again.
I also paid 50 cents to use the station toilet. For a brief moment I thought there was a queue at the turnstile. So did the person ahead of me. Then we realised that it was just a large man with that Iberian lack of awareness of other people, simply standing blocking access to the turnstile while he waited for his wife, presumably, to exit. Once inside, I found a modern place, fitted with stainless steel facilities and decorated with pots of flowers and other plants. Very nice! And there was piped music. However, I don't think it quite made up for a charge of 50 cents to pee!
After the hypermodern intercity train, the Oporto to Vigo train was a step back in time. As a rule we travel between Oporto and Vigo by bus but on a Sunday evening the only bus leaves at 9.45, arriving at Vigo at about 1.00 am. The train left earlier in the evening and conveniently departed from the same station as the one we arrived at from Coimbra. It was due to arrive in Vigo at 10.30 Spanish time. An obvious choice then! Except that it stopped several times along the way to rest ... for half an hour at a time. It rattled along so noisily that we wondered if the driver had to make running repairs along the way.
I am sure that in daylight it is a picturesque run but in the dark it left something to be desired. Even oddly named stations such as Nine and Darque (pronounced "dark") didn't make it any more interesting. There was a possibly amusing argument between the ticket man and a passenger but we understood little of it. We had a pleasant chat with two young men, a Scotsman and a Scouser, who are working at Vigo's language school, the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas. That was perhaps the high spot of the journey.
The ticket man explained that we would arrive late but gave no explanation. And arrive late we did. Almost an hour late.
Just time for a taxi ride to the Failde cafe for a quick beer and to check our email, using their internet connection. Even though they were clearly almost ready to close, they still gave us free croquetas and olives.
Portugal was excellent but it's good to be back in the land of free food!
Sunday morning, we were up bright and early for one last chess game (eventually lost but so it goes!), taking our suitcases to the venue for a prompt getaway. We had been told at the last minute about people who would be travelling to Galicia by car and who might be able to give us a lift. However, it turned out that they had full cars already so we went back to plan A: train from Figueira de Foz to Coimbra, another from Coimbra to Oporto and finally one from Oporto to Vigo.
After farewells and see-you-next-years, we had a quick lunch and off we went to the station. There we were offered a discount for being over 65. There are some benefits! €8.35 each got us tickets all the way to Oporto. The first train must have stopped at fifteen or more stations, which is not bad for a journey of an hour and a quarter. Between stations, it crawled along past waterlogged fields, tall feathery grasses next to the track and those small Portuguese churches with a distinctive spiky tower.
Some of the names were oddly repeated: Fontela and Fontela A, one of which was a lovely old station straight out of an old film, and Lares and Bifurcação de Lares, sounding like a medical condition. Eventually we alighted at Coimbra B, not Coimbra itself (there's another duplicate station name!), to wait for the next train. There an optimist was trying to collect his fare to Oporto by asking everyone at the station to give him a coin or two. Most people just shook there head at him but I saw a couple of people give him some money and one lady give him a piece of her mind. This did not deter him from asking new arrivals as they appeared on the platform.
Our second train was a superfast intercity, speeding through the dark to Oporto's Campanhà Station, huge by comparison with where we had come from. I practised my Portuguese some more by asking our way around and buying tickets for the train to Vigo, making sure we got our old dears' discount once again.
I also paid 50 cents to use the station toilet. For a brief moment I thought there was a queue at the turnstile. So did the person ahead of me. Then we realised that it was just a large man with that Iberian lack of awareness of other people, simply standing blocking access to the turnstile while he waited for his wife, presumably, to exit. Once inside, I found a modern place, fitted with stainless steel facilities and decorated with pots of flowers and other plants. Very nice! And there was piped music. However, I don't think it quite made up for a charge of 50 cents to pee!
After the hypermodern intercity train, the Oporto to Vigo train was a step back in time. As a rule we travel between Oporto and Vigo by bus but on a Sunday evening the only bus leaves at 9.45, arriving at Vigo at about 1.00 am. The train left earlier in the evening and conveniently departed from the same station as the one we arrived at from Coimbra. It was due to arrive in Vigo at 10.30 Spanish time. An obvious choice then! Except that it stopped several times along the way to rest ... for half an hour at a time. It rattled along so noisily that we wondered if the driver had to make running repairs along the way.
