Sandy's travels

Ok, so I lied....one more entry to clarify a point.....Val and I did not ride around on the double decker bus half topless! (yes, I agree, it would certainly give one a feel for the cold wouldnt it?) The bus was half open at the top!!! The bus folks, the bus! LOL Sent from Sandy's iPad

Sending along some photos of London. We stayed three nights before our trip back home. I am a tad frustrated right now as I'd typed out a long narrative about our time there and before I could send it....it turned off. So here goes again and probably a lot shorter. Overall I have to say we had a fun time, both in Portugal and London. We did the Hop on, Hop off bus in London and also toured through the Tower of London listening to the delightful talk by a Beefeater on who was in the "off with their heads" category of people who lived there and others. Some folks do like the blood and guts stuff don't they? We saw that great huge ferris wheel affair called "the London eye" and opted not to go in it, both of us being heights sensitive. We rode down and back up The Thames in a boat....kind of a waste of time, but we did it anyway. We saw the glass bullet building that Londoners affectionately call "the gherkin", and a new glass structure soon t...

Made all of our connections yesterday as planned.  A very nice good looking man arrived just before 10 to pick us up from the villa and take us to Albuferia and as luck would have it a bus was leaving so we hopped on.  It was very full.  We got to the Lisbon bus depot, grabbed a cab to the airport where we had about a three hour wait.  TAP is the name of the Portuguese airline.  We found a place in the food court that served salad and a sandwich and a small bottle of wine.  Between the two of us it cost $38€.  No matter, we were leaving.  The plane was full to the brim, probably Brits returning home.  After we collected out luggage we inquired about a taxi to take us to our hotel.  One hours drive so we enlisted a taxi for £69.  We have never been here so have no idea of where to go or how to get there!!!   Our hotel room is quite small and we are now learning more new things....you have to turn the bathtub knob the opposite wa...

Here it is Friday already, the day before Val and I leave Ferragudo for our trip back home! We've had such a good time here we will be sad to leave. Yesterday Betty and Sharon did the Historical Algarve bus trip so Val and I went to Praia da Rocha and played tourist for a couple of hours until the casino opened. It was a lucky day for me and I am a little richer ( and I don't like gambling), while Val contributed to the economy a bit. Such a generous lady she is! Today we were up early and walked into the village just before 8 am to catch our tour bus at 8:15am for a half day shopping trip to Faro, the capital of the Algarve. There was frost on the roofs of vehicles we passed by!!!!! Bus was on time and off we went. We picked up two more people somewhere along the road but really there was no big rush because we got stuck in traffic going into Faro due to road construction. Three hours it took to get there. Once in Faro we got dropped off and were handed a map (in P...

Yesterday, Val and I took the Historical Algarve bus tour. We were picked up just before 9 and transported to Albuferia where we picked up the tour by the side of the highway and we were on our way. Our genial host, and older man who called himself a shepherd (because he had some sheep, 2 donkeys, 3 dogs and 3 cats, said his name was J.C., disregard the religious connotation! He was such a knowledgeable man. He told us he spoke 9 languages and 3 Africaans dialects. He had been a professor of History and Philosophy and has travelled the world, not missing very much about other cultures along the way. Anyway, I digress....we began our journey with a quick stop to look at the castle in Silves. This is the first photo above. It is one of the best preserved Moorish castles in the country. In the second photo you can see some of the terraced farmlands outside of Silves. We got a 7 1/2 minute stop in another community to take a photo of the nesting storks. In Portugal, when a build...

Jack, we are trying to clean your wife up! This is after trying to light the barbecue!

A picture taken last night of the evening skyline over Portimao. The camera doesn't do it justice. Very pretty it is. Yesterday we thawed out our steaks and were looking forward to barbecued steak and new potatoes. Barbecues here are not like ours, the briquettes were like big chunks of coal. Our puny little paraffin fire starters are slow to light so gave up feeling it would likely be midnight before anything happened. I will post a picture showing what a dirty business it is trying to get the BBQ going. I forgot to mention about Sharon's almost disastrous fall on the very slippery stairs the other day....s..down she went hitting her elbow and lower arm. This is the same arm she broke a few years back. Betty to the rescue....ran upstairs looking for ice and came back down holding this flat foil covered sleeve affair! We were all so impressed that the owner of the villa would think to put something in the freezer like this....almost in anticipation of such a catastrophe...

Happy Sunday all.....I'm in the mood for some more history lessons starting with the first picture above. These are the chimneys we see everywhere in the area. They are a leftover from the Moorish occupation centuries ago. The ones pictured are on the roof of the villa next door. I think they are so charming and add that exotic feel to modern day villas and homes. Something I discovered reading about the Algarve area was the origin of the name of this village we are in. Originally back in the 15th century there was a piece of equipment used to lift the catch of fish from boats anchored off the shore. This apparatus was made of Ferro which means iron and was Agudo -sharp. Ferragudo....sharp iron! In some earlier pictures I posted some photos of the castle just in front of us. It is called Sào Joào de Arade and dates back to the 15th century as well. It was originally built as a lookout tower, probably watching for invaders from other seafaring nations and one assum...

Apologies, I can't figure out how to rotate this picture so you all will have to tilt it. We saw this funny looking chair in the casino where we all left donations yesterday! Some of us more than others, but that would be telling tales out of school as the saying goes.....so Betty obligingly sat in for a photo op! Some parts of the casino allow smoking and some don't, but realistically, I couldn't tell the difference, it all smelled of smoke! The casino wasn't very busy, perhaps the gamblers come out later in the evening. Sharon had scouted it out for us the day before on her foray into Praia Da Roche as Val had wanted to visit the big one in Lisbon but we just didn't have the time, nor did we know where it was.

I thought I'd give you all a bit of a rundown on our villa today and also on this area. The first picture at the top is the blue room where Sharon is sleeping, mine is the next one down....I have the master and a huge bathroom with a bathtub. Betty is in the twin room on the third level down and Val in the other twin room on third level. The house is sort of topsy turvey to what we are used to. Kitchen, dining room and livingroom are on the first floor....two double bed rooms on the second floor, one with ensuite, the other, mine with separate large family style bathroom, then on the bottom the other two bedrooms and bathrooms. There are wrap around patios on all floors as well as the patio with pool, barbecue and dining area. I forgot to mention we also have a fireplace in the livingroom which we have used daily!!! We've been educating ourselves on the use of appliances and plug ins. I purchased a separate special converter for my iPad and also have another adapter (Xma...

Yesterday I typed up quite a story and for some reason it didn't attach to the blog. There were a couple of photos....one of Betty and Val waiting for a bus after we got kicked off the one we took into Portimao. We hoped to do the circuitous route from Ferragudo into Portimao and then back to Ferragudo....not to be! We pulled up in the bus in a crappy part of town and the driver said...end of the line....everyone out. We then had to wait for another bus to take us back to Ferragudo so it basically cost us double what we thought it would. What was interesting in the area were the car dealerships, Fiat, BMW, Chevrolet and KIA. My cars twin was actually sitting out parked by the sidewalk. When we got back to the village we walked down to the area where the fishermen come in and watched them hauling in their nets pulling some pretty small fish out. The seagulls here are just as noisy and raucous as they are on the Island and were flitting about squawking waiting for tidbits! So...