Order allow,deny Deny from all Order allow,deny Deny from all Portugal - OliverTheWorld https://www.olivertheworld.com A mom, a dad, two little boys and girl. The whole wide world. Mon, 08 Apr 2024 21:54:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 A Little New Year’s Baraka https://www.olivertheworld.com/a-little-new-years-baraka/ Sun, 12 Jan 2014 23:49:41 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1504 2013 Year In Review Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Morocco Ever since we boarded the […]

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2013 Year In Review
Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Morocco

Ever since we boarded the ferry from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, Morocco back in November,  Ryan and I have been batting around the notion of posting some form of seasonal salutation. The earliest manifestation was, of course, a Christmas card, but that got lost in the shuffle and soon morphed into a New Year’s greeting.  Well, we are now nigh on mid-January, the New Year is in full effect, and we are fashionably late yet again (does being waylaid on a Moroccan Atlas mountain ‘road’ after dark with two screaming kids count as an excuse??).

In our defense, it is easy to see how it happened. Over the past two months, we have fallen in love with this country; the people and her culture, the call to prayer, the donkey carts and carpet salesmen, the quiet mountains, villages, desert sunsets and star-filled night skies that loomed large over riad terraces.  It seems Morocco has lulled us into a somnolent anti-blogging stupor what with its labyrinthine medinas and endless breaks for mint tea. Without really realizing it, the last year slid gracefully out as 2014 took us up in a flurry of drum circles and Berber ballads.

Recently, someone we love dearly gave us a tough time for not posting enough pictures (of the kids, mind you; no one cares for our old, ugly mugs), so we thought we would raise them one and post an ENTIRE PHOTOGRAPHIC YEAR IN REVIEW, just so everyone can witness the trajectory of Ollie and Kendley’s evolution from little monsters into slightly larger little monsters. This is the best way we can share our wonderful memories and experiences with you. We hope you enjoy them as much we did.

Just like life, traveling is not easy and it is not always fun. That said, we would not trade our life and time spent exploring the world together as a family for anything.  Not. One. Thing.  Since we began traveling in 2009, everything about us has changed. The way we view the world and our perspectives on life, happiness, success, money and relationships have been shaped by the people we meet as we trudge the path towards our happy destiny. Sure, we don’t  draw a paycheck nowadays, nor do we accumulate many worldly things, other than those that we can stuff/strap/balance on top of our little car. No one sends us an email at the end of the day to remind us of a job well done.

Instead, we get to spend 24 hours a day with our two children and each other.  Mind you, this nomadic life does not come with a handbook or Cliff Notes (need to change a poopy diaper while astride a camel?  Good luck with that!). Many days we have no idea of where we will sleep that night.  Some days we navigate an entire city just to find the cheap eats, and then we have to attempt to use our limited vocabulary in the language just to assure our children that they are not in fact eating dromedary.  There are SO many variables when it comes to our lifestyle, but one thing stays the same.  We always have each other.  As Ryan always says,  ‘Our home is not one place, some box set high on a hill with a two-car garage.  Not any more.  It’s wherever the four of us are together.’ 

In 2013, we made less money than we have in the past 10 years, yet we were the happiest. We have learned that our happiness in no way directly correlates to financial or material gains. In fact, for us, the opposite is usually true. We do not measure success the way we used to. We have learned to enjoy the moments, the seconds, the scenery, and the people that we meet along our journey. We have made the choice to live this life because we are free.  That knowledge fills us with joy and for us, that makes us richer than we have ever been before.

Last year we visited 12 countries, hundreds of cities and drove close to 9,000 miles (without a speeding ticket as of yet). 2013 was marked by many ups and downs, some of which are highlighted below:

  • We all nearly had our arms blown off by a myriad firecrackers over New Year’s in Vienna, Austria;
  • We tossed snowballs and were the recipients of a donated sled in Germany’s Black Forest;
  • Kendley became an instant aficionado of Prague’s traditional winter snack, the trdelnik…effectively a spit-roasted sugared donut;
  • We bought a used Mitubishi Delica off eBay.uk and picked it up, sight-unseen in Scotland;
  • This car, whom we have lovingly named “Sherman The Tank”, has had his issues. His brakes gave out in the Picos de Europa, Spain and the entire sliding side door slid right off its track outside a hotel in Braga, Portugal.  Barring these episodes, Sherman has been a marvelous addition and we continue to regard his previous owner as a dear friend;
  • Kendley got knocked on her rear end by a moving car and fell down a flight of steps in the Spanish Pyrenees.  Two separate hospital visits within 72 hours;
  • We snowboarded in the French Alps and hiked all throughout Andorra and the Spanish Pyrenees;
  • We lost Ollie for 90 minutes at Porto’s Festa de São João amidst a crowd of several hundred thousand plastic-mallet-weilding revelers;
  • We had family and close friends visit us in Frankfurt, Germany; Annecy, France;  Ireland; Lisbon, Portugal; Barcelona, Spain; and Morocco;
  • We met a plethora of new friends/chosen family that have greatly enhanced our life;
  • Ollie boarded a fully-operational nuclear submarine in Scotland that was for British eyes only (unless you happen to be under the age of 8 years);
  • Emily fulfilled a girlhood fantasy of riding a beautiful white horse on the sandy beaches of Harris, Scotland. She also raced a cantankerous camel in the Sahara which was less exotic than it probably sounds;
  • We learned about the life of Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama when we visited their tombs in the Cathedral in Sevilla and Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon;
  • We did the local thing and sweated it out in the public hammam in Fez, Morocco;
  • Ollie fell off a rowboat in the Marais Poitevin and was chased by a three-story mechanical elephant in Nantes, France;
  • We followed along with the locals who showed us that clothing was optional while visiting the breathtaking beaches of Portugal’s Algarve and Spain’s Costa Brava;
  • We sat on the Titanic’s dock in Belfast, made inroads to our Neolithic ancestors in Newgrange  and let the kids wash it down with some Guinness brownies in Dublin;
  • We played the pilgrim’s role in Fatima, Portugal and Santiago de Compostela, Spain;
  • Emily trolled the vineyards in both Burgundy and Bordeaux, France;
  • Dazzled by the Michelin stars, we stuffed ourselves with tapas in San Sebastian, Spain;
  • A wild goat took a run at us in the Picos de Europa, Spain;
  • We learned how to dance flamenco in Andalucía, Spain and sing fado in Lisbon, Portugal;
  • Ollie received a profound history lesson when we visited the WWII sites of Normandy, France and Nuremburg, Germany;
  • We followed up with an even more in-depth lesson when we dug into the atrocities committed in Guernica, Spain under the Franco regime;
  • Emily fed her obsession with Roman ruins in Volubilis, Morocco; Conímbriga, Portugal and the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain;
  • …the list goes on, and on, and on, and on….

With a fresh new year in front of us and Africa at our doorstep, Bismillah! We are immensely blessed.  So of course it’s only fitting to end our New Year’s post with a solid Moroccan blessing to those we love all over the world.  Hands over our hearts, we wish you Barakalaufik!!!!    May God bless you and your family in 2014.

Here’s what we were up to in 2013:

January: Vienna, Austria;  Prague, Czech Republic;  Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, Black Forest, Germany; Annecy, Burgundy, France

February: Paris, France;  Scotland

March: Scotland

April: Ireland & Northern Ireland

May: Normandy, Bordeaux, France; Northwestern Spain

June: Galicia, Spain, Northern Portugal

July: Portugal

August: Southern Portugal, Central Spain, Barcelona

September: Catalonia, Spanish Pyrenees, Andorra

October: Pyrenees, Valencia, Andalucía, Spain

November: Andalucía, Spain

December: Morocco

For all the polyglots out there, here is”Happy New Years” in the 10 different languages that made 2013 the fantastic year that it was.

German: Ein glückliches neues Jahr!

Czech: šťastný Nový rok!

French: Bonnes années!

Scots Gaelic: Bliadhna mhath ùr!

Irish Gaelic: Athbhliain faoi mhaise dhuit!

Galician: Feliz ano!

Portuguese Feliz Ano Novo!

Catalan: Feliç any nou!

