Second home in Armação and a cliff-hanging boardwalk.

We’ve moved to our new place in Armação (that I originally booked). It’s a gorgeous apartment right on the ocean promenade. It has a small front balcony to oversee the activities of the community and the ocean.

The patio out back is huge and completely ignored. I don’t understand why they didn’t put potted plants around the perimeter, patio furniture, and a BBQ grill. One big umbrella or roll-out awning would make it a perfect spot.

The inside is beautiful with a soft queen-bed, a second room with two twins, two bathrooms, a dining room, front-room, and a galley-kitchen. It has three air-conditioners, which is a good thing because of the fruit flies everywhere. When I woke up the first morning, I opened the doors front and back, and gloried in the fresh breeze.

Then I closed all the doors and we went to the store to buy bug-killer. After I fumigated, we went to the beach. When we got back, I swept up a thousand tiny flies. Not my best moment. When I told the owners about it they said, “Yeah, they’re a problem. They are mosquitos.” No, they’re not mosquitos. “Keep the windows closed.” So helpful. I talked to the owner at our favorite beach snack-bar, and she said it’s only temporary. The fruit-flies come every year and lasts for about 4-5 days.

I’ve walked both of my favorite walks so far. The cliff walk was glorious! The boardwalk over the wetlands preserve was hot… pretty, but hot. If I do that one again, I’ll go earlier. But most likely I’ll do the cliff walk because it offers a challenge with its stairs and hills. Plus I think the cliffs are stunning.

We met a sweet couple at a restaurant the other night who offered to take our picture. A couple of nights later we saw them at another restaurant on the promenade. We stopped to chat and made plans for the next night, last night, to have dinner together. They’re on vacation from Holland. They met the same year, 1979, as us. It was such an enjoyable evening.

Today is going to be a busy day. We plan to go over to Carvoeiro to walk their cliff-hanging boardwalk and stop for a hamburger and fries. It’s an adorable village. My sister requested orange earrings to match her work-uniform. I love a challenge. There’s the best little jewelry shop in Carvoeiro. I’ll let you know if I’m successful.

One of the odd things about Armação is their seagulls. They sound so weird. It’s something between a crying baby and a dog howling. As usual they are serious beggars. I’ve actually never seen anyone giving them food, but they’re ever hopeful.

As I write this, a tiny Portuguese lady is creeping into the café alternating between cane and rolling grocery tote. She’s as tall as me sitting down. Her laborious progress is killing me, but I’m making a point to not let her see me watching her. Right as she crept behind me she muttered, “Aye-aye-aye.” Such a universal saying!

A truck just drove by in reverse. It’s going the wrong way on a one-way street. I wonder if the driver thinks that because his vehicle is pointed in the right direction, it’s okay? I made the mistake of ordering a café duplo (a double-shot of espresso and hot water), and now I’m feeling shaky and jittery. This is a lesson I never seem to learn. I think it’s because it tastes so good.

We went to Carvoeiro yesterday. It was great to be back on the cliff-boardwalk. And the burger and French fries were great too. Boneca Bar makes their fries Belgium-style. I’m very picky about my fries, and in general, the fries are wimpy in Portugal—never crispy.

By the time we got back into Carvoeiro village, I was boiling hot. I headed straight for the jewelry shop because they have air-conditioning. Their jewelry is arranged by color, so if you want orange you just go straight to that section. I ended up buying too much because the cool air felt so good. Good marketing trick.

Last night we made dinner. I’d bought filet mignon, so we had that and left over rotisserie chicken and sausage. Joe cracked open a bottle of Hermalinda Syrah-Reserva—man, that was so good.

Today we plan to be beach-bums, which will involve beer and wine.

Portugal: Goodbye São Martinho, Hello Armação

We noticed flyers about town, in São Martinho, indicating some sort of event at the fire-station. Most of the firefighters here are volunteers, so it’s pretty remarkable that they’d take even more time out of their lives to have an open-house. Of course, we just had to go! It was great to see the different vehicles all open for inspection.

For some reason they had a drum set for the kids to pound on inside, near the trucks. They had a little obstacle-course for the children, but best of all was the fire-hose. They had the kids, one by one, give it a try. I don’t think it was a real fire-hose, but it was definitely stronger than a garden-hose. The had a big thing shaped like a house. They had to get the stream through the window.

Out back they were loading up the grill for a pork rotisserie… probably a good thing they were surrounded by fire-fighters. They Invited us to come back that afternoon for pulled pork sandwiches. We didn’t make it, but I bet that would’ve been fun.

The police (GNR) showed up this last week as Sao Martinho started getting busy. I thought the GNR jamming past us with lights flashing looked pretty intimidating on his Vespa. I’m sure it wasn’t actually a Vespa, but it was about the same size.

