Wednesday, March 15, 2023

From Portugal to California



It's starting to rain. I'm under a giant umbrella at the park watching an ancient man go down the street with a box on his head—ingenious. The lady who runs this kiosk is staring at all of us to make sure we don't move her tables. That's forbidden. So everybody has to stand under my umbrella while their table gets wet. She's quite militant about it. That's why I pick this table. It's one of the few that's completely under an umbrella.


We'll be home by the time I post this blog. I may have some additional adventures to relate by then. One thing I've been meaning to explain to you, in general, is how my blog works. Many, many years ago I wrote an email to family when we were on one of our adventures. I'd hunt down a cyber-café and write a quick run-down. To save time, I learned to make a group email. The group grew. A-liu, my friend visiting from Taiwan sat me down and forced me to create a blog. 


So here's the part which will be interesting to those of my more conspiratorial readers; I only have four followers according to Google. That's because I own the list of my followers. If I decide to close this blog address, no problem. I take you with me. For this reason, I don't have a good relationship with Google. 


It drives them crazy that my blog gets so many views without going through them first—because your route is direct. It made them so mad they suspended my advertisement-income account every time I traveled because I'm cheating their system. That's why you don't see adds on my blog… I canceled my add account. I don't make any money from my blog, and I don't want to. But I do make money from my books which are located on the right side of this page.


Fashion is always of interest to me. This visit has been the rubber pants. I have no idea what these britches are made of, but they look like thin flexible rubber. All ages of women wear them and they don't look good on any of them. The younger girls wear the crop tops, crop sweaters, and crop jackets. Wearing a down jacket that bares the stomach seems counter-productive to me. Another fashion statement is the big huge shoes. We call them Frankenstein boots. A girl could have a slimming and dainty outfit on and then those shoes! But I can't skip the nylons—they wear nylons here… all types of designs, but lots of nude color. I haven't seen that since the 80s.


Most men wear fitted jeans/pants or nice sweats. Levi jackets are popular here, and the Levi pants are really expensive—around 100-150 dollars! So are Converse shoes… really expensive. The cheapest pair I've seen was $95, except the used ones at the flea-market.


The weird colored hair is popular here. Not as much as in the States, but definitely here. The difference is colors are much, much more intense. No soft hued green here. The one that really strikes me though, is the beards. Guys die their beards orange, green, and blue… though, honestly those guys look like northern European tourists.


They have an unusual sport here. Something we've never seen before. It's called futvolley. It can be played anywhere, but usually on the beach. A volleyball net is set up and the teams are placed in the volleyball format. The difference is they don't touch the ball with their hands! Seriously, it's only heads, shoulders, and feet. It looks like an incredibly hard sport to me… but I can't play either soccer/futball or volleyball, so I'm easily impressed.

Those of you who know me are aware that I can deliver the "Mom look." It comes naturally to me with no practice at all. Izzy says it's terrifying. I used it in Sweden when a guy was provoking Joe (like provoking a grizzly-bear). The man instantly backed down. Well, I got to use it the other day at the grocery store. Grocery stores are set up with an inside entrance gate and the registers as the exit. A guy was walking with shampoo and lotion containers toward the entrance gate. I stopped what I was doing and watched. He looked furtive as he crept through the veggie section. He passed through the entrance gate and kept his eye on the oblivious security guard. Then he opened his jacket and covered up his loot. I stared hard at him. He must have felt my eyes from fifty feet away. He looked at me and froze. We maintained eye-contact for a few seconds and then he turned around and went back through the veggie section. I watched him until he put the shampoo and lotion back and left. See… I have a super power! Of course, that wouldn't have worked in California. The guy would've just stared back at me as he walked out.


We're home now. The eleven and a half flight with an additional forty-five minutes at each end for some airport issues, was awful, as usual. We've decided that the Airbus is our least favorite airplane. Mainly because the light-switch is out of reach, so you have to stand up to flip it on or off. But worse than that is there's no discernable flow of air. There are no little vents above you. The upside is I don't feel so dried out. The downside is I have to fan myself with the safety pamphlet constantly.


I hate to throw a company under the bus, but Tap Air does a terrible job. The service and food are simply deplorable. In the entire flight they came by with a cheap lunch and seven hour later, a snack tray. Twice they came by and offered water… twice in thirteen hours. I always feel like I'm in survival training in the Army. Thankfully we learned from our first flight last year and we bring our own food. For someone like me, who doesn't normally eat any grain-based food, I have to be creative. I bought two ham and cheese sandwiches and threw away the bread.


It's nice to be in my own home. Picking out what to wear this morning was difficult. I'm not used to so many choices. The biggest shock, of course, is sticker-shock. It's amazing how expensive everything is in the States, expect gas which is the same if not less. Food and drink are the ones that hit us in the face all day, every day. While waiting for our flight from San Francisco, we ate at the airport. We split a hamburger, I had a glass of wine, Joe had two beers for $92.03.  I chose a comparison restaurant in Cascais. This is the most expensive community we visited in Portugal. It is similar to Carmel-By-The-Sea in California. We were one street away from the oceanfront at an elegant restaurant. We split a hamburger, I had a glass of wine, and Joe had two stout beers for 19.00 Euros (about $20.00). Even if you say it would be double at the airport in Lisbon, that's still only $40. By the way, their airport is only slightly more expensive than the outside prices. A ham and cheese sandwich was only 4.40 Euros.


Well, I'll talk to you next time we all go on a trip together.

6 comments:

  1. Wow! What an experience you too have had!

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  2. Always sweet to come along on all your trips with you! Fun to hear your Google dodge. And when you're too tired to write books, you just need to keep up with your creative photography!

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    1. It's good to have you along for our crazy trips. I love being able to incorporate my photography. ☺️

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  3. Thank you for your interesting travels my friend. Glad your home safe. Looking forward to the next time. 😘

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