I have been a super slacker on my posts lately. I am currently sitting in a student no show, so thought no better time to use my time than to upload some recent photos of the past six months or so, and get some memories in writing.
On our recent visit to the US, I had the opportunity again to visit my Grandma Ryder. She wrote in her dairy from when she was very young. It was so interesting to read and listen back to the details of her day to day life. So I am inspired to get back to writing, even if the details seem minute and boring to me now, I am sure one day, I will look back and laugh and have great memories.
We spent Christmas with Joel's immediate family in their family home. The weather was chilly but still sunny. Each morning while we were there I enjoyed walking Mel outside and letting her run free. One afternoon we met with Joel's friend Pedro and his dog Bulma for a walk together. I forgot what breed Bulma is but she is as big as Mel but with white long hair. They got along so great and had so much fun chasing each other around in the mud together. Poor Bulma just had a bath though, soo she didn't stay clean very long. :P
We spent the weekend after New Years with Joels cousins and Cristina and Ricardo. We bought them Cirque de Soleil tickets for Christmas so it was fun to enjoy time in Lisbon. Celina and Ricardo (cousins) are super great hosts and it is always fun catching up with them. On Sunday they took us to a delicious brunch place! YUM, I loved every sip of my chai latte! After brunch Joel and I decided to visit Sintra! I had never been before (well... when Nichole visited, we tried to go but lets say we got rained out before we made it inside anywhere.) It is so charming and I definitely recommend it for anyone who visits, especially Quinta da Regaleira.
Aveiro has a famous festival which is quite random, called Sao
Gonçalinho. There is a chapel in Aveiro which used to throw food off of
the top to the people below who were in need... now the people throw
"cavacas" to the people below to catch. Cavacas are huge but hard,
tasteless bread/wafer type things... I don't know how to describe it
well. You can break a tooth trying to bite it and there is almost no
flavor. People also hurt their heads if one hits you directly. Some
people wear helmets :P and others bring umbrellas or have assembled
these nets to try and help catch more. I asked many people whether they
liked the cavacas and most people say no. One girl told me she liked to
dip hers in tea and eat it. That I could understand a little bit.
Anyways people stand all in one square and try to catch the cavacas for good luck. We didn't catch one directly but had fun watching the excitement. The photo below is from outside of the square where the canals are in Aveiro decorated with lots of Christmas lights. It is beautiful!
The weather during the spring was pretty mild compared to the amount of rain we had the previous year. We enjoyed lots of bike rides with friends and a few hikes.
Our big project of the winter was to go through with our plans of making a master suite. The two downstairs bedrooms were previously connected with a square space, which was good for... nothing. There was also a closet in that wall, however the wood had that super old, stinky, strange smell that no matter what we tried we couldn't get rid of. So, we off that square space so the bedrooms (one of those "bedrooms" is my office/gym) were no longer connected. Opened the office door to the front hallway, and opened up the previous closet space to take the full wall. Then redid the master bathroom and did away with the pink everything. :P We had wanted to do this project for a long time and actually had already been given the closet parts from IKEA as a gift from Joel's parents. But we couldn't find a contractor to do the work. One we found wanted to over charge us by tons and was soo slow to respond, many others we called said they didn't have time until next year or something crazy! We finally found a little company to do the project. They did all of the work taking off the old tiles from the bathroom, putting in new pipes, closing the wall and opening the wall. Joel did a lot of the installation, plus we had to choose the design and the tiles etc. That quite a project in itself. We spent 6 hours in Leroy Merlin (Portugals Home Depot) trying to make sure we had thought about everything we needed. They ran into a leak coming from the upstairs pipe and a few other challenges but overall we were impressed that they stayed mostly on the schedule they told us and worked really hard and sometimes really late into the night. The end result was so pretty and we couldn't be happier with our suite!
I also had the chance to visit Braga with a few of my friends. Joel was watching a formula 1 race and they invited me to join them! It was a beautiful day and we had a great time exploring Bom Jesus and the center of Braga. It is very cute.
A friend who I met in Korea, who later moved to Australia, and now back home in Scotland decided to come for a visit in the beginning of April. I had so much fun spending time with her, cycling to the beach, and showing her around. It means so much to catch up with old friends who understand SOO many places of your life.
Then, not much longer after Marnie left it was time for my parents visit! The first part of their trip was with us to Malta, which you read about in the previous post. After we returned from Malta, we headed to Soito for Senora da Granja festival. The weather was so nice this time around, maybe too hot for people like my mom! I enjoyed the sunshine though as opposed to the super rainy time we had last year. While relaxing in Soito we went on some walks, played disc golf in random fields, and visited Sortelha. Sortelha is considered the oldest constructed Romanesque castle located in the Beira Interior region and dates back to before the 1200s. Anyways as always we had a fun walk around the castle wall, then drove up close to a windmill. As always Soito is filled with lots of delicious food and wine! My parents enjoyed everything in Soito!
After Soito they headed off to Lisbon and then back here only for a few days, then checked out Porto for a day before they headed back home. The time went so quickly!