I am sure that in daylight it is a picturesque run but in the dark it left something to be desired. Even oddly named stations such as Nine and Darque (pronounced "dark") didn't make it any more interesting. There was a possibly amusing argument between the ticket man and a passenger but we understood little of it. We had a pleasant chat with two young men, a Scotsman and a Scouser, who are working at Vigo's language school, the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas. That was perhaps the high spot of the journey.
The ticket man explained that we would arrive late but gave no explanation. And arrive late we did. Almost an hour late.
Just time for a taxi ride to the Failde cafe for a quick beer and to check our email, using their internet connection. Even though they were clearly almost ready to close, they still gave us free croquetas and olives.
Portugal was excellent but it's good to be back in the land of free food!
Monday, 1 December 2014
Girls in their glittery shoes.
Saturday night in Figueira da Foz. After the chess player had drawn yet another lengthy game, we waited around until our friend Kevin had also drawn an even lengthier game and then went for a couple of beers. As we left the casino we saw the streets were full of young people. Well, relatively full. If this were Manchester you would wonder why there was still room to walk along so freely and how it was that you could still find somewhere to sit and talk. But compared with other evenings, even Friday evening, the place was heaving.
Of course, it might also have been heaving late on Friday evening but we had headed back to the hotel at an earlier time, around 9.30 and it's quite likely that the beautiful young things didn't come out until later. But where had they all come from? Our best guess was that the majority of them were university students, probably resident in Coimbra, the nearest big university town and, incidentally, once capital of Portugal, during the week. Like many university students all over the world, they tend to come home for the weekend so that Mum can do their washing, feed them well and send them back on Monday laden with clean clothes and provisions for the week.
The young men, apart from the odd over the top hairdo, were dressed much as young men always do. I imagine they wore clean clothes but they did not appear to have made any special effort. Ah, but the girls! Well, they made up for it, as you might expect. Girls have to dress up, after all. Lots of short skirts in a variety of colours.
Most remarkable, though, were the shoes. Such a range was quite revelation. Most came with platforms - two or three centimetres high was usual. And, oh, those killer heels!!! If you take into account the platforms, then the heels are probably not all that high but with the platforms they look like stilts. And some of them were truly impressive. Even more impressive was their ability to walk in such footwear on the white cobbles of the Figueira pavements, especially as they were just a little slick with the light rain that had fallen earlier in the evening.
The prize goes to the girl with the white shoes. Tall and slim, she was showing off her long legs, made to appear even longer by her heels that must have been about five inches high, spiky stilettos that she balanced on surprisingly well. The platforms were a good inch high as well. Now, these shoes were white and sparkly, possibly with some sort of diamanté coating. Not ideal for a late November evening. Goodness knows how much such footwear costs but I suspect that shoes like that don't come cheap. And she wore them as if she were in the catwalk. Such a lot of effort but she spent part of the evening sitting on a doorstep opposite the bar, talking to her friends. I have to say that I was impressed, in a way!
The legs may have been on display but in general I would say that the Portuguese girls seem to be more sensible than their Manchester counterparts. None of the legs were bare and everyone had a jacket of some sort. There were no bare arms and shoulders on display, possible because a good deal of the socialising took place in the street. I suppose they may have gone on to a disco later. And maybe Portuguese discos still have cloakrooms, which I understand have disappears from English clubs, explaining the lack of coats and jackets among the lovelies who go there.
And that's the end of Figueira da Foz for this year. Maybe we'll return next year. For now we are back in Vigo. All good!
Of course, it might also have been heaving late on Friday evening but we had headed back to the hotel at an earlier time, around 9.30 and it's quite likely that the beautiful young things didn't come out until later. But where had they all come from? Our best guess was that the majority of them were university students, probably resident in Coimbra, the nearest big university town and, incidentally, once capital of Portugal, during the week. Like many university students all over the world, they tend to come home for the weekend so that Mum can do their washing, feed them well and send them back on Monday laden with clean clothes and provisions for the week.
The young men, apart from the odd over the top hairdo, were dressed much as young men always do. I imagine they wore clean clothes but they did not appear to have made any special effort. Ah, but the girls! Well, they made up for it, as you might expect. Girls have to dress up, after all. Lots of short skirts in a variety of colours.
