After one week.

Well, we seem to be in a prolonged cold spell here with temperatures around 5 or 6 °C in the mornings and highs around 15 or so - the longest cool spell I can recall since we have been coming here.

The cool morning temperatures make early morning photography a bit less attractive but I still go to the beach around 6:45 am as, regardless of the cool, it is still my favourite time to be there. In spite of the cold mornings I have experimented a bit more with long exposures, this time using a slightly different method. Yesterday I took my tripod and made some long exposure photos with the camera on the tripod so that things that are not moving stay in focus while the moving water has a smooth texture to it. This is trickier than the earlier method of just moving the camera while the shutter remains open for 1/6 or 1/8th of a second - everything in the frame is "smoothed" out. Using the tripod method getting the exposure correct takes some work with filters and shutter speed. I know - more than you care to or need to know.

In any case, the photos here are from this method and, as they are my first effort, the photos are not as good as I had hoped. I learned quite a bit as I bumbled my way through the process so, hopefully, they will be better next time.

As I said in my last blog post, we are well settled in now and liking the rooms we have much better as we adjust to them and alter them to our needs. For example, the tiny kitchen had a door on the entry and the open door blocked access to the 'fridge and part of the limited counter space. Every time you needed to get to the fridge you had to close the door. So, I removed the door - what a difference! And, so far, I have not been charged with vandalism. And there are some aspects of this place that we really enjoy - for example, in the afternoon we have sun on the balcony and streaming into our living area, which is lovely. Having now looked at and heard about other places, given that our old place is no longer available, this place seems the best for our needs.

I actually lied above - this photo was made by the so called Intentional Camera Movement method, so different from those above. And I have also been trying a bit of black and white.  Let me know what you think.

I included a photo or two of the stone breakwater in an earlier post, but I have quite a few photos of it and quite like this one.








Ruth is having some hip discomfort so not able to walk far so our usual daily activity patterns have been somewhat limited. She has not been to the beach yet and yesterday, for the first time this year, we went to "old town", part way there and back on the bus. While in old town we found a very good walking stick/cane for her and that seems to help quite a bit.

On the other hand, I have been walking from 10 to 15 Km every day. This is one of the things I enjoy a lot here - being free of the car, if I want to go somewhere I walk. In the morning I go to the beach, then John and I do our daily walk and I usually have my 10,000 steps in before lunch. Need bread or groceries? I walk. It's great!

Last night I went to the beach just in time to catch the sun setting so, no surprise, I made several photos, a couple of which are here.

Tomorrow we meet with our JM Vacations rep so will book our trip to Seville (March 8th) and find out about the possibilities concerning the Douro Valley and Granada-Cordoba trips.

Portugal, early days,

The proof, to me, that we are now really here is that I was on the beach this morning before sunrise and I can say that it was rejuvenating. It was cool - 12° C - and fairly windy so the ocean was thunderously pounding the beach - a sound I thoroughly enjoy.

I spent only a short time there this morning as I was to meet John at 8 am for our regular 4Km morning walk, but I made a few photos just to reintroduce myself and you to one of my favourite morning and evening spots here in Albufeira.

This scene is, no doubt, familiar to all. Just to establish location :-)

Don't forget to click on photos to see a larger image.

I am also experimenting a bit with some long exposure photography, so if one or two of these photos appear blurry, they are.

Yesterday John and I went looking for a place that he wanted to find, and, including our morning walk and this project we walked a total of around 15 Km that day! And after finding the place in question we decided to walk home on the beach which, because of major changes the ocean has wrought, turned out to be more labor intensive than we had anticipated. More about the beach changes later.

The photo below shows part of the large breakwater they put in place a year of so ago and now beautifully covered with moss.

I think it is safe to say that we are all now quite settled in and accepting the many shortcomings of this new place, the Monica Isabel Beach Club. After a lot of disappointments, complaints and calls to the JM Vacations rep, Jean and John finally now have the basic equipment for cooking their meals. There are still some fairly basic kitchen items lacking but, though we would prefer not to, we can function without them. While the rooms we are in are spacious and quite nice, unfortunately this place is quite stingy with kitchen items (or maybe they are just disorganized) and they apparently have a reputation for poor management. So be it - we are here and happy to be so.

The cold front has moved in and this morning at 6:30 it is around 7 degrees C, and we are looking a mostly sun but high temperatures somewhat lower than usual - around 15° C each day for the next several - still much better than southern Ontario!

This photo was made last evening from the balcony outside our living room.

