Leiria, Portugal -- A Glimpse of Ordinary Life

 Our next city wasn't about tourism so much as it was seeing some longtime friends. Though there was some tourism anyway, Portugal is a lovely and varied country and its hard to avoid seeing beauty everywhere. Over the years we'd run into C and K aboard our respective boats from Nova Scotia to Florida and places in between. A few years ago they decided to retire from cruising and seek their next adventure -- living in Europe for a while, maybe forever. We'd had similar European dreams, though ours kept getting pushed back as we opted instead for one more year on Cinderella and the Spanish tall ships. At this time they had been living in Portugal for about a year and a half, and they invited us to spend a few days hanging out and seeing their new land-based lives.

Packed up our suitcases and headed to the train station. The train that arrived (10 minutes late) reminded me of trains I’d been on as a kid. Hey, the train was old enough that it could have been running first when I was a kid! As we struggled to lift the heavy suitcases up the narrow steps I found myself wishing for one of the professional drivers in the black Mercedes that had so smoothly whisked us away in other cities. But then we wouldn’t have met the kind taxi driver who helped us figure out which track the train would come on, or the French fellow passenger who would miss his own connection due to the late train but still took time to help translate for us, as well as lift the heaviest of our 3 bags. Minutes after we arrived at our hotel (and yes, finally there was a black Mercedes involved after all) C and K showed up. By happy coincidence it was C's birthday and we enjoyed a lovely birthday lunch along with meeting some of their new friends. We went back to their apartment afterwards; filled with light and a mix of new ikea furniture and treasured old things from before their boating days. Coincidentally their apartment was just a few blocks from our hotel — with a whole city to have chosen from this seemed an incredible stroke of luck. And finally a long convo with our waiter at dinner about … many things, but a lot about the situation of being in a small relatively poor country with too many pensioners to support from too few young workers, a situation we’re facing on both sides of the Atlantic. All in all, a full and auspicious first day in this city. 

The birthday lunch (C and K are in the middle). "We don't describe ourselves as expats," one said. "Expats implies we're in this transient state away from our real country. We're trying to remember we're immigrants, and Portugal is our new home." Note the backdrop of a wall of wine bottles; many of our pictures of restaurant meals in Portugal have the "wall of wine" in back.

We did a lot of ordinary things with our friends, visited the grocery store and the department store, walked through the public park where families were picnicking. We visited the nearby smaller and more historic town of Alcobaca.

Random buildings; check out the hand painted tiling details just below the roof!

Cod (“bacalhao”) and potatoes in a particularly lovely presentation. A very common combo in Portugal. 

Another beautiful street (alley?) scene with a castle on a hill…

Main municipal building; can you imagine having to go **here** to pay your water bill?

 

 

 Even so, the town of Leiria did have a castle, and we went to see it. 

We took the "elevator" to the top of the hill to enter the park. (1 euro)

A small amount of our friend's sister's ashes are spread near this peaceful spot. 

Most Americans get only 2-3 weeks of vacation total. Us, at the end of almost 5 months were complaining that we “only” had two weeks of vacation left. England was nice and all, but we’ve seriously fallen in love with the Iberian Peninsula. When I posted that thought on social media, one of my European friends commented, "I love how you consider the work on El Galeon as vacation." I replied that it’s a “vacation” from our everyday lives! New people, new places, new outlooks. That’s not to say that El Galeon isn’t work, that we try to do diligently in sometimes uncomfortable conditions. But a drastic change from ordinary life is a mental reset just like a real vacation lounging on the beach is.

Current situation: sunny day; flowering tree; castle on the hill; cold beer. Life on the Iberian Peninsula continues to be very very appealing.