This town really is a village. There’s no place to get to speeds higher than 20 mph. The other day we watched in wonderment when a testosterone-driven teen decided to speed around a corner. He just tapped the gas, but those big marble slabs that delineate an intersection are slicker than snot. He looked like he was on ice.

Before we leave São Martinho, I will tell you about something sad. Our friend, Antonio, was really upset the other day when we met him for lunch. He said they’d found another beheaded goat under the bridge in the river. Apparently, the goats are used in Brazilian and African cults for worship. That morning he’d spotted several beheaded doves on the shore nearby. He thinks it’s the Brazilians, but who knows. It’s always done in the middle of the night at various bridges, according to Antonio. Unfortunate.

We were packing up our belongings in anticipation of coming down here, to the Armação de Pêra, when I got a text from our next Airbnb. Raquel, an absolute sweetheart, was apologetic because the bathroom plumbing job wasn’t finished on time. She wanted to put us up somewhere else until it was finished—four days after we arrived. I said not to worry, we could stay there during a construction project. Absolutely not! She said it was covered in dust and not up to her standards. She was frantically looking for a place for us while I sat on a bus reading and relaxing. About two hours before we arrived, she found a place.

Sadly, she said that she’s not used to people being nice about things that go wrong. Firstly, I have to say that she was super nice and sorry about it. Secondly, I find that things go way smoother when I’m nice. Being an uptight snob doesn’t get you far. I took a deep breath and tried to imagine how stressed out she must’ve felt. I have to admit that I wanted to stay at more then one place, but it’s way cheaper to stay for a month in one apartment. Anyway, I got my wish. We’re at a place we’d actually seen from our balcony on another trip. I even posted pictures of it because it had pools on the roof.

Susana was waiting for us out front of this place. She gave us a tour and pointed out the one flight of stairs to the roof.

It’s a clean little apartment with good air-conditioning and bizarre tiled bathroom and kitchen. It’s on a busy road, so it’s kinda noisy, but at night it sounds like the ocean. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

We went straight to our favorite beach restaurant and then walked down the beach. What a chore! Man, the sand is way softer here and our feet and calves were screaming by the time we got back.

The first morning I went to the roof to write while Joe worked out. I’m writing a screenplay based on my second Tattered Book. This one is about a woman, Susan, in her sixties. It’s a romantic comedy based in the States, Portugal, and Italy. I’ve made some good progress on it since we’ve been here. Joe came up with a great analogy for writing a screenplay. He said it’s like reducing everything in your house (the book) down to a suitcase (feature-length film). It can only have what it absolutely cannot do without. Fortunately, it’s not a short film—that would be a backpack.

Joe and I both felt a little yucky… you know, that achy tired feeling? We attribute it to being out in the sun all day… we’ve become accustomed to the cooler northern coast weather. Today we feel better, but decided to stay in the shade. We’ll head to the beach tomorrow.

Routines of Travel

The everyday routines of this community and our travel lives... I’ve had people marvel at our willingness to give up the comfort of our routines. But in reality we don’t. We experience new things every day, but we have the daily things too.

Every morning Joe stretches and reads yesterdays news (we’re eight-hours ahead of California). Then he puts in his earbuds and cranks up the motivational video and works out.

Every morning I go straight to the window and open it. I lean on the window sill and stare at the bay. Sometimes this is cut short by the flock of birds nesting nearby. They go into attack mode. Joe finds this highly entertaining. He sticks the flyswatter out the window and taunts them. They look like competitive fliers, like the Blue Angels or something. Their aerodynamics are amazing.

I carry my coffee to the couch and play Wordle, Strands, and Letterbox. Then I wash the eggs and Joe makes eggs and ham for breakfast. Every other day we walk to the street gym to meet his friend Antonio. I sit at this café and write either my current work-in-progress or this blog.

You may not know this, but I have degenerative disc disease. I worked out on the street gym a couple of times, but it flared up my nerve pain. So, I’m sticking to my tame workout. Every morning, I work out—gently. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.

Every couple of days we walk either the beach or the boardwalk to Salir do Porto—the neighboring town. I love being part of this community’s routine of walking the beach early in the morning.

Up on the promenade the business owners wash their store steps and windows for the day.

The jet skiers and kayakers drag their gear down to the waters edge and stand in the water talking before they start. The fishermen either set out their lines from the shore or they paddle out to their boats and head out the mouth of the bay. Cafes start filling up with the coffee and croissant crowd.

Once a week, I do a puzzle with my friend, Theresa. We have an app on our phones on which we can do the puzzle together while we chat.