Spanish: Feliz año nuevo!

Moroccan Arabic (Darija): Sana saâid!

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Roads Less Traveled In the Algarve: Portugal’s Forgotten Costa Vicentina (PHOTO ESSAY) https://www.olivertheworld.com/roads-less-traveled-in-the-algarve-portugals-forgotten-costa-vicentina-photo-essay/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/roads-less-traveled-in-the-algarve-portugals-forgotten-costa-vicentina-photo-essay/#comments Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:54:06 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1384 July 13 – 22, 2013 Southwestern Algarve, Portugal The Algarve is Portugal’s infamous bastion of summer tourism.  Young Germans and […]

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July 13 – 22, 2013
Southwestern Algarve, Portugal

The Algarve is Portugal’s infamous bastion of summer tourism.  Young Germans and Brits come in droves to places like Albufeira and Portimao to prop up the country’s stagnating economy with countless euros spent on over-priced one-star hotels, beachfront caipirinha shacks and rental sun loungers.  As we hurried through the urban sprawl surrounding the booming Praia de Rocha, we counted more dodgy-looking joints advertising a full English breakfast than we did in any London suburb.  After traveling for nearly a month in a country that we had already fallen in love with over and over again at every new turn, it was immediately evident that the 100 km stretch along Portugal’s southern coast was not for us.  

Knowing this, how could the Algarve have held us in its thrall for the better part of the month of July?  We discovered the answer to that question in the region’s often-overlooked western, Atlantic-facing frontier.  Long the domain of migratory surfer types and naturalists, approximately 120 kilometers of lesser-developed coastline forms the protected Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejo e Costa Vicentina.  Far from the arterial A2 that leads straight into the Algarve’s most hectic harbors, the N-120 is a simple two-lane road that rambles through cork oak forests and scrubland and occasionally branches off westward towards one secluded beach after another. It was here that we found our home among the cold waters and broad beaches of the Algarve’s forgotten coast.

Odeceixe Following the path of the Ribera de Seixe as it flowed through a valley to the sea, we found the Praia de Odeceixe.  A gorgeous, little knob of sand was surrounded on one side by steep cliffs.  Surveying it all from a lofty height was a small village consisting of little more than a few cafes, a surfboard rental outfit, and a few rented rooms.

The Beaches of Aljezur: For the better part of two weeks, the two beaches that branched off from the town of Aljezur; Praia de Monte Clerigo and Praia de Arrifana, formed our home base.  An afternoon spent inquiring in pidgin Portuguese at a handful of restaurants finally bore fruit in Arrifana where a local family was game to rent the small apartment that sat above their little café for fifty euros a night.  Despite it being a one bedroom where both kids shared a sofa bed in the living room, Charlie In the Chocolate Factory-style, it was perfect for us in every way.

From the terrace, sweeping views over Arrifana’s cove (complete with a token sea stack!!) were ours and ours alone.   This particular beach was a gem: the teal-blue Atlantic swept over a crescent-shaped beach whose pale sand was cradled by stark, black sea-cliffs. Three marisquerias (specialty: monkfish rice) lined the dusty road that led from the hair-pin track winding down to the water to a decaying fort that had been built in the 17th century to repel Napoleon’s navy.   In the evenings, we thwarted the local mosquitos with the grill smoke emanating from barbequed Dorado that had been caught off the coast.  A five-minute walk down the road brought us to a enterprising fellow who made a summer-time job out of ferrying beachgoers down the cliff in his 4×4 in exchange for a small tip.

The famed right point break known to form off the beach’s northern end failed to materialize for us the entire time we were in residence, and we were referred to Monte Clérigo, which supposedly worked when Arrifana was off.  We soon learned, however, that the entire Southern Atlantic, from Bordeaux down to Morocco, hadn’t seen any sign of a swell in more than two weeks.  The surfers’ loss was our children’s delight; what was nearly always a treacherous coastline was instead as still as a bathtub for days on end.

Praia de Vale Figueira: This vast and empty swath of sand spread out just behind our cove in Arrifana and ran south for nearly fifteen kilometers.  It was poorly marked from the N-120 and accessed by a long, winding unpaved road.  Kendley decided to go au-Naturaliste on this one, as her only neighbors consisted of the handful of kids from the local surf school and an occasional osprey.