Portugal - arrival

Well, we are getting settled in our room in the Monica Isobel apartment-hotel but after some minor, slightly unpleasant, events which we could have done without.

The flight was fine, in fact the smoothest trans-atlantic flight I have been on so far - it left about one half hour late but took only 6.5 hours from Toronto to Faro, Portugal  (normally just over 7 hours) and we arrived about 20 minutes early - just around 8 am on Wednesday. It was sunny and about 14 or 15 °C and the bus trip to Albufeira was uneventful.

When we arrived at the Monica Isobel, however, things began to unravel. Though the reservations had been made and confirmed in early April 2012, the folks at the desk claimed that they were not expecting us! So, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and blaming and consultation with superiors before they agreed to find a place for the Wheelers and us, but, we would have to wait until 3 pm before we would be able to get into our rooms - this was announced at about 10 am or 5am our time after a relatively sleepless night! So, though some were very tired and looking forward to a bit of rest, that would not happen until after 3 pm and, they informed us that the rooms would not be on the ocean side of the building! We protested and in time they found one room with an ocean view and promised a second one for the next day - John and Jean would stay one night in a less than pleasant room. (The desk clerks kept their word and J and J moved to a very nice room the next day - Thursday.)

It was almost 4 pm (6 hours after arrival at the hotel) that we finally got into our room. The space is fine - very large rooms rather cold (not temperature cold) and, while there is a view of the ocean, it pales compared to what we would have at our old place. 

While we were waiting for our room we decided to go to the bakery to get some bread and on the way stopped at the atm to get soma cash. I looked for my debit card but it was not in its place, nor could I find it anywhere. Finally I recalled where I had last used it back home. There were some anxious hours ahead. I sent an email to Bob James asking him if he could check on it and, thankfully he discovered that I had left it where I though and they had shredded it, so no one will be depleting our account!

Both these photos were made looking out our bedroom window. We have a balcony off both our bedroom and living room with large patio doors leading on to each so the rooms are very bright.

Both photos look west toward old town Albufeira.

Out for dinner last night at the Trés Palmeiras restaurant then "home" (hard to think of this place as home yet) for an early to bed. Slept well and up for an 8 am walk. Rained in the night and it was off and on sun and rain during the day but warm enough at 19° C.  Mostly grocery shopping today and visit with the JM Vacations rep to talk about possible trips. We are planning to go to Seville in early March when our friend Rose is here. And we are considering going back to Granada to visit the Alhambra and to Cordoba. Also thinking about a trip to the Douro river valley which we have heard is quite beautiful. We'll see what emerges.

We have also just learned that we have arrived just in time to enjoy a serious cold front that is coming from …. well, there is no Canada here so it must be from, say, Scotland? Anyway, they say the sun will shine but for the next 4 days highs will be around 14 or 15 ° C, not too bad for hardy Canadians. Again, we'll see - the weather guessers have been wrong before.

For some reason we have managed to shift to local time very quickly, which is very convenient.

It turns out that the wi fi area is the lobby and in the evening it is a zoo full of noisy people drinking, watching TV and using their computers, iPads, etc., so the internet is painfully slow. Fortunately, at 6:30am there is no one here, and as it is the time I prefer anyway, I will be using the morning hours for blog and email.

Hope to get out today for some photography, weather permitting.

Cuba - Day 19, January 21st

Today is travel day - from Cienfuegos to Varadero - to catch the Westjet flight home tomorrow afternoon.

Breakfast at 8 then some final packing before our taxi - Fabio kindly arranged for one of his taxi driving friends to pick us up at 9:45 to take us to the bus station. At around 9 or so we were very pleasantly surprised by a visit from our first Casa host, Amed - we were hoping to see him before leaving but as time was getting short it seemed increasingly unlikely. He arrived with a couple small gifts - a copy of his book for Bob and a Cuban straw hat for me.- perfect! as I had mentioned to him that I was considering getting one.

Minutes after Amed left the taxi arrived and, with mucho gracias's etc., we were hustled into the taxi - another of Fabio's friends' classic Cuban taxis! And, it turns out that, by chance, I had taken a photo of this vehicle (remember this car?) days earlier, unaware that it was a taxi - so here is a photo of the outside. The inside is definitely something else! Like some of the other taxis, the seats were very soft and have clearly experienced repeated repair, there was no covering over the inside of doors, and when Bob tried to close the partially open front door the driver said not to bother- it would be fine.

