Brazilian Night

We all had a fun evening watching the Brazilian dancers and because our table of 8 was right next to them, many of us were seconded to dance as well. Look at that hair fly!

Hiking the cliffs to old town Albufeira

Here are a few pictures of us hiking the hills to Albufeira from our club. It's always fun to climb and the boys remembered this from years past.

One of the pictures is a look back towards our club. The cactus and other lovely flowers are in bloom along the way.

Boys in the Pool , Gardens and sea at CPO

From the lobby in the club you can view folks in the swimming pool; well, mainly their legs. However, I asked the boys to swim down so I could recreate a few of the pictures we did 4 years ago. They also posed for me with their friends and the children's statue.

Portugal in May

Well, the Gallant family vacationed in Portugal for the month of May. We spent three weeks at our timeshare in Albufeira at Clube Praira da Oura in the Algarve. The last picture is a view from our apartment out to the sea.

The word Algarve is derived from the Arabic Al-Gharb, meaning West. This is Portugal's southern most province. For a period of two weeks we were joined by our friends Brian and Sharon, from Kelowna, and Fred and Mary, from Calgary/Costa Rica. Although the weather did not cooperate - one of the worst springs on record - we did manage to have a good time.

Here are a few pictures of us touring out to the west coast to see the furthest tip Cape de San Vicente and then some pictures of our tour east to Faro where we visited one of the old cathedrals (where the storks nest) and the surrounding old palace full of orange trees. Look at the one shrine done in skeletons. There is also a chapel of bones (Carmo Church) which we did not visit. The purple flowering trees were really spectacular which the pictures don't really do justice to.

We visited Silves which is a very old town formerly the capital of the Algarve. Here there is a wonderful old cathedral (Se) and Moorish Castle with a huge cistern. Much of it is being reconstructed (interior) so basically you just walk on the inner ramparts and take in the surrounding views. Eventually they will have reconstructed some of the inner spaces and of course a "coffee" house for tourists to dispose of a few more euros!

For our last week, we ventured to northern Portugal, to a town called Amarante where we visited some friends. There was no heat in the house here and it was a mere 9 degrees celsius when we arrived. Considering we have little to no warm clothing I, particularly, was a frozen popsicle! The incessant rain has ruined their cherry crops and the wine vines don't look too healthy either! This is more serious in my opinion. As always we consoled ourselves with the national green wine (vinho verde), port wine, pate and delicious varieties of cheese. You can never go wrong here.

I made the boys go in the pool at the club because four years ago when we were there we lost our camera on the way home and have no pictures; therefore I made them recreate many of the scenarios from before. I just love the one of them holding hands with the children statue. They were most cooperative for their mother!

Our routing took us on a night flight from San Jose to Madrid with a small layover and then a short flight of one hour to Lisbon. Here we rented a car and drove down to the Algarve. The highways are a dream especially coming straight from Costa Rica however they are toll highways and we spent half the amount on tolls as gas.

We had various adventures this month including an incident with the Manager of the Club; the Portugal police and our sons in regards to a wrongful accusation of theft from the video arcade. The boys were out of their minds with worry that day considering it was the only day we left them by themselves and we were not around for all this excitement. John had offered, or I seconded him - can't remember which, to drive the ladies around to shop for pottery. Needless to say when we arrived home and the boys were full of tales about theft and the police; we were invited to visit the manager. What fun! Anyway, it was all a big mistake and along with their apologies we and our entire group were invited to a lovely theme evening - Brasilian night. Wait till you see those pictures!

The next excitement was that I lost my watch - not serious but annoying and last but not least we discovered my VISA number had been compromised. Keep in mind, I still had the card but the happy thief was busy charging up delights such as i pod tunes, development software, yahoo voice and of course, an escort service. Charming! Luckily, John's number was not compromised and they were able to reinstate his number so it was easier to finish the trip without a lot of hassle going to banks, etc. So, these adventures along with my chattering teeth ensured I was the first one to the boarding gate to go home.

When we landed in San Jose, the sun was shining and of course we were so warm and then our friends told us how we had just missed 8 days of solid rain and the worst tropical storm (Alma) in 120 years. Real sorry we missed that! We got in on the clean up at home so didn't get out of it entirely.

Anyway, we are back home catching up on "stuff" and will be back to Canada July 27th.

Austin Pepper Seed Strikes Again

Austin is starting a whole new crop of peppers in preparation for the rainy reason. If a seed doesn't grow, he takes it out and puts it in water so it will sprout first. He never gives up! He has his Auntie Cynthia shopping for more varieties. He also insists that I use them in all my cooking! Anyway, he quite enjoys his gardening; me - I'll stick to roses!

Here are a couple of shots of his new crop. We use the washed out milk containers for his nursery which works very well.

Visit to Tamarindo Beach

Our friend, Pat, was visiting Costa Rica and one of her stops was Tamarindo beach which is about 2 hours north from us. We went to her hotel for the day to visit and collect our "Canada package" of goodies. One of the items were jeans for John which to all concerned was a quite a relief as he was resembled either a vagabond or a rock star, depending on how you viewed his jeans (or what was left of them!)

Here are some photos of Austin doing his back flip into the pool and Pat and her friends. I think you can see Andrew in the pool in the background in one of the shots.

Sun patio is complete

We finally received our wrought iron table for the sun patio and it was definitely worth the wait.

The chairs were stock but we had to design the table to match the space. The company in San Jose did a fabulous job and we just love entertaining on that level.

John set up our huge umbrella which can swing directly over the table for shade but it wasn't set up when I took this picture. My bougainvilleas are still in bloom although not as full as they were in December. They just took your breath away then but they still add some color at the end of the dry season.