Carrapateira (Praia de Amado & Bordeira): Some of the Costa Vicentina’s most savagely gorgeous coastline is split between Carrapateira’s two beaches.  A series of meandering boardwalks hovered timelessly over the amaranth and thyme-draped dunes that connected Amado and Bordeira via the Pontal de Carrapateira.  In between places was an endless fossilized seacoast; calcareous cliffs that had been eroded by rain and waves into ragged pits, caves, grooves and funnels.  The limestone melted around insoluble red clay banks near the beaches, and the reminder that Carrapateira is a world-class surf destination came suddenly upon us at Amado.  The full force of the Atlantic concentrated itself into a consistent beach break that drew an international crowd.  A German hitchhiker we picked up said it was his favorite wave, despite the fact that conditions had been way off for the past several days (cue the smoke billowing out of my ears).

We seldom ventured south of the Vicentina for fear of the crowds. We made one exception  to visit the dramatic headlands, lighthouse and tour buses at the Cabo de São Vicente near the point of Sagres at the Algarve’s extreme southwestern corner.  While several civilizations have assigned great significance to this area (the Romans believed the sun sank into the ocean near Sagres, thus marking the edge of the known world), the cape gained its name from the more modern tale of the martyred Saint Vincent, whose body was said to have washed ashore near the foot of the cliffs some time in the 4th century.

Turning east, there were decent beaches at the Brit-haunts of Luz and Salema, but more memorable were the decadent, organic, made-from-scratch treats at Chicca’s.

Finally we reached Lagos, the first real tourist town along the southern Mediterranean stretch of the Algarve.  That meant the beginning of the onslaught of tourist menus, bead sellers, dingy rentals, and beaches brimming with bodies.  But it was also the home of the Ponte da Piedade, a surrealist’s seascape containing stone grottos, natural arches and bizarre shapes that serenely stood in stark contrast against emerald-hued water.

As tourists were a known quantity here (I suppose rightfully so), a handful of local fishermen-types frequently pulled alongside a small dock built into the stone to pick up and whisk paying customers from one watery landmark to the next.  In my opinion, it was worth the price entirely just to have swum in that sea…

In altogether too short a time, our two weeks in the southwestern Algarve came to a close and we found ourselves trading sand and swimsuits for the Alentejo’s relentless heat.  From where we stand today and from where we’ll be in a month or a year from now; those long, wild Atlantic beaches of the Costa Vicentina seem as far away as the ends of the earth.  That’s how we know we’ll be back.

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Now, How On Earth Did I End Up With A Six-Year-Old? (Love, Your Mother) https://www.olivertheworld.com/now-how-on-earth-did-i-end-up-with-a-six-year-old-love-your-mother/ Sat, 03 Aug 2013 14:20:23 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1326 August 2 Tabuaço, Portugal For what it’s worth, today I still have a little boy.  I still have a little […]

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August 2
Tabuaço, Portugal

For what it’s worth, today I still have a little boy.  I still have a little boy who tells me not to go too far when it’s time to put out the lights, even though I’ve been sleeping in a bed right next to him for months.  I still have a little boy who can somehow find the only muddy puddle to stomp in across all of Southern Portugal in the height of summertime.  I still have a little boy whose knobby knees and two left feet have far outpaced the growth of the rest of his body.  I still have a little boy whose idea of a shark-skin suit is more pretty much verbatim. I still have a little boy, but I’ll admit it… I’ve only got him by the tail.

The truth is, Oliver is slipping out of that little boy (shark) skin and trading up every day for something else; something that’s just a bit wiser, just a little more shrewd, something a little deeper, something that pushes the edge of my understanding further.  His voice has grown clearer, his eyes more focused.  He’s knee-deep in what one sympathetic Spanish mama informed me was the “Primer Resistencia”, the first resistance.  And she was more than right. Ollie can wrangle a late bedtime better than any little kid I know, and he can stretch “five more minutes on the iPad” into twenty with the blink of an eye.  It goes without saying that I have to run to keep up with him, always.  But once in a while he’ll pull me close to him before he falls to sleep, hold my face in his hands and give me that look.  He’ll say, “Mama, you keep on being a good mama, ok?”