Most remarkable, though, were the shoes. Such a range was quite revelation. Most came with platforms - two or three centimetres high was usual. And, oh, those killer heels!!! If you take into account the platforms, then the heels are probably not all that high but with the platforms they look like stilts. And some of them were truly impressive. Even more impressive was their ability to walk in such footwear on the white cobbles of the Figueira pavements, especially as they were just a little slick with the light rain that had fallen earlier in the evening.
The prize goes to the girl with the white shoes. Tall and slim, she was showing off her long legs, made to appear even longer by her heels that must have been about five inches high, spiky stilettos that she balanced on surprisingly well. The platforms were a good inch high as well. Now, these shoes were white and sparkly, possibly with some sort of diamanté coating. Not ideal for a late November evening. Goodness knows how much such footwear costs but I suspect that shoes like that don't come cheap. And she wore them as if she were in the catwalk. Such a lot of effort but she spent part of the evening sitting on a doorstep opposite the bar, talking to her friends. I have to say that I was impressed, in a way!
The legs may have been on display but in general I would say that the Portuguese girls seem to be more sensible than their Manchester counterparts. None of the legs were bare and everyone had a jacket of some sort. There were no bare arms and shoulders on display, possible because a good deal of the socialising took place in the street. I suppose they may have gone on to a disco later. And maybe Portuguese discos still have cloakrooms, which I understand have disappears from English clubs, explaining the lack of coats and jackets among the lovelies who go there.
And that's the end of Figueira da Foz for this year. Maybe we'll return next year. For now we are back in Vigo. All good!
Saturday, 29 November 2014
Out and about. This and that.
There are some odd and interesting buildings in this town. I've already mentioned this huge futuristic tower on the sea front. It's a hotel, called Oasis, I think. At night when it's all lit up, it looks like a space ship about to depart. Maybe they should have featured it in the new Star Wars film. 
Closer to the centre of town is the Hotel Mercure. This building is quite astounding, built to look like a ocean liner. Usually when I see buildings shaped like boats they turn out to be sailing club headquarters. Not this one. A hotel. 
It makes our hotel look very boringly normal. No complaints about it though. Our hotel just has older buildings behind it.
Then there is the clock tower down at the far end of the promenade. Pleasing in a geometrical sort of fashion. 
Then there is the strangely geometrical clock tower - all straight lines.
Out and about this morning, I tried to get into the grounds of the Palacio Sotto Maior, the stately home just round the corner from the hotel. Last time we were here I remember complaining that the museum connected to it was closed but I did manage to walk around the gardens. This year everything is closed up and I could do no more than peer through the wrought iron gates. 
It has been a good day for going walk-about. Blue sky and sunshine and rolling waves coming up the beach. If you can see that far, that is. I have had to put up all my life with comments about the walk out to the sea at Southport, where I grew up. This beach makes that one look like a meagre strip of sand. Absolutely superb in the sunshine today, I bet it's quite majestic in winter storms. 
Because it is Saturday, the roundabout was operating for the children. No school It must have felt like summer holidays.Well, this is our last full day here. One more game tonight and then one tomorrow morning. (The chess player drew last night's game, by the way, in record time - well, record for him!) After the final game and probably some kind of closing ceremony, we will up sticks and head for Vigo, by train. We have worked it all out: slow train from Figueira da Foz to Coimbra B, super fast train from Coimbra B to Oporto and then one of the only two trains per day from Oporto to Vigo. Once there, it's just a short(ish) walk up the hill to our flat.
Mind you, I am not sure we should go to Vigo. Galician friends on Facebook have alerted me to an armed robbery that took place there yesterday. Someone tried to rob a branch of Abanca, one of the new banks which have opened in the last year or so as a result of the various mergers and reorganisations. In the ensuing chaos, of the robbery not the reorganisation, one policewoman and one of the robbers were shot dead and other police were injured. Someone from the Galician government commented on the fact that the police were not wearing bullet-proof vests. But in most European countries I don't think it's a routine thing to wear them unless you are on a special mission. If you just go to investigate an incident in the early afternoon you might well not be prepared for that. Desperate times.
We shall go carefully and quietly up the hill to our flat.
Friday, 28 November 2014
Friday!!
Newspapers online this morning had headlines about Black Friday sales. What's that about?
