Do you want an ice cream? Selling ice cream cones at Estremoz Saturday Market.
The Caixa Forum, Madrid.
🚗 Starting the journey home. Driving across Spain to Barcelona to catch a flight. Writing this from a hotel in Madrid. The sounds (mainly traffic) of a busy city rumbles below. The wind blows around the terrace. A different world. Change. Reflecting on so much.
🐦 I like how in some Portuguese motorway service stations they play the sounds of birds. After the noise and stress of highway driving, the sounds of birds I find relaxing.
When I was younger and my grandfather came to visit he use to give me the empty end of an ice cream cone. I never knew the reason why, and asking my mother she does not know why either? My wife and I were eating at this very good Gelato place in Possanco, Comporta called Gulato, and I was reminded of my grandfather’s gifts as I bit down towards the end of my cone.
By the way, I can’t say enough good things about Gulato. It is a bit off the beaten track but still not far away from everything else in the area. Hunt it down. Lovely staff, the owner trained in making Gelato in Italy. Delicious gelato all made on the property. A beautiful location.
Some friends in Alcácer very kindly arranged a sunset boat ride for us along the Sado River yesterday evening. This was completely unexpected and a lovely gift. The boat was solar powered and so there was no noise of an engine or exhaust fumes. There was just the sound of water lapping against the boat as we sailed forward along the river, of fish jumping, of the wind blowing through the grasses at the river’s edge. This made for a very relaxing trip.
Drinks and snacks were provided for the ride. The boat’s captain, Manual, shared with us the history of the Sado River, once a busy trade route through the Alentejo area of Portugal and further afield. Earlier that day a new Alcácer acquaintance shared the trade that use to take place between Alcácer do Sal and Cornwall, England. Cornwall had tin and this was used for making steel in Portugal. With the history of human settlement in the Alcácer do Sal area going back 40,000 years, the river has been an important trade route for a long time.
Chatting, eating, drinking, watching, listening, laughing.
If you find yourself in Alcácer do Sal, look up Sunrice boat trips. A good host, great company. We had a wonderful evening.
Views along the Sado River at sunset.
We revisited Alcácer do Sal’s Railway Station today, and this time got to go inside as a goods train rumbled by.
Anyone would think that someone at Apple is making some announcements right now, going by the content of my timeline! #WWDC
Heavy skies over the beach at Carvalhal yesterday while we were out walking. That said it was warm when the sun broke through, and some people were I the water. The threatening clouds came to nothing.
Monday June 10, 2024 Newsletter letter
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Monday June 10, 2024 Dear Friends, I write this on Portugal Day, a national holiday, celebrated every 10th June. I did not know what Portugal Day actually celebrated and so I headed over to Wikipedia. According to the Free Encyclopedia’s entry for Portugal Day, It commemorates the death on 10 June 1580 of Luís de Camões, a poet and national literary icon. Wikipedia’s page for Luís de Camões states that,
Anger and The Nun - or don't judge the book by the cover
Saturday, June 8, 2024
This story share by Robert Rackley on his blog Canned Dragons reminded me of a story that I heard about a Tibetan Buddhist nun. A friend of mine, herself a Buddhist nun at the time, was studying at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala in Northern India. I’ll call my friend Ani-la, meaning nun in Tibetan. A friend came to visit Ani-la. Ani-la took her friend on a walk around the Institute and Dharamsala, showing her North Indian home.
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. Monuments have lives woven into them.”
~ Pericles
Pine trees to distant rice fields.
Images of the Road
Saturday, June 8, 2024
I have long loved rail travel. Sitting in a carriage, watching life go by. Gratefully allowing others to take the strain of the transportation logistics. Perhaps striking up conversation with a fellow traveler, or more likely than not sitting quietly reading, writing, watching, sleeping. When I got older and threw a backpack on my back railway stations took on another significance for me. That of unknown adventure. Yes, I might have had a ticket in my hand stating an intended destination, but as I looked out at the train tracks disappearing into the distance from the station platform I had a sense of unknown adventure ahead.
A stork with nest on top of large concrete structure on the edge of Alcácer do Sal.
⛈️ Well the weather has finally broken this time. At long last. I just heard the longest roll of thunder that I have ever heard - a couple of minutes?
🌧️ The air was getting heavier and heavier. It was feeling thick to walk through. Above the clouds were building. Dark clouds. Finally, just now, the impasse broke and there was a brief shower. Short, but enough to lighten the air and to allow us to breathe again.
Shall I, shan’t I? …. I did.
I walked past this gentleman a handful of times as l was running errands in Lisbon. He appeared totally engrossed in reading his newspaper. Something I rarely see these days. Phones yes, I’m on mine now, newspapers no.
As unobtrusively as possible, I took the shot.
These two donkeys lived in the hotel grounds that we stayed in while down in the Algarve over the weekend. They were not always in their corral, but sometimes were wandering the grounds. On our return one afternoon, the older one greeted us with some loud braying as we got out of the car and walked towards him.
I finished reading: In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. This book felt like a gift that I am very grateful for. I took my time with it. An account of a young Buddhist monk setting off on a wandering retreat who then becomes severely ill and almost dies. What made this book special for me was the intimacy of his story. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan Master, shares his Buddhist approach to the struggles that setting off on the retreat brings to him. Then as illness strikes he offers rare insight, from my perspective, into the Tibetan view on mind, consciousness and dying. 📚