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.

10 flights

Garmin, which pretty much dictates my life, likes me to do the equivalent uphill daily of 10 flights of stairs. 

This was achieved today in 5 minutes as we made our way to the Botanical Gardens for what was an interesting visit.

With confirmation today that our land has been registered, it's always good to get garden ideas. However, with the gardens being part of the university, which is somewhere near the stars, our day started going slowly uphill.

We then descended, walked along the riverbank to the walking bridge across said river, that of course was closed for maintenance (the Hard Rock Cafe curse returns) and found our way back to a cafe for lunch.

Perhaps it was the glass that made them look smaller, but in hindsight we got too many of the items on display. The things that looked like pastry were a meat for me and shrimp for Annette, surrounded by donut. Mmm mystery meat. We didn’t need the accompanying chicken thingy, but hindsight knows everything.

We had a free afternoon and after checking the bus timetable, decided (in retrospect, foolishly) to walk up the hill via the river to the shopping centre next door to Decathlon.

It was a nice walk, but I'm done with uphill, until the next place we go to.

It was your usual shopping mall and some purchases were made. Next stop Decathlon, which was deceptively close. No purchases and then a long wait for a bus downhill while sitting on the footpath.

Back to our street, the Editor purchased a mystery pastry, we went back home and relaxed until dinner time.

We opted for the 'wandering through the street and looking at menus method'.

We settled on Tuca. What a great place. The owner recommended pastries and a pizza. Our chosen pizza had run out of ingredients but he added ham to a vegetarian and changed the cheese (he let us sample it to check the taste).

If you are ever in Coimbra, go there.

To finish off he gave us what we think was a coffee liqueur, which was actually quite nice, although Annette was rather dubious.

Coimbra is highly recommended if you have Mountain Goat determination.