That one day

Every holiday, there comes that one time when I have to figure out for myself how to get from A to B and back again.

We will get to that later.

No hurry to get anywhere in particular today so we wandered the streets, checked out some shops and most importantly, found the missing ceramic statues we had yet to find. The monkeys were the hardest. They were hidden in trees. Who knew?

For the last and 7th time, Lidl, our go to food shop when in wherever we are, was visited. Tomorrow's lunch, snacks and today's lunch were purchased and we headed home for our midday rest.

With 2 phones, 1 European sim card, and 1 person's desire to visit a museum, I was left with a paper map and the name of a record store in my head. Annette had circled Lidl and the name of the store (at my request).

My navigational skills usually relate to the whereabouts of golf courses, golf shops and shops that sell chocolate covered nuts.

I have purchased said nuts from Lidl so that was my starting point. 

Now if I was a map maker or cartographer (you choose), I would make it obvious that the street, that someone needing to get to from the roundabout near Lidl, to Silver Tentacles record shop was actually coming out of the roundabout, and not 100 metres further down the road. An Artist's impression of a map is not what I need. Accuracy is the key.

Had I known that I just needed to walk down the road with the massive crane in the middle of the street, there would have been no problems.

As stated, the last of the ceramic figures was found this morning. The crane mentioned was of the lifting heavy stuff kind.

With money running low, we thought we would keep it going in that direction. 

Pizza for me of the honey with figs kind while Annette went for the crab ù

tortelli and a plate that almost didn't fit on the table. It cost a lot more than the usual home cooked meal. 

Back home to clean and pack for an early start tomorrow.

Blue for you

For those of you familiar with the Status Quo album, Blue for You, from 1976, this post is not about it.

The best two songs are Is There A Better Way and of course their classic Rain.

Seeing Francis Rossi wearing a denim waistcoat is one of the most 70's thing ever, but as I said, this post isn't about the album.

Since we sold our house, picked our land and visited the offices of McDonald Jones for our house design, one of the main priorities has been the colour of the kitchen. At one point last year while travelling in a car through a French village, the desired Kitchen Blue was spotted. Alas, no photo. Since that moment, the search has continued and every day in Portugal my eagle eyes are looking and quite often "Is that the blue?" comes out of my mouth.

Today, after we caught the replacement trackwork bus for a day trip, I quickly realised how many different shades of blue the village of Óbidos contained.

It was a long, slow walk with many shops to be seen. 

We walked the city wall, being careful not to die by falling in the process,

found a sub par lunch,

and caught a bus back to town. Ribs and salad from Lidl are in the fridge, Annette is sleeping and I give thanks that my back is feeling good today.

I also give thanks to YouTube for their ability to be seen worldwide as Portuguese TV is of no interest to me.

Ribs Du Jour

in search of

Up at 6 to depart at 7:20 for a train that left at 8:52, was probably too early, but previous bus lateness had us being a bit cautious.

The bus came immediately and we were at the station's indicator board, waiting in the cold morning, for 30 minutes until platform 5 came up, we waited on Platform 5 for over half an hour in the cold morning until our train arrived.

Not much to see as the windows are graffiti covered and the usual Portuguese fog was covering the landscape until midday.

On arrival in Caldas da Rainha, we had 2 ways to decide which was our way out. We chose poorly. But that was ok because there was a lift that would take us up to the walkway and we could then head in the right direction. The lift was broken.

But there was another lift on the train platform that we just came from, so across the tracks we walked and headed up the platform. 

Then the staff member started yelling at us from the other platform to wait. We were pointing up to the sky (international language to indicate we were going to the lift). He finally realised that we weren't catching a train. We continued on our way.

I said "that building looks like it's art deco". I immediately fined myself 2 euros.

We walked down the typically bumpy footpaths, found our house, met the owner (who had just got out of major surgery) and headed out to explore. 

Who would have thought that after all the hills we had walked, that a two hour train journey would finally break my body. Added to the inside and outside of the right knee, my back gave in, but we had to find the ceramic figures that were in various places around town, visit the ceramic shop, do general sightseeing and go to Lidl (a poor imitation of Aussie Aldi).

Some 21,000 steps into the day and totally broken, I lay on the lounge and thanked the holiday gods for an easy holiday.

Gnocchi and garlic bread for dinner from our Lidl experience and nighty night.