View over the River Sado, Alcácer do Sal on a windy evening.

View from a bridge of a river with a boat moored to one side. A town of white houses rises up from the river. Above is a blue sky with scattered cloud. A reflection of the bridge with two people standing on it appears in the river.

Well we arrived in Alcácer do Sal late at night yesterday, and it turned out to be the last day of a weekend festival. Alcácer does festivals well.

Festive and Decorative street lighting above a statute of men digging for salt by the town name Alcácer do Sal.

Cars crawled to the venue, also on the route to our house.

Cars sit in a traffic jam underneath decorative festival lights.

The festival is the Feira Nova De Outubro 2024. I am not clear what it was celebrating, but there were markets, food stalls a plenty and music. Even well into the third and final night of the festival, it was busy.

People walking in front of a lighted sign saying Feira Nova De Outubro 2024.

Olá Portugal 🇵🇹

Watching a fly climbing up the inside of a window of the airplane that I am on, oblivious of the fact (I assume!), that it is about to depart England.

A quiet Sunday morning in an overcast Britain. I’m moving on today and I’m sad about that.

I look at countries vying for power in the world, vying to be the most powerful…and ask myself, “Why?”

I am from a country that use to have the largest empire the world has ever known, England, and where is that now? I am about to visit a country that had its own small empire, Portugal, and where is that? Portugal is next to a country that had its own small empire, Spain, and where is that? Europe is littered with the remains of another large empire, the Roman Empire. Look at that now.

They all go the same way. Why waste the energy and upset in trying to create them, to be, supposedly, number one? They all crumble to dust in the end.

Let’s do a much harder thing…get on with and support each other.

What a difference a few thousand feet make. These photos were taken six days ago as we approached London Heathrow. The first was taken up above the clouds as the first light of dawn made an appearance.

A view of an airplane wing from an airplane window, flying over a cloud cover sky below with the first light of dawn on the horizon.

As the plane descended into Heathrow we dropped into the cloud beneath us, and we stayed in it. The land did not come into view until a few hundred feet from touch down. It was pea soup fog until landing, and we arrived to a murky rainy day.

A view of an airplane wing from the window of the plane. The wing is surrounded by thick cloud less than a thousand feet over east London as an airplane comes into land.

Thankfully the weather had brightened up since….though next week does not look so hopeful.

Sunrise over Bristol a couple of days ago.

Red, orange and golden light on the horizon of a dark city (of Bristol) at dawn. Above the sky is blue with the trail of passing aircraft.

I spotted this character just down the road from my mother’s apartment.

A stuffed cuddly toy monkey, coloured shades of tan and brown, sitting on top of trash cans.

🐦 There’s barely any light in the sky, but I can hear the first birds of the morning singing the early notes of the dawn chorus.

😵‍💫 Well jet lag did its bit last night. I’m up before six having a cup oof coffee having managed probably less than two hours sleep.

At least I can enjoy the quiet early hours…it’s beautifully quiet.

🧟 Jet lag sucks. Last night, pill aided, I slept for 12 hours, after a day of feeling delirious as I tried to stay awake following my early morning arrival.

Today (or yesterday, Tuesday, as I write this) fresh air, a massage and a good meal helped me relax and feel more back in my body. I went to bed feeling tired, but a little fearful that I was not tired enough…

Sure enough tonight, although pill aided again, I am typing this wide awake after maybe one hour’s sleep. I slept better on the airplane. I can feel the call to sleep knocking on my eyes. I feel a little lightheaded. However, so far no luck. I fear morning will bring a discombobulated day.

I’ve managed to stick with learning Portuguese for 30 days. I’m surprised with myself and happy. I’m unclear as yet what that means for making myself understood or what I understand? Of course 30 days is little time on which to build such expectations, but I do congratulate myself on getting this far.

A drawing in gold and yellow depicting a thirty day learning streak on Duolingo.

Finished reading: The Lady With The Dog by Anton Chekhov 📚

I feel as though I am pretty tolerant of different toilet facilities that one might encounter in daily life. This is especially so for me while traveling. I’ve used some very basic, very impersonal, very smelly toilet facilities. I’m not saying that I enjoy them or go looking for them, but I find that I can let my guard down and tolerate more.

However none of this stops me from grading my experience and I think the toilet that I used on my flight from Maui to LA yesterday evening was the worst that I can remember. Where do I start…or maybe I shouldn’t?! Discoloured toilet seat, paper littering the floor and something of a questionable nature on some of that paper. Water everywhere. I tipped toed in and shakes off the paper as I walked out. Thankfully only one visit was necessary!

🥱 Waking up at LAX, or rather an airport hotel nearby. Heading to the UK to help see my mother and hopefully help with some water leaks in her apartment.

I made mention that in an earlier post of the Pacific Golden Plover, or kōlea, which visits Hawaii for the winter. This morning I tried to capture some photos of a Plover feeding in our front garden. They are fairly tame, and there is still a limit as to how close that I can get to them. There is also a limit to the resolution of my iPhone 13 Mini zooming in. But here is an effort to share a visiting Plover with you.

A collage of two photos of a Pacific Golden Plover feeding on a lawn with vegetation behind.

A crescent, waning moon high in the sky at dawn this morning as I stepped outside.

A crescent, waning moon high in a dawn sky with scattered, red tinted clouds.

I’m sitting outside. Everyone is out. The day is ending, this little corner of the world is quietening down. The wind is waning to a gentle breeze. The sun has set and the light is starting to fade. Scattered clouds fill the sky to the horizon, all slowly drifting westwards. The ocean from here looks calm, but I’m really too far away to say if that is true.

A car drives home, breaking the stillness with joyful music singing out through the windows. An airplane flies overhead.

Neighbours’ voices drift over the hedges. Birds fly by, heading home to roost.

My body rests and settles, falling back into the arms of the stilling atmosphere around me, grateful for this time alone.

OK, time to age myself. I was just looking at PCalc on my iPhone. I have the display set to that used by old LED calculator displays. I remember when such calculators first came out, the cool thing was to see what words you could spell out with the display.

For example, 710.77345 would spell SHELL.OIL if you turned the calculator upside down (and used a little imagination…actually not too much. The old LED displays did a pretty good job of spelling!).

I can’t remember other words that we figured out. Anyone out there have some? Perhaps I’ve set myself a little game for the next few days?