I love stepping from the noise and hustle of the street, into the silence and calm of a bookshop. This evening it was Livraria da Travessa.
Where we spent a good part of today, here in Lisbon.
As my wife just said to me as she frantically mopped up a potential stain after spilling a drink on the couch,
“I’m pleased that I did it and not you.”
Me too! 😉
🚿 Well I didn’t ask for that, but I got a proper drenching getting out of the car. It was like being in a car wash. Water from all sides and a river rushing down the road to clean my shoes!
🌧️ There has been a Severe Weather Warning hovering over us since this morning, and now it appears to have arrived. With that said, the severity of that warning is changing rapidly. The forecast thunderstorms have currently disappeared and it now looks as though we’ll have moderate rainfall into the night. Though even there it is now no longer lasting until the early hours.
I’ll take my weather app as a guide, and my gazing to the skies as the more accurate assessment of current conditions, and what might be coming.
Caught in conversation.
Peppers for sale in Mercardo do Livramento, Setúbal.
Always worth a visit, though warmer days than today are better recommended. This was taken over the weekend.
👋 Olá Lisboa. Olá Príncipe Real.
In Lisbon for the day with Maui friends. Saying goodbye to them tonight as they head home.
View over the River Sado, Alcácer do Sal on a windy evening.
Well we arrived in Alcácer do Sal late at night yesterday, and it turned out to be the last day of a weekend festival. Alcácer does festivals well.
Cars crawled to the venue, also on the route to our house.
The festival is the Feira Nova De Outubro 2024. I am not clear what it was celebrating, but there were markets, food stalls a plenty and music. Even well into the third and final night of the festival, it was busy.
Olá Portugal 🇵🇹
Watching a fly climbing up the inside of a window of the airplane that I am on, oblivious of the fact (I assume!), that it is about to depart England.
A quiet Sunday morning in an overcast Britain. I’m moving on today and I’m sad about that.
I look at countries vying for power in the world, vying to be the most powerful…and ask myself, “Why?”
I am from a country that use to have the largest empire the world has ever known, England, and where is that now? I am about to visit a country that had its own small empire, Portugal, and where is that? Portugal is next to a country that had its own small empire, Spain, and where is that? Europe is littered with the remains of another large empire, the Roman Empire. Look at that now.
They all go the same way. Why waste the energy and upset in trying to create them, to be, supposedly, number one? They all crumble to dust in the end.
Let’s do a much harder thing…get on with and support each other.
What a difference a few thousand feet make. These photos were taken six days ago as we approached London Heathrow. The first was taken up above the clouds as the first light of dawn made an appearance.
As the plane descended into Heathrow we dropped into the cloud beneath us, and we stayed in it. The land did not come into view until a few hundred feet from touch down. It was pea soup fog until landing, and we arrived to a murky rainy day.
Thankfully the weather had brightened up since….though next week does not look so hopeful.
Sunrise over Bristol a couple of days ago.
I spotted this character just down the road from my mother’s apartment.
🐦 There’s barely any light in the sky, but I can hear the first birds of the morning singing the early notes of the dawn chorus.
😵💫 Well jet lag did its bit last night. I’m up before six having a cup oof coffee having managed probably less than two hours sleep.
At least I can enjoy the quiet early hours…it’s beautifully quiet.