As we settle into the winter months our social calendar remains pretty active. We seem to be out for drinks or dinner, or have guests over rather often...here are a few shots of some of favourite ladies.
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| Madelaine |
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| Lorna |
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| A few friends came over for drinks! |
We decided to treat ourselves to a new settee as our old one wasn't very comfortable., So we have a nice new leather recliner.
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| Our new settee! |
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| The lounge |
I have some fiends I grew up with who live in Portugal. We found a cheap Ryan air flight (100 euro return including luggage for the two of us) to Porto so headed off for a weeks hols.
Portugal
We spent the first two nights is Porto. A very old town built on hills and with many very narow streets The public transport is terrific and cheap - so we bought a day pass and whizzed around on trams, busses, the metro and a funicular.
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| A porto tram |
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| The River Duoro |
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| The funicular |
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| A traditional tiled church |
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| Dried fish in a supermarket...this was fish on an industrial scale..even industrial machines in the background for the slicing up of selected fish.....both the dried cod that is the national dish of Portugal and an amazing range of huge frozen fish...sll sliced to order....with long lines of customers reaching along way back into the store. And this was just a regular size supermarket....they sure love their fish here. |
And so on to the University town of Coimbra to see Hugh and Jean. We spent two nights with them, and their 3 dogs, cat and rabbit. It was wondeful to catch up with them after a gap of 30 odd years! It was strange that it seemed as though no time had passed at all - except that we were a touch older but that was hard to tell of course.
They looked after us very well - we joined them at a friends lovely 50th birthday party in an old palace. We had lunch out at a wonderful retsaurant, and Hugh took us for a tour of the old University.
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| The young lads! |
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| Hughs office |
So after a lovely weekend we headed off to Lisbon - the capital of Portugal. It is very similar to Porto - built on hills - old - narrow streets, and an excellent public transport system. We had a good look round and when we got tired we hopped on a tram and went for a ride up the hills, and hopped off when we got somewhere interesting.
We had hired a car and did the 3 hour drive back to Porto for our last night. We stayed at this lovely old "castle" hotel, near the centre of Porto. We did a final bit of shopping (it is much cheaper than France), and of course had afternoon tea in one of the many wonderful cake shops! Fortunately or unfortunately Portugal is the home of the coffee and cake shop...all rather tempting, we were amazed a the general slimness of the population...then took another look at all the hills....no wonder they can fill up on cakes....the walk home is nearly always up hill...and even when it is downhill there are always stairs up to your apartment.
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| Castello Santa catherina - our Hotel |
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So full of coffee, cakes and BBQ chicken we wended our way back to Roanne. We were pleasantly surprised by Ryanair...heard many horror stories of 'snap' charges and surly staff but our trip got us both there and back at the advertised time without any problems at all.
Nice to be back on board however, and look forward to several more weeks of Roanne life before we make the big decision on where to go this year..
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