Europe 2016

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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
doing laundry
29 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ 🌙 63 °F
Because vacation is not all fun and games!
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Donna BielakI wondered what you were going to do about the laundry situation on a long trip. Were laundromats easy to find?
2016-11-02Svara
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
apartment building designed by Gaudi
30 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 63 °F
Our first stop on our day of Gaudi
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
second stop on Gaudi tour
30 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 63 °F
Rhonda and Russell are playing tour guides and doing a great job.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
third Gaudi building
30 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 63 °F
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
Park Güell
30 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 64 °F
It looks kind of like a cross between Arizona and Dr. Seuss.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
La Sagrada Familia
30 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 66 °F
The crown jewel of our tour.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
and so we leave Barcelona
31 oktober 2016, Spanien ⋅ ⛅ 59 °F
We are on the bus to the airport. R came down with my cold yesterday so he is not at 100℅ , but it should be a not to hard day.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
welcome to Portugal!
31 oktober 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 70 °F
We splurged and got a car that is picking us up at the airport and driving us all the way to our hotel in Évora so we avoided having to figure out metro and train and bus transfers.

So when we came out of the airport there was our driver with a card with my name on it. Whee! High class!Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
Évora is amazing!
31 oktober 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 75 °F
Quaint cobblestone streets. Very narrow and all the buildings have these blazingly white walls. We are enjoying our first meal in Portugal.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
snack for dinner
31 oktober 2016, Portugal ⋅ 🌙 66 °F
We weren't up for a real dinner and then the hotel offered us this little welcome snack. It's perfect!
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
view from our hotel window
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 61 °F
Those are the ancient walls of the city in the background
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
Chapel of Bones
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 63 °F
This chapel is lined on the interior with thousands of human bones. They had to move a whole bunch of monastery cemeteries many years ago to build estates on the land and so the monks disinterred the bones and used them to decorate the chapel.

Russell and I showed a lack of decorum and started making puns.

"This place has a lot of elbow room."
"You're just ribbing me!"
"Sorry, it was my knee jerk reaction."
"Now you are pulling my leg"
"It took a lot of elbow grease to build this place."
"And quite a few skulled workers."
"Are you lying or is that just a fib-ula?"

The sign over the entry door loosely translated to "These bones wait here for yours."Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
city center of Évora
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 63 °F
This feels like a small village in the city center, but it is actually quite a large town
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
Igreinha
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F
This is a little village. The houses are all blazing white with a stripe of color along the ground level. Usually blue or yellow, but sometimes other colors.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
cork tree
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 70 °F
We passed some cork trees along the way. You can see where they have harvested the cork. They take the first cork (virgin cork) when the tree is about 20 years old. That harvest is not very useful. Then every 9 years after that they can harvest again. So it is at least 30 years after planting that the tree starts producing.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
cork factory
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F
Next stop was a cork factory. They harvest a given tree every 9 years. Then they dry the slabs for about 3 months. There is Russell standing in front of a drying pile. Then they boil the cork for an hour to make it more malleable. That big machine is the boiling vat. Then they sort and grade for quality and wait 30 days and then boil for one more hour. Then they package them in pallets. The best grades go off to the wine cork producers (about 18% of the total factory production) and the wine corks end up costing between 5 cents and 1 dollar per cork.

I hope you were paying attention, there will be a test later.

One thing they do with cork that isn't quite wine grade is cut it into very thin sheets with a felt backing and it can be used to make all sorts of stuff. We kind of went crazy in the gift shop.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
lunch break
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F
After spending all our money at the cork factory, we had to hit an ATM before finally eating a late lunch.
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
wine tasting in São Miguel
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ 🌙 72 °F
We went to a very fancy winery. Got a great tour and tasted a bunch of yummy wines. The winery is trying an experiment making wine in ancient Amphorae. We tried some. It was kind of rough, but it was an interesting experience.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
first real dinner in portugal
1 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ 🌙 64 °F
Russell ordered a half portion of beans to start. It was huge. Then they mixed up and missed my dinner order which was a really good thing because Russell and I together barely made a dent in his dish.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
pottery village
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F
Our first stop on our second day bike tour is a little village known for their clay, and therefore their pottery. After all the stuff we bought yesterday, we have no room in our luggage for more souvenirs, especially heavy fragile ones, so all we did was look, even though things were very tempting to buy!

We wandered around a family run pottery business. Generations of men worked the clay and generations of women painted the pottery.

The kiln, and the giant rack that rolled into it, were huge!Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
the Love Rock
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 70 °F
Our next stop was a megalithic monument that is known locally as the Love Rock. The young single women of the village come here on the first Monday of the Easter season (first Monday of Lent? First Monday after Easter?) and they try to toss a rock over their back (left hand only!) and if the rock lands and stays on the top of the monument, you will be married within the year. You only get three chances!

Our guide, Maria, who is a local, showed us how it was done. Russell tried, but was not quite successful, which shows how hard it is.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
cows and egrets with watermelon
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F
As we were biking, we passed a field of watermelons that must have spoiled before harvest, so they just left them in the field and let a herd of cows in. Evidently, egrets follow cows around here. So it was a very pastoral scene and Russell was entranced. He said later it was the coolest thing he saw all day.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
another megalithic monument
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F
Located near a very nice farmhouse
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
biking to castle
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 73 °F
Next we biked up a short (1mile) but very very steep road to an small village and ancient castle on the top of a hill. Good thing I had an electric bike! I was able to power up the hill without too much effort.

The road up had great views of the largest artificial lake in Europe. It was dammed and created about 15 years ago. Great for irrigation and for electric power production, but evidently it has changed the local climate making it more humid and the temperature less variable through the year.Läs mer
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Europe 2016 Sarah McCabe
lunch on top of a mountain
2 november 2016, Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 75 °F
Biking is hungry work. Forgot to take a picture before we ate, but here is the view from our table.
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