February 2nd,2023

Today was another interesting day.

I had woken up in the middle of the night last night. Actually it was mid early morning around 3am. I checked the fireplace to see if the wood was still burning. I added a little bit to it and then sat down at the computer because I wasn’t tired anymore. I put more in my blog and posted it as you may have seen. I couldn’t get the images on at the time but I did later on.

It was freezing in the house. I put layers on over top of my jammies and then put a hat on and gloves! It’s funny how we can rely on central heating at home. You forget that in a lot of the world, they don’t use it anyway. I tapped away on the computer and checked emails and got myself up-to-date. Somewhere around 4:30 AM, after several cups of tea, I went back to bed keeping the hat on my head, and the fleece over my pajamas. I snuggled down and fell asleep. Next thing I knew it was 9:30 AM. I got myself cleaned up, brushed my teeth, got dressed in layers, had another couple of cups of tea and then, I decided to go outside and walk into town with my walking poles and little fold up bags to get some food shopping. I figured they don’t use plastic here either. Walking up the lane I turned around and came back down to take some layers off. It was hot outside. No, I’m not complaining, but I couldn’t walkif I was sweating already!!!

I walked into town. It was a little farther than I thought it would be but, interesting, and I felt comfortable. First thing was a cup of coffee was a café au lait I used to have when I was last in Spain. It was good but it’s not what I wanted.

After that I walked down the main street to the cliffs and the entrance to the beach. The town is beautiful, so clean, absolutely pristine. And because it’s slow season it’s not busy that’s what I like. After getting a view of my surroundings, I came back up to a restaurant that I thought might be interesting. I ordered the menu of the day.(menu do dia) It happened to be octopus or calamar,i not in the North American style. It was good and I had a lovely salad with it. I skipped the dessert and I also didn’t have it beer or wine with it. I thought I was being really good. I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours so I was thinking I was quite the saint. I paid and left and went over to the Supermercado, that was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and it wasn’t open until 3 o’clock. What a strange hour to open a grocery store! I went back to the restaurant and had a beer losing my sainthood in that choice.

At 3 o’clock I went back into the market and got my food. Prices sure are high! No surprise in that mention. I had so many bags Luís,(my landlord) offered to take them for me later so I could walk home without any weight. I did just tha, left the bags in the restaurant I had just eaten in. On arrival home it was still hot outside.

I sat around, feeling quite sleepy in the sun, and then the sun went down and it got cold again. My ability to light a fire in the fireplace is lacking. I am no firestarter! Several attempts failed. I texted Luís and he said he would help when he got here with my groceries. He didn’t arrive until after 6 PM, not his fault. I feel guilty depending on him. But he did pick my groceries up and they are here now. Well while lighting the fire, we started talking (no, he is lighting my fire-that would take an explosion!) and I learned so much about this environment. By the way, he is an environmentalist. (Coincidence, eh.) He does something down on the Algarve with wind turbines and monitoring how it affects birds. I’ll find more about that later. He is quite the personality, very attractive, probably somewhere around my son’s age.

Around 9 o’clock, his mother called. I think he should’ve been home instead of chatting with an old lady!

To sum it all up, I really like this house, and I think maybe next year this is going to be a holiday home for artist to paint. We could rent both sides of the house and sleep about 10 individuals. The coast line is wild. It’s a Neal Grieg coastline. It would be so great to paint

Tomorrow I will go, the other way up the road to check out the Fisherman’s wharf. Just a brief glimpse of that and I knew I wanted to be there. I’m bringing my camera.

See you later.