Crazy people buying electrical goods they don't need because "it's a bargain"??? I read reports of students buying several TV sets or taking away two trolleys full of stuff. Students?! Even if the goods are reduced from £300 to £150, how do they afford to buy four or five items? A mad rush to buy stuff you don't even know you need because the prices are reduced! Police having to close down Tesco stores because of aggressive purchasing! People fighting to get in and then snatching goods off other shoppers! Has the world gone mad?
I decided to investigate Black Friday and had some interesting results:-
Anyway, some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to import the idea to the UK. As if we didn't have enough sales already. Chaos appears to have ensued as a result! I remain unimpressed!
Maybe we also need to import Buy Nothing Day, a day of protest against consumerism, usually the Friday or Saturday after Black Friday.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot this one. When you google Black Friday it throws up a singer called Rebecca Renee Black who released a single called Friday in 2011. This was deemed the "worst song ever" but it went viral on YouTube. So it goes.
I have found an interesting new (to me anyway) word: brumotactillophobia. It means fear of having different items of food touching each other on your plate. This sort of plate - lunch yesterday - with a tasty sauce combining all the ingredients wouldn't please brumotactillophobes.
I remember my brother being a bit fussy in that way - major ructions if his potatoes touched his meat. Complicated arrangements to prevent the gravy spreading too far. Mind you he was more than a little fussy as a child. Whatever anyone else had for dinner, my mother used to prepare mashed potatoes and minced beef for her son. Pandering to his fad, I call it! He did grow up to be a normal eater in later life, although it took him a fair few years before he would eat cheese. We all have our little quirks. It's what makes life interesting.
The chess player's little quirk at the moment seems to be having lo-o-o-o-ong games. Last night's was another 6.30 to 11.30 marathon! It went through "not so bad", "a reasonable position", "not playing well", "getting better", "made a blunder in time pressure" to "lost". So it goes.
Today is another day! Let's hope it's not another Black Friday!
Crazy people buying electrical goods they don't need because "it's a bargain"??? I read reports of students buying several TV sets or taking away two trolleys full of stuff. Students?! Even if the goods are reduced from £300 to £150, how do they afford to buy four or five items? A mad rush to buy stuff you don't even know you need because the prices are reduced! Police having to close down Tesco stores because of aggressive purchasing! People fighting to get in and then snatching goods off other shoppers! Has the world gone mad?
I decided to investigate Black Friday and had some interesting results:-
- In 1881, a severe European windstorm hit the coast of Scotland on Friday 14th of October. 189 fishermen from Eyemouth in Berwickshire were drowned. They named it Black Friday.
- In 1910, there was a women's suffrage event in London on Friday 18th of October - Emmeline Pankhurst and co. The police were sent out in force against the suffragettes and many of those arrested were assaulted and manhandled. The first case of police action against the suffragettes - Black Friday.
- In 1862, two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, tried to corner the gold market in New York on Friday September 24th and brought about the collapse of the market. Just one of the scandals that rocked the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.
Anyway, some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to import the idea to the UK. As if we didn't have enough sales already. Chaos appears to have ensued as a result! I remain unimpressed!
Maybe we also need to import Buy Nothing Day, a day of protest against consumerism, usually the Friday or Saturday after Black Friday.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot this one. When you google Black Friday it throws up a singer called Rebecca Renee Black who released a single called Friday in 2011. This was deemed the "worst song ever" but it went viral on YouTube. So it goes.
I have found an interesting new (to me anyway) word: brumotactillophobia. It means fear of having different items of food touching each other on your plate. This sort of plate - lunch yesterday - with a tasty sauce combining all the ingredients wouldn't please brumotactillophobes.
I remember my brother being a bit fussy in that way - major ructions if his potatoes touched his meat. Complicated arrangements to prevent the gravy spreading too far. Mind you he was more than a little fussy as a child. Whatever anyone else had for dinner, my mother used to prepare mashed potatoes and minced beef for her son. Pandering to his fad, I call it! He did grow up to be a normal eater in later life, although it took him a fair few years before he would eat cheese. We all have our little quirks. It's what makes life interesting.
The chess player's little quirk at the moment seems to be having lo-o-o-o-ong games. Last night's was another 6.30 to 11.30 marathon! It went through "not so bad", "a reasonable position", "not playing well", "getting better", "made a blunder in time pressure" to "lost". So it goes.
