red things from prado (small village near santarém), last june. these diptychs are going to have a category of their own from now on – so there’s more from the series here.

Thousand Origami Cranes (千羽鶴 Senbazuru or Zenbazuru?) is a group of one thousand origami paper cranes held together by strings.
An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the mystical or holy beasts (others include the dragon and tortoise), and is said to live for a thousand years. In Asia, it is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person’s wish come true. This makes them popular gifts for special friends and family.

(from wikipedia)

seen a bit everywhere, in the streets of porto.

“onde nasceu fernão mendes pinto?
jorge de montemor onde nasceu?
a mesma terra o mesmo céu que eu pinto
castelo velho o que foi deles é meu”
- afonso duarte

“where was fernão mendes pinto born?
jorge de montemor, where was he born?
the same earth, the same sky that i paint
old castle what was theirs is mine”
- afonso duarte

last tuesday, driving slowly between figueira da foz and coimbra, we came across the castle of montemor-o-velho, proudly standing on top of a small hill. we had no big agenda for the day, other than picking up the cats at midnight in lisbon, so we stopped a while to explore.

the castle was first heard of in medieval times (before the country of portugal was born), and it was successively conquered by christians and arabs and even by napoleon troops. in 1910, it was declared national monument, along with “igreja de santa maria da alcáçova”, a church within the castle walls.

the views from up there are stunning, green fields all around the castle walls and many squares of rice plantations (and some storks too) due to the proximity of the mondego river.


while the castle walls and premises are in reasonably good shape (the paths are clean and the lawns are taken care of, there’s even a little café up there) you can’t really say the same about the church. the frescos and statues could really use a hand. what battles are they trying to tell us about?

other details seem to have stood the test of time a bit better: there are beautiful tiles decorating the walls, writings and a few gravestones on the church floor.


the entrance is free and on the day we were there, there was no soul on sight. a whole castle to yourself, how about that? :)

still wrapping my head around these blue skies, the grass, the coarse salt and being able to drink the water from the tap, proper meias de leite, the politeness, not having to use a vpn to access the most basic sites… but also remembering what happened on the 4th of june, 20 years ago.

the cats arrived safe and sound (to my biggest surprise), and we’re all a bit jetlagged and trying to re-adjust as best as we can.

a lot has changed, and a lot is still the same in my little country but for the first time in my life, i am in portugal as a worker (as opposed to a student sponsored by her parents) and i am looking forward to re-discover this little “garden by the sea” with the small liberties this new position allows me.
so stay tuned for more adventures, including tons of test-tasting because the food here is absolutely unbelievable. it’s going to be a fun couple of months.

hello europe! :D

(Hint: It’s not The Netherlands)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal’s drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Read the rest of the article at Time, or the initial article on Salon.

the audacity of sneakily pushing this law in 2001 without making a fuss about it was genius. if this law had been put on a referendum 8 years ago for the people to decide, it would have never gone through… which is not to say that some things shouldn’t be put on referendums, it’s just that portugal is mainly a conservative/catholic country, with a lot of resistance to change. this was a bold step, but one in the right direction, as the studies have shown. well done!

(image by the flickr commons)

the china adventure is coming to an end: another few months in the middle kingdom and we should be flying to our next destination. no, nothing happened, we weren’t victims of the crisis… but 2 years is enough. there are a lot more countries to explore out there!

i’m not too fond of tags like locating independent or digital nomads, but i love the crazy plans that involve hopping between destinations. food, travel and photography – these are the things that make me happy. so we plan on hitting the road, keep a roadtrip log book, take pictures, blog, look for geocaches, taste all the local specialties and send postcards from a number of different places – while we soak on the wifi and work a bit from the places we stay in. we have a gps, sort of an online business and some freelance gigs, and as soon as we get our mei backpacks and ship the cats home (a whole new adventure), i think we’re good to go.

until then though, i’ll try to fit in as much of china craziness as i can – be warned! :)