Joe and I often sit around reading for an hour or so, then we’re off and running. There are 129 steps to our condo, and we do that a couple of times a day. We walk up to the big grocery store, stop at the open market, and pop into the butcher-shop every couple of days. The other day we accidently timed it for when school let out. We walked with hundreds of teens for several blocks.

There’re two churches in this town with church bells. First one chimes out the time, then thirty seconds later the other one chimes out the time. At 12:03 the tsunami warning blares out its practice warning—noon is a bit noisy around here. We have several places we sit and watch this little bit of the world walk by. At about 3:00 pm (15:00) our phones start dinging as our friends and family start waking up.

I frequently walk by Maria’s swimsuit shop. She always has a happy smile and a greeting for me. I finally decided to get a suit from her yesterday. She is truly a professional. We discussed my problematic body and then she started loading my arms with bikinis. The one I liked was the most expensive, of course. I was so disappointed. She took pity on me and discounted it a lot, so I bought it. In case you think that was impulsive of me, I’d budgeted for that before I left home because I’d seen her shop the last time we were here.

In the afternoon, we both take naps. Well, I try but usually unsuccessfully. Joe’s a master at napping. Then we head back down for dinner or just a glass of wine. I make dinner several nights a week and pick out a movie to watch while we eat.

So, you see… our lives are fairly routine even when we travel.

Cafes and Exercise

You all know that we’re obsessive people-watchers, and there’s no better place to do that than from a cheap café. Sometimes we want the luxury of a more expensive place, but usually we’ll choose a little place packed with locals. There’s one on the ocean-front road. We sit up on their little balcony with the locals watching the tourists. The most entertaining part is admiring the skills of their young waiters. They dash to and fro with full serving trays while stepping over excited poodles and playing children. This should be an Olympic sport.

On the back streets, up the hill in our neighborhood, are several cafes we like. The Café Inferno attached to the firehouse is always packed.

The dumpy little place next to California Burgers has the exact same guys smoking cigarettes out front or watching sports inside the cramped space. They admire Joe because he ordered a beer and a chocolate pastry.

A recent discovery is the tiny bar attached to the farmer’s market. A group of locals are always standing around chatting. We ventured inside the other day and bought a little glass of wine and a dark beer for 1,90 Euros (about 2 bucks). Then the owner set a little plate of thinly sliced salami down for free. The wine was only sixty cents! And it was good. Perfect for me because it takes me forever to drink a glass of wine. We’ll definitely be back.

We also like a café on the other side of the river. It’s a beautiful walk over the boardwalk to get there. This one isn’t remarkable at all, but it’s fun to watch the people going down to the river and especially to the giant sand dune—the biggest dune in Portugal. Today we ran into Antonio, Joe’s work-out buddy (between his workouts). He sat with us for lunch. He seems to know everyone, and though he doesn’t have all his teeth, he always has a big cheerful smile and words of encouragement. The world needs more guys like Antonio.

The other day we had one of the many Scout Troops approach us at a café with a handmade sign. A girl stepped to our table and said, “ola” (hi). Joe responded with, “Hi, how are you?” Her face was comically panic-stricken. All her buddies came to our table to help problem solve how to sell their item to the English speakers. One boy pulled out his cell phone and typed into his translator while they all watched over his shoulder. He held it out to us as they all swung their gazes to us. “We’re selling horseshoes to earn money for our troop.” We looked at their bags of bread and asked, “Horseshoes?” Just then an older boy stepped up and said the horseshoe shaped bread is a traditional Portuguese bread. We bought one for 3 Euros. It’s a little sweet with a cinnamon flavor.

Kids here are always involved in something. Usually it involves a soccer ball or a scooter. At one of our small cafes a little boy was practicing his foot moves around the customers. Nobody minded. In fact, a few would tap the ball his direction if it was underfoot. It seems that the Portuguese just assume a soccer ball is nearby. They’re always prepared.

Speaking of exercise, the outdoor gym has been rebuilt since we were here last. It’s been great. And they have a new addition—a jungle-gym type station for the more serious athletes. Joe loves it. He can do his pulls ups. They even have rings. This is where we met Antonio. He’s a bundle of energy and does some really crazy stuff.

The local school has kayak lessons in the bay near us. They also have lifeguard training… at least I hope it’s training. Otherwise, it’s a lot of people wearing red shirts floundering around in the water and yelling for help while the lifeguard swims out to rescue them.

Speed-walking, running, and cycling are the main sources of exercise here.

But they do have this class that shows up below us several times a week. I’m getting hungry thinking about all this exercise, so I think I’ll talk Joe into taking me out to dinner at a nearby traditional Portuguese restaurant. Ciao-ciao.