Today is another day! Let's hope it's not another Black Friday!
Thursday, 27 November 2014
A lot of stuff!
Sometimes you just find yourself a little overwhelmed. It can happen with lunch.
Yesterday we decided to revisit a place called the Nucleo Sportinguista for lunch. We had been there last time we were in Figueira and remembered it being worth the visit. Our route took us through a park where the art work appeared to be inspired by Miró and Picasso. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there last time we came this way. Certainly worth seeing anyway.
At the end of the park, Phil looked around, a little bewildered. "I was sure we should have come out at the restaurant", he declared. And so we had. He just couldn't see it because it looks rather like a glass box. We were simply looking through it.
The food was as good as we remembered, although what was listed as garlic soup was really just another variation on vegetable. No problem. Next came fish. We thought you had to choose between the fish listed on the menu but the waitress explained that it was "uma mixta". So, when I had served myself this ....
I still had this left to eat.
But I managed it! I just didn't eat many potatoes. Such restraint.
A friend of my daughter's lacks that restraint. She confessed on Facebook, where such public confessions take place, to having been unable to resist opening all the doors on her advent calendar and eating all the chocolates hidden away behind them. One of her friends commented, "For every door on an advent calendar you open before the date, an elf dies in a work-related health and safety accident." In this way new Christmas myths are invented!!!
Of course, the true way to avoid eating all the chocolate is not to buy any! In our house I hide it. As I do biscuits! Cake is another matter. It needs eating while still fresh. Advent calendars, though, should not involve chocolate. If you only have the ones with pretty pictures; it removes temptation. Unless you are clever enough to hide a gift behind each door. Mind you, you probably need to be quite wealthy as well as organised to do that.
If you are quite wealthy, and silly, you can buy bundles of sticks as Christmas gifts. Marketed by Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, twin sisters who were child stars but have reinvented themselves as fashion designers, these bundles of sticks are called "palos santos" - Spanish, and probably Californian, for "holy sticks". You burn them in your home to rid it of negative energy apparently. Negative energy?! It is known as "smudging" and is thought to stem from a Native American practice that involves burning bundles of herbs, usually sage. At twelve dollars a bundle, it seems rather silly. Surely you could give the money to a good cause instead.
I have been going on just a bit this autumn about how good the colours have been and how the trees seem to be keeping their leaves for rather longer than usual. Well, I seem to be right. It's official. And it's all down to global warming and carbon dioxide, as you might expect. Here's a link to an article explaining it all, more or less.
While we're on about global warming, here's another curiosity. During last summer and the one before that we stuck tinfoil on our windows in the flat in Vigo to reflect the sunlight back away from our flat in an attempt to keep the interior a little cooler. It seems that we did the right thing. Scientists have been working on a mirror that reflects heat out into the cold depths of space in an attempt to replace air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth. And we all know that air-conditioning units are counterproductive as they just add to global warming. Anyway, here's a link to tell you all about it. Of course, it's all rather more complicated than our primitive aluminium foil but I think the principle is much the same. Who'd have thought it?
Update on the chess player: last night's game was less lengthy than the previous one. Another draw. Three points out of five. He seems quite happy with it all so far. We shall see!
Yesterday we decided to revisit a place called the Nucleo Sportinguista for lunch. We had been there last time we were in Figueira and remembered it being worth the visit. Our route took us through a park where the art work appeared to be inspired by Miró and Picasso. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there last time we came this way. Certainly worth seeing anyway.
At the end of the park, Phil looked around, a little bewildered. "I was sure we should have come out at the restaurant", he declared. And so we had. He just couldn't see it because it looks rather like a glass box. We were simply looking through it.
The food was as good as we remembered, although what was listed as garlic soup was really just another variation on vegetable. No problem. Next came fish. We thought you had to choose between the fish listed on the menu but the waitress explained that it was "uma mixta". So, when I had served myself this ....
I still had this left to eat.
But I managed it! I just didn't eat many potatoes. Such restraint.
A friend of my daughter's lacks that restraint. She confessed on Facebook, where such public confessions take place, to having been unable to resist opening all the doors on her advent calendar and eating all the chocolates hidden away behind them. One of her friends commented, "For every door on an advent calendar you open before the date, an elf dies in a work-related health and safety accident." In this way new Christmas myths are invented!!!