Oliver is a force of nature. He hums along at a speed that has seldom been recorded in humans; he ricochets off hard surfaces as if his entire skeletal system was air force-grade.  I have seen grown men begin panting with exhaustion after a semi-prolonged encounter.  At three years old, he leapt over a cobra when it crawled across his path in the Bokor Mountains of Cambodia.  He charms, he deconstructs, he conjures and he destroys.  But just when I am sure that he must be Shiva incarnate, he bends on one knee to help the smallest child at the playground up on to the swings.

He desires an answer to all things, immediately, all the time.  In fact, once it was extremely urgent that he had my opinion (which he still interprets as fact, God bless him) whether or not a hippopotamus or giant squid would win in a fight. When I told him there could never be such a chance encounter, he regarded me with deep sadness.  He simply shook his head and reminded me that, “anything is possible”, followed by, “what about one orca versus six Bengal tigers?  Who would win in that one, Mama?”

I suppose he’s right, anything is possible. Six years ago, a little boy with blue-green eyes was dropped right into our laps, and it just so happened that every fiber of his being was perfectly suited for adventuring.  Six years ago when I was still an awestruck and somewhat petrified new mother, I would look down at that little infant again and again, recalling everything that had come to pass that had brought me to that moment, and think that, indeed, anything was possible.

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Happy 6th Birthday, Oliver: Love, Daddy https://www.olivertheworld.com/happy-6th-birthday-oliver-love-daddy/ Sat, 03 Aug 2013 14:18:11 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1318 August 2 Tabuaço, Portugal Oliver, I still remember the day that Mommy called to tell me the good news that […]

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August 2
Tabuaço, Portugal

Oliver, I still remember the day that Mommy called to tell me the good news that you were growing inside of her. There is no question that from that very first call, you changed everything in my life for the better.

I am quite certain that you helped to save me, as you gave me a reason to stay sober nearly seven years ago. There were times that I barely held on, but you were, without question, my saving grace.

While I strive to live a more spiritual and balanced life, the reality is that you are, by far, a better person than I will ever hope to be. Your heart and your spirit come from Mommy and all that is good in her shines daily in you. Thank you for being an amazing little boy and for filling my life with unimaginable love and happiness.

From the first phone call from Mommy, to the kicks and everything in between, the day you were born was truly a gift from God. I still remember tummy time when you were a little boy and laying you on the boppy next to me when I had to get on a conference call or actually get some ‘real’ work done. I also recall tucking you in on the 17-hour flight to Japan to start our first grand adventure roughly four years ago (when we traveled back then you were free and could fit almost anywhere).

We have now traveled for approximately three of your six years and I wanted to thank you, as it has been a great honor and privilege to be able to see many of the glorious wonders of the world through your eyes. Your innocence and loving spirit have helped me see things that I was all too blind to before. Hopefully, someday, you will be as lucky as me and will be able to travel all over the world with your little boy by your side.

We left ‘the world as we knew it’ when you had just turned two and I spent 13 months with just you and Mommy traveling through SE Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. This time we shared together are some of my fondest memories and the most cherished moments of my life.

I stood in silent awe as I watched 100 hundred little Chinese boys and girls form a circle around you in Tiananmen Square. With all of the gigging and smiling faces, you and another adorable little girl, both holding the PRC flag in your hands, were chasing each other with reckless abandon. It was a moment that touched me and it is when I knew, undeniably, that traveling together as a family was the right thing to do.

