Photos from my friend the intrepid traveler, Elvia Contreras. She and her grand-niece went to Portugal and the photos are as lovely as I have always been told Portugal is.
Elvia on the Tajo River, looking intrepid!
Here is lovely Pia, Pia Solorzano Contreras, also on the famous Tajo bridge. I remember visiting her mother, Mariana, and dad, Chuy (Jesus) when they lived in Veracruz, and after dinner Pia sat down at the piano and played an enchanting Mozart piece and as I watched she missed a note and gave that little furious shake of the head that musicians or singers do when they flub a note, I have done it many a time, but she raced on (it was a fast selection) and finished in good style. She’s now studying in Puebla but took time to accompany her great-Aunt Elvia to Portugal.
Scenes from travel in Lisboa — a library of course!
With a flying girl on a bicycle in the upper left.
Another library, this time in a converted church. Both in Lisboa.
Here are houses in Oporto, it all seems undeveloped, un-modernized, organic… maybe this is why people fall in love with Portugal. Elvia said she liked Oporto more than Lisboa.
The medieval city Obidos, with its ancient defensive wall still standing. When I think about it, Portugal remained neutral during World War II and so these ancient towns never got bombed flat into smoking ruins like so many places in Italy, Germany, France. England.
More in the next few days! I am working at the new far-future fantasy novel and taking care of Jackson’s slowly-healing wounds, our music group played in church last Sunday (yesterday) for the first time in a long time, Sid Fly was with us, such a great performer! and Tom our fiddler, Kathy, Diane… I asked Sid if he and Kathy were cousins and they immediately made kissing noises at each other. Kissin’ cousins, get it?
It takes a great leap of faith for a reader to enter into a fantasy, purely imaginative world, at the present time because of the endless excitement of the news feeds. They can’t let go. This book will end up unread and dead I am afraid but who knows. I may published the first few chapters on this blog.