Of course, the true way to avoid eating all the chocolate is not to buy any! In our house I hide it. As I do biscuits! Cake is another matter. It needs eating while still fresh. Advent calendars, though, should not involve chocolate. If you only have the ones with pretty pictures; it removes temptation. Unless you are clever enough to hide a gift behind each door. Mind you, you probably need to be quite wealthy as well as organised to do that.
If you are quite wealthy, and silly, you can buy bundles of sticks as Christmas gifts. Marketed by Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, twin sisters who were child stars but have reinvented themselves as fashion designers, these bundles of sticks are called "palos santos" - Spanish, and probably Californian, for "holy sticks". You burn them in your home to rid it of negative energy apparently. Negative energy?! It is known as "smudging" and is thought to stem from a Native American practice that involves burning bundles of herbs, usually sage. At twelve dollars a bundle, it seems rather silly. Surely you could give the money to a good cause instead.
I have been going on just a bit this autumn about how good the colours have been and how the trees seem to be keeping their leaves for rather longer than usual. Well, I seem to be right. It's official. And it's all down to global warming and carbon dioxide, as you might expect. Here's a link to an article explaining it all, more or less.
While we're on about global warming, here's another curiosity. During last summer and the one before that we stuck tinfoil on our windows in the flat in Vigo to reflect the sunlight back away from our flat in an attempt to keep the interior a little cooler. It seems that we did the right thing. Scientists have been working on a mirror that reflects heat out into the cold depths of space in an attempt to replace air-conditioning units that keep buildings cool on Earth. And we all know that air-conditioning units are counterproductive as they just add to global warming. Anyway, here's a link to tell you all about it. Of course, it's all rather more complicated than our primitive aluminium foil but I think the principle is much the same. Who'd have thought it?
Update on the chess player: last night's game was less lengthy than the previous one. Another draw. Three points out of five. He seems quite happy with it all so far. We shall see!
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Midpoint!
Wednesday already! I have a theory about the vagaries of time. There's the usual stuff about five minutes being very short if it's all the time you have to complete an important task and very long if you're waiting for a bus. Time is elastic. When you go away somewhere, time goes along normally to begin with. In fact, if you are doing lots of different and interesting things it can even seem to slow down. However, no matter what you do, when you reach the midpoint time speeds up. It happens every time! Without fail! And today is Wednesday, half way through the week. So I expect the rest of the week to fly by.
Still time to be adventurous though! Yesterday we took the plunge and had lunch in one of those little restaurants in a side street, away from the main drag, as it were. This one was called Búzio. No English to fall back on here but plenty of locals eating. Always a good sign. On the table behind ours four gentlemen were lunching together. One of them was clearly more opinionated than the rest; he rarely stopped talking enough to take a mouthful. The others barely got a word in edgewise. Another said nothing at all but, boy, he could eat! This probably explains his girth!
Anyway, the food was good wholesome stuff. Sopa de naboços to start with, another version of the "caldo gallego" we know and like. "Nabos" are turnips so it's possible that "naboços" are turnip tops, what the Spanish call "grelos". Our second course was "azélias fritas com arroz de tomato". Having established that "azélias" were some kind of fish, we turned down our waitress's suggestion that she should show us the fish prior to ordering. We had already understood that they were small "lenguado" or sole. Very good they were too; we had four small fried fish each, about five or six inches long, and a mountain of rice.
Whenever we have a dish like that I wonder if we are eating fish that are really too small to be caught legally. We eat them anyway so I should stop thinking about it. I am pretty sure they serve fish we have never heard of or that the British don't deign to eat. But it's all good tasty stuff.
The continental Europeans also use English words we have never heard of: "el footing" for jogging (Spanish), "relooker" meaning to renovate or to give a new look (French) and many more. English is everywhere in names of shops and bars, in adverts and especially in business and IT terminology. It amuses me. What doesn't amuse me is the transfer of mistakes such as the rogue apostrophe, sometimes called the "grocer's apostrophe". Here's an example from a seafront bar in Figueira da Foz.
Well, I just don't know! I have heard people say that some foreigners speak better English that the English but obviously they are no better at punctuation!
