Our Portuguese New Year

We were able to move around our flights for free, and were even able to spend more time in Lisbon for the New Year celebrations. We flew in on the 27th instead, which was nice that the snow finally started to disappear. I don’t do snow. I visit it, but then I leave. I have come to terms with the fact that I would not enjoy living around snow for months on end. With that said, we left the snow behind and were greeted with sunshine. Well, maybe not sunshine, but sun breaks and partially cloudy with minor sprinkles. Rain I can handle!

We exchanged our gifts anyway with Bruno and his family and ate ourselves silly in the process. There are so many yummy, yet fattening Portuguese desserts that neither one of us could live without trying, and of course, sampling again for good measure. Bruno is an excellent cook and with the sea so close, there was seafood at every meal. Now, I love prawns, but after eating them for 4 days straight, for lunch, snack, dinner and yes, even another snack, I was nearly sick of them.

We had a day of touring around Lisbon, since most of our other visits were spent on the beaches. We wandered around the old world fair exhibitions still standing, meandered through the shopping areas, gandered at Callatrava’s work, and even got to see one of Bruno’s designs: a small pedestrian bridge between buildings. We even stumbled across some ice skating, but it was on plastic, so we were not quite sure what to make of that. As the climbed the hills over Lisbon to the old castle ruins, it was great to hear all the sounds and songs of Christmas.

For New Years Eve, we had a feast with some of our old Portuguese friends and some new ones. Rita and Xu brought their new baby, Francesca, and when she started screaming like a dying cat, they knew it was time to head out. Ben noted that I may be good with small children, but I certainly do not look like a natural with small babies. They are so tiny, they sort of freak me out.

We popped the champagne at midnight, which neither of us partook in. Ben does not drink and I do not drink anything with pain in the name. Learned that one the hard way......but I did learn that lesson. We played a great charades type game that was made even more hilarious given the fact that the cards were in Portuguese, so we had to translate, and they had the difficult task of explaining their characters in English, so it was a translating game for both of us. My team crushed them the first round, but Ben’s team finished strong in the second round. I think my team just got too drunk, or else we would have won both. The night came to a close at 5:30 when our eyes could no longer stay open.

Our last day there, we got to have our favourite cakes in Belem, see the potential home that Bruno and Marta are trying to purchase and walk along a very foggy waterfront. The San Francisco bridge tippy-tops and Jesus were the only things sticking out of the clouds. It was a great visit with our two Christmas Travel Buddies, and it really lifted our spirits to get 2011 kick off right!

Family-less Chrimbo

Only mere hours before we were booked to leave on our flight to Lisbon for a Portuguese Christmas, it was tragically canceled. No yummy goodies for us, but at least we were not stuck in Prague like my friend Edell who nearly missed Christmas altogether. So Christmas Eve morning I went out in the cold, wind and snow to buy one of the last chickens available, scrapped together enough stuff to make stuffing and dug out an extra can of pumpkin to make a pie. Not traditionally Christmas, but it is holiday enough to suffice for us. It was our first white Christmas and since we had heat and food, we tucked in to watch movies, work another 4000 piece puzzle and made the best of it with our lone Christmas decoration that I had made myself. Ben even let me sing Christmas songs, since I do like to sing them all year!

Strange Anomaly #63

When we were walking through a park a dusk the park watchman walked around ringing a bell to warn everyone to get out so he could lock it up. Since they know how to properly do wrought iron fencing here, once you are in, you are in. When you are locked out, there is no real way to get in. Being an expert fence jumper, I know my limits and although I have tried, the sharp spikes sort of put me off wanting to really get in. Their manicured parks are safe from teenagers up to no good. ie: Me at age 16!

Movember

During the month of November men grow mustaches for the month of November to bring awareness to Men's Health. We were supposed to collect money for charity, but all our friends are architects, so we knew there was no point in asking for donations. For the whole month I got Ben to grow this and had to crab a picture moments before it was shaved off December 1st. He was hoping to hold out until Christmas to show Bruno, but he did not want it in all our photos since he thought it was a bit porn starish.

Month of Snow

As stated in previous post it started snowing on Thanksgiving (the same night our heat broke). For the next 4 weeks it did not go anywhere (and we still did not have heat)! One day, in the middle of this freak cold snap, it snowed nearly 10cm (6 inches) in an afternoon. Did not help in making my already hour walk to work any shorter.

Thankfully I never fell on the ice, although I did 'ice skate' a few times. I take a shortcut though St Patrick's Cathedral gardens every morning, and as I was taking a nice picture of the cathedral, I noticed something in the background. It was a large snow cock. It was no wonder that the next several days the left the garden locked up, and the snow sculpture was smashed. I had previously liked snow, but after being around for a few weeks, I was so over it. No more for me!

It is hard to believe that we just had one of the nicest summers where we could actually sun ourselves and get a tan.....

Strange Anomaly #62

There is an Asian market I love to go to for foods and sometimes they have American treats. Sort of strange why they would have it, but I don’t complain. It is my go to place for Root Beer, but the last time I went to pick some up they had Mountain Dew. Now I have never been a big fan of it, but have missed it now that I cannot have it. I looked right on one side, but on the other side it was written in Arabic. It was not bad tasting, but was nothing like what I was expecting. Needless to say I will not be picking up any more of it and will hold out for the Root Beer!

Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving this year was a scaled down affair. We just had our closest mates over which made it much more intimate and was a lot less work for me making so many random dishes. With less people, meant more pie for Ben and myself!! Everything went well, and about midnight it started snowing! I have never had a white Thanksgiving, so that was a special treat. Not so special for those that had to crawl home in a taxi that ended up costing them an arm and a leg, but it was pretty.

Strange Anomaly #61

I have realised that chivalry is not dead in Ireland. How many guys hold open doors, so make a point of letting me through, or getting into an elevator first and will squish out of the way so that I can get back out of the elevator first. Even when I try to open doors for them, as I am a woman all for equal opportunity, they take it from me and make me go through, they actually insist. I know the feminist in me says I am no weakling, I am your equal, I can get it myself, but there is also the girly side of me that likes it!

A Wedding to Remember

We had the honour of creating the wedding video for a couple that we were set up with, via a college mate, that have become our closest friends here. The had a beautiful wedding in the historic City Hall building right under the dome. I always love seeing people’s families and seeing themselves in their parents, brothers/sisters, etc. It was a beautiful ceremony and just as Tori walked up the aisle, the viking boat tours drove by and they gave her an extra loud viking ‘ARGGGG!’ as they passed by. There is the extra part of the ceremony that I was not used to, where they go up to the little table in the front, sit down, and the wedding party signs the legal marriage documents in front of everyone. I was just glad that Ben recorded it since I was too involved watching them, then if I had to think about recording it.

After the ceremony we met up later for ‘afters’ at a nice restaurant. I love this concept of ‘afters’. Invite who you want to the wedding, and then all the extended cousins, friends, co-workers come for the end to party at the reception. I wish the Americans had this concept, especially since I have such a large extended family. Like Portland, Dublin is a big large town, so of course we ran into some obscure friends that we did not even know knew our friends. It is a small world. It was a great night, but as the music cranked louder and louder to where Ben could not be heard over the music, we decided it was time to call it a night.

Strange Anomaly #60

There is a Compulsory 2 day marriage course before getting married, if you do it in the church. They go over all sorts of things like sex, living together, compromise, how many children you want, life goals. I would think that if a couple had not talked about those things before the class, only weeks or months before getting married, wow, they could be in for a lot of surprises. Could be good for some people, but I am glad that I figured those things out and did not need a course to talk about them before getting married.