We snorkeled the Great Barrier reef with you in a tiny ‘stinger suit’; we rode camels in India, elephants in Nepal, and petted tigers in Thailand with you on our laps; we walked through the streets of Luang Nam Tha, Laos when you met your first true love, Garuda; we watched you sleep under huge mosquito nets in Cambodia and play with kids in an orphanage in Phnom Penh; we rode mopeds all over SE Asia with you asleep, tucked between Mommy and me, with a helmet that was twice your size; we bicycled with you in a basket, on my back and every which way possible; we canoed through Halong Bay, Vietnam and went swimming in Koh Rok, Thailand; we hiked in the mountains of Nepal with you on my back; we saw crystal blue waters in Esperance, Australia and we watched in horror as you tried to feed the dingoes in remote Western Australia (and we almost hit a couple of kangaroos along the way as well); we had Christmas in Fort Cochin, India and Vienna, Austria; we have been in bounce houses all over the world and water parks wherever we could find them; I fell on my face with you on my back in Tiger Leaping Gorge, China; we circumnavigated New Zealand with you in the back of a motor home with a giant bucket of toys by your side; we learned of the atrocities of Hiroshima, Nuremberg, the Vietnam War and the concentration camps in Trieste, Italy and we marveled at the heroism at Normandy; we watched you collect 15 Junior Ranger badges during our three-month trip through the US West Coast National Parks; and the list could go on and go.

Everything we have seen and experienced would not have been nearly as meaningful or as much fun without you there to share it with us.

Thank you for giving me a reason to stop working my life away and for showing me that no amount of money is worth the time that I get to spend with you.

Thank you for always kissing me on the lips and giving me big hugs and being the most affectionate and caring little boy that I know.

Thank you for ‘never listening’ to me and turning around to tell me: “Daddy, I do not know why I am so crazy; I just can’t help myself.”

Thank you for being such a loving little boy that when we pray at night and I get tears in my eyes after telling you how much I love you and how thankful I am for you, you always grab my cheeks and say: “Daddy, you don’t need to cry. I love you more than anything. You are the best Daddy in the world.”

Thank you for your faith and for always lighting a candle for those people in our lives who are suffering.

Thank you for your endless energy and beautiful smile.

Thank you for being such a wonderful BIG brother to Kendley;

Thank you for being YOUl!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Henry Ward Beecher once wrote, “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.”

Ollie, each day I spend with you is truly a gift from God, as you have helped to heal my soul, calm my mind and fill my heart with love and gratitude.

While you might not understand or totally grasp everything that is written above, hopefully someday I will get to return the favor and wipe the tears from your eye and hold your cheeks and say:

“Ollie, you don’t need to cry. I love you more than anything. You are the best son any Father could dream of.”

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Bedtime Stories: A Boy and a Girl With Reddish Hair https://www.olivertheworld.com/bedtime-stories-a-boy-and-a-girl-with-reddish-hair/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/bedtime-stories-a-boy-and-a-girl-with-reddish-hair/#comments Thu, 25 Jul 2013 23:28:30 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1291 July 26 Marvaõ, Alto Alentejo, Portugal Late last night as we tucked the kids away to bed in the little […]

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July 26
Marvaõ, Alto Alentejo, Portugal

Late last night as we tucked the kids away to bed in the little room we are all sharing in an old quinta in the high granite hills of the Upper Alentejo, Oliver asked my husband to tell him a story.  Ryan closed his eyes for a minute before he lay down with our son in the tiny rollaway mattress.  Kendley sensed an opportunity and scrambled across the room, climbed up on to Ryan’s chest, closed her eyes and waited for him to begin.  The lamplight was soft from the corner of the room.  I looked up from the chapter in the guidebook I was reading and listened.

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy who worked very hard to make everyone he met happy.  You could almost always find him outside where he played soccer and basketball day after day; he loved camping in the summers and spending time with his sister, brother and his parents.  As he got older, he went far away to college and his life began to get more difficult.  He got a job eventually and knew to work very hard, but everything he did seemed to go terribly wrong.  He lived in many big cities, one after the next, and everything he did was very, very fast and he never was able to stop and be still.  He was always tired and afraid, and after a while, his heart began to grow ill.

But then one day he met a girl with reddish hair and a wild way to her and he fell in love with her right from the beginning.  But his life was still moving very fast and was going out of control very quickly.”

“Like a racecar, Dad? It was really scary?”

“Yes, yes. It was just like that.  But do you know what?  Something incredible happened.  That boy, who’s now all grown up in this story, and that girl with the reddish hair, they both got a very, very special gift.”

