At first, some apologies--it seems like my first posts were at malloysathome.blogspot.ca My fault! Jet lag? They are all there.....
Today I will try to act like I am on the same planet.
We took a bus from the hotel to get to our starting point of
the ruins of a very old (and very big) Roman Villa, classified as a national
monument. The precision of the
architecture is striking, with its very straight walls, and attention to all
kinds of details and embellishments.
There were many signs of beautiful mosaics such as in the baths. This was the villa of a very prosperous
family, for they even had their own temple that allowed observances of more
than one religious theme.
From ancient civilization, we then walked straight uphill
(or so it seemed!) to an observation point on the top of the summit of
Guihim. Here, current civilization
unfortunately caught up, with tagging not uncommon.
The views were spectacular. One thing I realized was that anything I saw
that shone, which would have indicated a small body of water in Canada, was
either a parking lot or greenhouse roofs.
There is no such thing as occasional water here. We descended rather quickly. Look at the obelisk now!
We passed by some very impressive luxury vacation homes, but
regardless of the prosperity of the home, there was inevitably a minimum of
three dogs guarding it. The din was
overwhelming. It is not uncommon to hear
roosters here, so at one point I was unsure who was louder—the rooster or the
dog.
We stopped in a tiny cafe for a drink, and were pleased to
discover that a cup of coffee or tea, or a beer were 1 euro (about $1.50). For the Swiss couple with us, they went wild
and had cokes which were 1.45 euros each!
Our walking today comprised about 14.5 km with 1100 ft of
elevation, which does not seem too bad, but the relentless sun can be
tiring. We were more than glad to toddle
back to the hotel, but unexpectedly we still had treats in store. After dinner, there was a display of
traditional Portuguese dancing, which was great fun. The men wore stark black and white outfits,
with black hats, but the women had a wide range of garb. The youngest couple, two children, were
extremely cute, and may only have been 4 or 5 years old, but they managed quite
nicely. (I think she had an extremely
strong lead.) Part of the display seemed
to be turning the women as fast as they could to get their skirts to bell out
widely. Very impressive.
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