we test new eyewear and check for directions… often.

we cringe as we cross big bad tunnels and buy vignettes when we get to the other side.

we brave the weather and get stuck in never-ending traffic jams… sometimes for hours.

so we snack on spekulaas and watch star wars to pass the time.

when things go well, we drive on endless roads without a speed limit… this is europe afterall.

and sometimes… well… sometimes, things don’t go exactly as planned…

after four separate diagnosis of “this doesn’t look like a simple problem”, we bid goodbye to our focus (who is now waiting for a diagnosis on a garage somewhere) and drove the last 100km to our destination in a taxi. and here we are now, in glorious amsterdam!

i left this country four years ago, almost to the day. it’s been too long – yet all the details, the smells, the sights, the sounds… they’re all coming back to us with such fierce familiarity that in some ways, it’s like we never left. for us, this is not a mere a sightseeing visit: we’re definitely more interested in revisiting all the things we love about the netherlands, all the particularities we’ve missed throughout the years. i’m really looking forward to this week :)

i’ve been away from this blog. after the last post, there were 5 weeks of surgery-and-recovery on the countryside. p’s mom is doing fine at the moment, and so we’ve moved on with our life… which brought us to our original plan: slovenia! :D

we arrived to ljubljana late last thursday, after a pretty intense 3-day roadtrip across portugal, spain, france and italy. we got good weather for traveling, mostly sunny/cloudy weather, with no rain, and lots of lovely autumn views.



noted on the way here:
* we crossed a thousand different versions of seats, citroens, renaults and lancias… but also lots of luxury brand suvs (bmw, mercedes, audi) which, given the current gas prices, is quite odd.
* in italy, you collect a toll ticket at the border with france, proceed to cross the country, and then pay the toll fee on the border with slovenia – it’s brilliant! in france, we stopped 12 times to pay toll fees…

* why the hell is portugal the country with less speed cameras among its neighbours? don’t we have one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world? :/


* i was expecting tunnels on this trip, but nobody prepared me for côte d’azur. it was kilometer after kilometer of tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge… bridges are ok, but i don’t like tunnels that much… at a certain point all i wanted was to stop right there and let paulo drive… why is there never a service area when you need it?

on a positive note, our car handled the trip without breaking a sweat!

so we’re here, discovering the city and looking for a place to stay. more updates when we get that milestone accomplished :)

hard task for me, almost impossible to translate this poem of Torga, without using all the twists the portuguese language offers. it’s about a specific peek on a hill in the margins of the douro river, called s. leonardo, or, the ‘terrace of the douro’.

compulsory high school portuguese literature, the meaning of the poem is much better captured when you’re up there, surrounded with vineyards on hills that resemble waves. this is the landscape of the “alto douro vinhateiro”, the region where porto wine is produced.

a truly magic (non-planned) roadtrip stop :)

so we’ve been thinking about getting a car. something simple, small but comfy, used but decent, diesel, 4 or 5 seats, and with some space to put our stuff. something to hit the road with when the time comes.

the plan is to stay in europe for a while, hop around cities and countries, discover a bit of what we’ve been missing – what we’ve been almost taking for granted. europe looks mostly predictable to me, organized and easy… but i’m willing to prove myself wrong, and i’m eager for the surprises these roads will throw at me.

getting a car is kind of a big thing for us… we’re cautious about this sort of big commitments… but i think there’s potential. europe is small enough to be drivable, i like roadtrips and i like driving as much as i like being in the passenger’s seat, taking pictures, suggesting pit stops and fiddling with the radio and the maps. i can see this working out.

paulo took this photo from the passenger seat of our borrowed ibiza, who effortlessly took us to the douro region this last weekend despite the narrow bumpy road chosen by the gps. :)

“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? :)