The barman across the road from the casino where the chess event is taking place told me that the Portuguese are better at learning languages than the Spanish, largely because of watching films in the original version with subtitles, rather than dubbed into the local language. (In Spain there are professional "dubbers"; dubbing-actors specialise in certain foreign actors. It happens in Italy too. An Italian friend of mine was astounded when she first heard George Clooney speak in his own voice!!!) We have conversations in a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, with a bit of English thrown in. I go in at least once in the evening to order a "garoto" Portuguese for the Spanish "cortado", "para levar" - to take out. I then carry a plastic cup of coffee across the road to the casino to give the chess player a boost.
As often happens, I am impressed by the level of conversation I have with barmen here and in Spain; they are always well informed. This one argues that Columbus is Italian - no way can he be Galician as our Pontevedra friends maintain! - but that he learned his sailing and navigational skills in Portugal. The barman went on the give me a mini history lesson about the kings and queens of Europe in the time of Columbus and how they were all related. Do English barmen know stuff like this? Or is there something superior in the continental European education system?
We've taken to popping in there as well for a post-chess game beer - hence the lengthy conversations about stuff - and the barman is now taking an interest in the chess player's progress.
Last night? A five hour marathon, needing TWO coffee boosts, which resulted in a draw! Phew! We thought it was never going to finish! It's a good job there are no more morning games until Sunday!
Still time to be adventurous though! Yesterday we took the plunge and had lunch in one of those little restaurants in a side street, away from the main drag, as it were. This one was called Búzio. No English to fall back on here but plenty of locals eating. Always a good sign. On the table behind ours four gentlemen were lunching together. One of them was clearly more opinionated than the rest; he rarely stopped talking enough to take a mouthful. The others barely got a word in edgewise. Another said nothing at all but, boy, he could eat! This probably explains his girth!
Anyway, the food was good wholesome stuff. Sopa de naboços to start with, another version of the "caldo gallego" we know and like. "Nabos" are turnips so it's possible that "naboços" are turnip tops, what the Spanish call "grelos". Our second course was "azélias fritas com arroz de tomato". Having established that "azélias" were some kind of fish, we turned down our waitress's suggestion that she should show us the fish prior to ordering. We had already understood that they were small "lenguado" or sole. Very good they were too; we had four small fried fish each, about five or six inches long, and a mountain of rice.
Whenever we have a dish like that I wonder if we are eating fish that are really too small to be caught legally. We eat them anyway so I should stop thinking about it. I am pretty sure they serve fish we have never heard of or that the British don't deign to eat. But it's all good tasty stuff.
The continental Europeans also use English words we have never heard of: "el footing" for jogging (Spanish), "relooker" meaning to renovate or to give a new look (French) and many more. English is everywhere in names of shops and bars, in adverts and especially in business and IT terminology. It amuses me. What doesn't amuse me is the transfer of mistakes such as the rogue apostrophe, sometimes called the "grocer's apostrophe". Here's an example from a seafront bar in Figueira da Foz.
Well, I just don't know! I have heard people say that some foreigners speak better English that the English but obviously they are no better at punctuation!
The barman across the road from the casino where the chess event is taking place told me that the Portuguese are better at learning languages than the Spanish, largely because of watching films in the original version with subtitles, rather than dubbed into the local language. (In Spain there are professional "dubbers"; dubbing-actors specialise in certain foreign actors. It happens in Italy too. An Italian friend of mine was astounded when she first heard George Clooney speak in his own voice!!!) We have conversations in a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, with a bit of English thrown in. I go in at least once in the evening to order a "garoto" Portuguese for the Spanish "cortado", "para levar" - to take out. I then carry a plastic cup of coffee across the road to the casino to give the chess player a boost.
As often happens, I am impressed by the level of conversation I have with barmen here and in Spain; they are always well informed. This one argues that Columbus is Italian - no way can he be Galician as our Pontevedra friends maintain! - but that he learned his sailing and navigational skills in Portugal. The barman went on the give me a mini history lesson about the kings and queens of Europe in the time of Columbus and how they were all related. Do English barmen know stuff like this? Or is there something superior in the continental European education system?
We've taken to popping in there as well for a post-chess game beer - hence the lengthy conversations about stuff - and the barman is now taking an interest in the chess player's progress.
Last night? A five hour marathon, needing TWO coffee boosts, which resulted in a draw! Phew! We thought it was never going to finish! It's a good job there are no more morning games until Sunday!
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