Just before our trip to the US, Joel's work team organized a camping trip to Geres National Park. One of the girls organized a full itinerary and things to do, plus dinner reservations, food in the airbnb, and hikes. On Sunday, Joel's boss (who was about to retire) joined us with his wife. They are very interesting people and avid world travelers. It was lots of fun to finally meet them after hearing a lot about them from Joel. They were so kind and guided us on a really cool hike through a huge crack in two massive boulders. Then we had a picnic up from a view point. There was also a cycling race happening on Sunday, so we were stuck once at the beginning. The rest of the crew was just watching the cyclists go by, while I was the only one cheering! I found this soo strange. In the US and other places I have lived, you always cheer on anyone in a race whether or not you are friends. The cyclists were appreciative of my cheering and I couldn't believe not a single other person would join me to cheer them on!
Both days we enjoyed swimming in the lake, I was surprised the water temperature was so nice, since it hadn't gotten really hot yet. The second day we went on these inflatable playground things that you had to swim to! They WERE soo much fun. There were obstacles, a climbing wall, trampoline, etc... I had wayyy too much fun but wow you never feel so old until the next day and you can barely move your neck. :P. Either way, totally worth it!
Well, I will save the next part of our summer for the next post!
Thanks for reading and lots of love from Portugal! :)
On our recent visit to the US, I had the opportunity again to visit my Grandma Ryder. She wrote in her dairy from when she was very young. It was so interesting to read and listen back to the details of her day to day life. So I am inspired to get back to writing, even if the details seem minute and boring to me now, I am sure one day, I will look back and laugh and have great memories.
We spent Christmas with Joel's immediate family in their family home. The weather was chilly but still sunny. Each morning while we were there I enjoyed walking Mel outside and letting her run free. One afternoon we met with Joel's friend Pedro and his dog Bulma for a walk together. I forgot what breed Bulma is but she is as big as Mel but with white long hair. They got along so great and had so much fun chasing each other around in the mud together. Poor Bulma just had a bath though, soo she didn't stay clean very long. :P
We spent the weekend after New Years with Joels cousins and Cristina and Ricardo. We bought them Cirque de Soleil tickets for Christmas so it was fun to enjoy time in Lisbon. Celina and Ricardo (cousins) are super great hosts and it is always fun catching up with them. On Sunday they took us to a delicious brunch place! YUM, I loved every sip of my chai latte! After brunch Joel and I decided to visit Sintra! I had never been before (well... when Nichole visited, we tried to go but lets say we got rained out before we made it inside anywhere.) It is so charming and I definitely recommend it for anyone who visits, especially Quinta da Regaleira.
Anyways people stand all in one square and try to catch the cavacas for good luck. We didn't catch one directly but had fun watching the excitement. The photo below is from outside of the square where the canals are in Aveiro decorated with lots of Christmas lights. It is beautiful!
I also had the chance to visit Braga with a few of my friends. Joel was watching a formula 1 race and they invited me to join them! It was a beautiful day and we had a great time exploring Bom Jesus and the center of Braga. It is very cute.
A friend who I met in Korea, who later moved to Australia, and now back home in Scotland decided to come for a visit in the beginning of April. I had so much fun spending time with her, cycling to the beach, and showing her around. It means so much to catch up with old friends who understand SOO many places of your life.
Then, not much longer after Marnie left it was time for my parents visit! The first part of their trip was with us to Malta, which you read about in the previous post. After we returned from Malta, we headed to Soito for Senora da Granja festival. The weather was so nice this time around, maybe too hot for people like my mom! I enjoyed the sunshine though as opposed to the super rainy time we had last year. While relaxing in Soito we went on some walks, played disc golf in random fields, and visited Sortelha. Sortelha is considered the oldest constructed Romanesque castle located in the Beira Interior region and dates back to before the 1200s. Anyways as always we had a fun walk around the castle wall, then drove up close to a windmill. As always Soito is filled with lots of delicious food and wine! My parents enjoyed everything in Soito!
After Soito they headed off to Lisbon and then back here only for a few days, then checked out Porto for a day before they headed back home. The time went so quickly!
Just before our trip to the US, Joel's work team organized a camping trip to Geres National Park. One of the girls organized a full itinerary and things to do, plus dinner reservations, food in the airbnb, and hikes. On Sunday, Joel's boss (who was about to retire) joined us with his wife. They are very interesting people and avid world travelers. It was lots of fun to finally meet them after hearing a lot about them from Joel. They were so kind and guided us on a really cool hike through a huge crack in two massive boulders. Then we had a picnic up from a view point. There was also a cycling race happening on Sunday, so we were stuck once at the beginning. The rest of the crew was just watching the cyclists go by, while I was the only one cheering! I found this soo strange. In the US and other places I have lived, you always cheer on anyone in a race whether or not you are friends. The cyclists were appreciative of my cheering and I couldn't believe not a single other person would join me to cheer them on!
Both days we enjoyed swimming in the lake, I was surprised the water temperature was so nice, since it hadn't gotten really hot yet. The second day we went on these inflatable playground things that you had to swim to! They WERE soo much fun. There were obstacles, a climbing wall, trampoline, etc... I had wayyy too much fun but wow you never feel so old until the next day and you can barely move your neck. :P. Either way, totally worth it!
Well, I will save the next part of our summer for the next post!
Thanks for reading and lots of love from Portugal! :)
Comments
Post a Comment