A Perfect Day for a Road Trip

The sands of the Sahara continue to hang around, albeit in lesser quantity than Thursday evening and yesterday. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to head off into the mountains for a road trip and because Marc was interested in an art exhibition that was presently on in Silves, it became our destination “de choix”.

Our friend, Andrée-Anne, wasn’t up to anything today and when we invited her to join us, she jumped at the opportunity. Once breakfast was done, our fabulous artisanal fresh cheese, home made bread, sweet thyme honey, and strong black coffee, we headed off, collected Andrée-Anne from her apartment in Fuzeta and hit the road.

The drive was about 1hour 20 minutes and the further we went from the coast line, the less the air seemed dusty, a bonus for us. We arrived in Silves, parked, then headed off to find the exhibition pavilion.

We found the pavilion and the exhibition was fun to see. Marc bumped into one of his old colleagues with whom he exhibited a couple of years ago here in the Algarve so that was fun also, he enjoyed a grand chat. I didn’t take any photos inside as it wasn’t really conducive for that but once we were done, off we headed to explore a bit of Silves and find a place for lunch.

OK, so we sat on a lovely terrace, a fabulous guitarist sitting on the corner of the street playing gorgeous music throughout our entire meal. It felt a bit surreal to be feeling so incredibly zen and Silves was not at all busy, despite it being market day. I decided to take a couple of “mug shot” over lunch and I told the two of them to stop talking until I took the shot……they humoured me and insisted that because they had “posed for me”, now I should take another with their not so happy faces!!

A great lunch, grand chat with a couple of Americans sitting next to us who told us they were here to buy property because with the upcoming American election they felt certain they were going to have to leave the USA!!! No names were mentioned to protect the innocent!

After lunch, off to wander.

Of course we had to do a selfie with my timer….I use it so seldomly I had to spend a few minutes trying to figure it out. Accidently turned it off twice instead of actually taking the photo.

We three totally enjoyed our time together, our day trip, and wandering around this lovely old historic capital of the Algarve.

One of the outstanding things about Silves is the presence of storks. They encircle the town in flocks of dozens. It’s against the law to disturb a stork nest so often the locals will work around or leave in place features with a nest on! The Storks have a lifespan of up to 35 years, and at around 3-5 years old the chicks will usually return home or somewhere close by to build their own nests. This results in generational groupings of nests of which some can be found in Silves alongside the river. We passed one place and we referred to it as the stork condo as there must have been 10 large nest on the structure. We were in the car so I couldn’t get a shot but I did get this one while walking along the main road.

The drive home was also special as I took the smaller back roads which literally wind through one small town after another and when not in the towns proper, orange groves, trees laden with the sweet scent of orange blossoms. We were more or less like those dogs you see, hanging out the windows with happy expressions on our faces sniffing deeply. Twas another grand and wonderful day in Paradise.

E assim mais um dia chega ao fim.