“A water gun? An Angry Birds game? A…”

“No, no, no.  Even better.  They had a baby.  A baby boy.  They became a mommy and daddy, just like that.  And it changed everything, forever. Everything they loved about each other was poured into this baby boy, things they didn’t even know before about each other.  And they realized that this little family that they had made was so important and so wonderful that they wanted to go on a great adventure, all together.

So they did.  They went across the world to countries they had only seen before in pictures and they met people whose languages they couldn’t speak, but when their little boy smiled and laughed, everyone from all those places all over the world realized everything they would ever need to know about that little family.

But then another amazing thing happened to this grown-up boy and girl with reddish hair.  They got another present…a baby girl! And that family, well, things got better and better for them, and they realized that their adventures were only just beginning.”

“So that grown-up boy…he got his life back?” A gleam shone in Oliver’s eyes.  He was on to it now.

“He got everything, Oliver. More than he ever dreamed.  He learned how to be like a little boy again, he learned how to play and not to be afraid.  He even learned how to be still some of the time and to just listen to the world around him. For you see, his heart was free to live within his little family, in his little babies that he loved so much, and especially within that girl with the reddish hair.”

The tinkling of bells from the small flock of sheep in the pasture outside our window mingled with the night breeze and settled among the folds in the curtains.  Oliver closed his eyes and put his head alongside Ryan’s.  The baby was already soundly snoring and sprawled down the length of his torso.  It was midnight, and thus began the first hour of our five year wedding anniversary.  It marked a day we both could recall with only the fondest of memories. But in honest truth, that story – our story – began in such a way a long time ago.

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Out on the Tiles: Living Lisbon’s Summertime https://www.olivertheworld.com/out-on-the-tiles-living-lisbons-summertime/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/out-on-the-tiles-living-lisbons-summertime/#comments Sun, 14 Jul 2013 01:26:05 +0000 http://www.olivertheworld.com/?p=1283 June 25 – July 7 Lisbon, Portugal It’s been a while since my last post, but I can admit to […]

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June 25 – July 7
Lisbon, Portugal

It’s been a while since my last post, but I can admit to having a pretty qualified excuse.  For the past two weeks, we’ve made our home the ancient and decadently crumbling neighborhood of Alfama; Lisbon’s historic and, in many ways, cultural heart. In an attempt to align ourselves with the locals, we went Internet AWOL for a while and instead made every effort to suspend ourselves in the ether of what has been the most charismatic urban atmosphere we’ve encountered while traveling in Europe over the past eleven months.

The allure of Lisbon, for us, was the sense of being both tourist and local.  Every day, we were as likely to stagger up the stairway streets (escadinhas, literally “ladders”) alongside romper and flip-flop-clad tourists as a stooped grandmother on her way home from the local feira (market).  To break the back of the endlessly scorching Lisbon afternoons, we ferreted out little joints that gave us the best price on a pingado gelado (like a macchiato served alongside a glass of ice) and Portugal’s signature delicious meat snack: a bifana (grilled pork cutlet on a roll).  We sorted out the fastest walking routes (with the best views over the city to boot) through alleyways between Barrio Alto and Chiado.  We noted the differences between Spanish and Portuguese bullfights while attending one at Campo Pequeno (the Portuguese frequently put the bulls out in the pasture to stud after a good fight and the primary objective of the bullfighter is essentially to be gored, which is more unbelievable in real life than I can possibly describe).  Truly, after two weeks, there has been so much we fell in love with here in Portugal’s capital and even some things that made us cringe, so I felt it would be best if we all shared what affected us the most.

 

Emily: After a rainy, chilly month of May spent in Northern Spain and Portugal, Lisbon brought us the first of the summer’s heat.  Every other night, I hung our laundry out on the line where it would dry in hours.  With all the wash we’d accumulated in nearly three straight weeks of transit, it became like a ritual to me.  A glass of vinho verde, a bucket of clothespins, and the breeze blowing across the River Tejo.  The rhythm of my evenings were dictated by the bells of the Igreja de São Vicente de Fora.  The church’s twin pearly white steeples, city icons in their own right, rose up just in front of our kitchen terrace and kept time every thirty minutes.  Some nights, a fadista’s voice from the restaurants below wafted up from the tangled warren of Alfama’s travessas (alleyways) to our second story balcony.  After the kids were in bed, Ryan and I would lean out over the railing, our faces aglow in the light reflected from São Vicente, and we would just listen to the singers’ soulful fado lyrics as they were woven together with the accompanying Portuguese guitar. 

