Today was one of our two food shops each week. We have a fridge in Tut but it only holds enough fresh food for 2-3 meals hence two shops a week. The nearest town is Idanha-a-Nova which is about 30 minutes away. It sits high up on a hill and has wonderful views over the valley as you drive up.
There’s a little cafe opposite the ‘camara’ (town hall offices, which incidentally are beautiful looking council offices ) and they do the best buttered toast! As we walked up to it, we saw Carlos who we met at the start of this year when he came to inspect the shade/rain shelter we had built for Tut. He was on the phone, so we waved and carried on but when he finished his call, he came to the cafe and sat down with us for a quick chat. As he left, he said, ‘If you need any help, call me.’ How lovely. We had read that Portuguese people generally love to be of help and that’s certainly been our lived experience so far here.
We had a walk around the town where we discovered there was a monthly market on today. Today’s ‘mercado’ was a mixed one of clothes, shoes and towels as well as fruit and veg. Once a month there is also a ‘bio mercado’ which sells organic locally produced food. The town has been designated a ‘cidade musica’ (music city…even though I’m sure it’s a town) and has lots of musical performances. Last year when we came, we saw a poster with four smartly dressed men on it. I said to Phil, ‘I think that must be a four tenors type event. Shall we book tickets?’ As I was logging on to book, Phil suggested we check the translation. Lucky we did as it turned out to be bull fighting instead! So we gave ‘the four tenors’ a miss!
This afternoon we decided to do a circular walk around the village. It’s the first time we’ve done it as it was too hot to walk much in the summer. Today was a beautiful 22c with a gentle breeze. We have driven the route many times but walking the 2.5 miles slowly, we saw so much that we’d not noticed before. We said ‘Olá boa tarde’ to people sitting outside their houses just chatting the day away and stopped to take photos of all sorts of wonderful views.
On the way back we saw Monelli, the older chap (89 I think) who often stops to say hello to us. He doesn’t speak any English and we are in the early stages of our Portuguese, however he gestured to invite us into his house for a drink. We went in and spent a wonderful half hour with him stringing words and actions together and sharing family photos to communicate in conversation. His wife died earlier this year and he really misses her. He told us – Phil and I – to be good ‘amigos’ (friends) to each other.
As if that wasn’t enough socialising for one day, a couple went by on a tractor …Joey barked…then they got off to go for a walk and passed by our wall…Joey barked. I went over to the wall and we got chatting. They are Zinda and Aramande. I made myself speak in Portuguese and we had a good, if basic, conversation for about 10 minutes. They were so friendly and left with a ‘Muito prazer’ which means it was a real pleasure to meet. We sat outside to mull over what a fabulous day we’ve had… until it got too dark to see each other. Back to more work on the house tomorrow. Night all.