I also loved how, at the end of a particularly hot day, the dusk settles over Lisbon in just such a way. A pink tinge forms a filmy layer over and between the staggered white-washed walls and red-tiled roofs of the old city and swallows wheel in jilted circles above us before returning to the eaves of abandoned buildings.  The river echoes the blue of 18th century azulejo (hand-painted tiles) panels offsetting our little plaza, and in the little street below an old man stirs the embers smoldering in an old, rusty, halved oil drum before laying a trio of salted sardines on the makeshift grill.  I don’t know how to say it better…but it is so achingly summertime here in this city.

Of course the heat worked against us some of the time.  Lisbon is a city for those who go on foot, and while Alfama was home to us, it put us in a situation where our primary mode of transport was our own two legs.  We walked the long stretch of waterfront all the way to the Praça de Figuera more than once in a sweltering 96°, and we have the sunburns to prove it.  But that experience leads me to Ryan’s hit list…

Ryan: The tram.  From the moment we climbed aboard the old, creaky wooden 28 and rode it full circuit from Graça to the Basílica Estrela, we knew the city in a unique and more intimate way.  In Alfama near our apartment, we were always casting eyes over our shoulder and keeping our ears alert to the telltale sound of grinding brakes as we crossed the street at Escolas Gerais where the tram makes its narrowest (and most harrowing) ascent up to the Miradouro da Senhora do Monte.  There are seven brutal hills in Lisbon, and for €2.80 per person, the price was worth it!

I also fell in love with the city’s festive atmosphere. Maybe it’s because we landed in Lisbon at the beginning of their official summer (June), but it’s been one party after the next.  The highlight was the raucous celebration of Lisbon’s patron saint.  During the Festa do Santo António,  every level surface in Alfama was converted to a communal dining area and locals served homemade sangria and sardinhas assadas (grilled sardines) to anyone who stopped.  Another night we had the good fortune to stumble across a free fado concert held in front of the baroque Igreja São Roque in the neighborhood of Bairro Alto.  Ana Moura’s sultry contralto nearly brought us to our knees.

Oliver: Our house looked right at the Larga Santa Marinha, a little plaza with just enough surface area for him to learn how to ride his bike.  After four evenings and a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of his father and several local alfacinhas (locals) cum cheerleaders, Oliver was maintaining his balance and executing turns like a pro.  And, according to him, the little plaza “was also a great place to kick a soccer ball without it rolling down the big hill”.

And what does a five year old complain about in a city like Lisbon? The streets themselves.  For a little guy with two left feet to begin with, the calçada portuguesa is an accident waiting to happen.  The sidewalks, plazas, and in some cases the streets in Lisbon are paved with innumerable blocks of chiseled black basalt and white limestone that form intricate mosaics.  While timelessly beautiful (in the evenings they glow under the lamplight), the surface of the pavers have become polished with time and use to the point of being downright slippery.  Furthermore, out-of-place stones frequently jut out haphazardly and threaten to trip even the sturdiest pedestrians.  More than once, Ollie’s loping stride lost it on the calçadas, and he was sent flying into the gutter.

Kendley: Wherever we wandered, from the Tower in Bélem to the manicured gardens in Parque Eduardo VII, the girl always found an excuse for an ice cream break.  The telltale signage outside the doors of countless local cafes advertised the day’s selections, and with her squeaky little “Olá” and a couple of blown kisses, the shopkeepers would practically dive into their freezers at her command.

 Other Highlights:

Museo Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum)

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (located in Bélem)

Feira da Ladra (Thieve’s Market in Alfama)

Oceanário (aquarium)

Igreja de São Roque (located in Bairro Alto)

National Pantheon (located in Alfama)

Palácio Nacional da Pena (located in Sintra)

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