To start the car he reached under the dash, pulled out several wires, put them together and, presto, the engine sprang to life! though hesitantly. But, we were off, at least for a few moments, when he suddenly stopped the car and without any explanation, got out and left us. We had no idea what was going on but it seems the police had stopped him for we know not what. After a few anxious moments, at least on my part, he returned with a big grin, started the car with his wire trick, and we were once again on route to the estacion de l'autobus.

We had already bought our tickets but were still a bit uncertain how to negotiate things at the bus station. Fortunately, Amed had given us some advice so we were at least partially prepared and managed to get to the correct location in the station (there are no signs so if we hadn't had the advice of Amed, we would have almost certainly been confused about where to go and how to get there). And checking our bags turned out to be easy after parting with a CUC peso or two. So we were happy to be there at the requisite 30 minutes before the scheduled bus departure but also, based on our previous bus trip with Viazul being 1.5 hours late, thinking we may have a long wait. Not so - the bus arrived pretty much on schedule and left only minutes late. The route to Varadero seemed a bit circuitous, but the trip was very enjoyable so didn't seem like 4 hours.

Ah, Varadero - what a difference from Havana and Cienfuegos! We are clearly in tourist land. From what I have seen so far, this seems a reasonable place to come and experience warm to hot weather in January - which is fine - but it is not a place to come to experience Cuba. And, had it not been for travelling with Bob, who has been to Cuba several times and knows some Spanish, I would likely have gone the Varadero route and missed the opportunity to experience Cuba in the way we did.  It's true that our time in Cuba was marred by illness but, as inconvenient as that was, I would definitely recommend our experience of Cuba over the ambience of Varadero.

For example, who could forget Habana Vieja, its sounds and smells, its charm and spirit, its opulence "cheek by jowl" with its warts of poverty and decay,

and its people;

the Plaza de la Revolución, our Giraldilla friend George,

the singing peanut lady on Calle Obispo,

the exquisite Gran Teatro de Habana, our Casa hosts, Amed and Ines, Fabio, Aglaes, and their beautiful 4 year old daughter, Fabiaglaes,

not to mention the parade we happened on, including Bob's new friend,

the Sunday band concert on the Cienfuegos Prado just outside our door,

the children singing in what Bob thought might be a gambling den,

the Teatro Thomas Terry,

the baseball game,

El Nicho,

our taxi ride adventures, the concert in Iglesia y Monestario de San Francisco de Asis and the flamboyant but superb pianist, Sergio Tapanes Pita,

the sunset over the Malecon in Cienfuegos and

our "ferry" ride to the Castilo de Jagua on an ancient boat designed for maybe 80 people but loaded to the gunwales with at least 200!

I won't forget any of it. at least, not soon! 

For a bit on the day we travelled home, click on Bob's blog

Cuba - Day 18, January 20th

Several days ago, when Amed (our first Casa host) took us to our new place, he told us that on Sunday mornings at 9am there is a band concert on the Prado right in front of the new place - Casa Fabio y Guilda. Amed's information was confirmed by Fabio and, it turns out that his father (Fabio senior), who lives in the Casa, plays clarinet in the band.

So it is now Sunday morning and we were pleased to find the band members assembling on the Prado virtually in front of our door.  As it all came together, the band was comprised of players from a wide range of ages - an oboist who looks to be about 25, to some players in their early to mid 60's - and over the next hour or so, they play an eclectic collection of music including some excellent improvisation by sax, flute, trumpet and tuba players. During some of the performance Fabio's 4 year old girl sat by her grandfather while he was playing. It was a wonderful concert and a great beginning to another relaxing day!

After the concert we strolled - slowly - because of Bob's persistently painful foot, down to the internet cafe quite certain that there would still be no cards available. To our surprise, though the place seemed quite dark and there was no one at the terminals, we found that they had cards! Bob was ecstatic. We bought 3 CUC''s worth of time for each of us and I sent an email home and checked out my blog to see if my last post had been published, and I was happy to learn that it had.

Fabio Sr. and grand daughter, Fabiaglaes

Our next goal for today was to check out the handicrafts places once more, so we went by only to find that the one I was interested in was closed and, surprisingly, the bulevar (boulevard), which is normally filled with people, was virtually empty and most places were closed. We went to one of the few open shops but found nothing of interest, so decided to go back home for a bit.

Near our Casa we passed a place we had walked by many times before but today we noticed a hand printed sign on the door which said, essentially, that no one under 18 could enter. Bob thought it might be a gambling establishment. His unrelenting curiosity forced us to check it out - and it was a pleasant surprise. We found ourselves in a fairly dark room and, instead of the gambling we supposed, there were colourfully dressed children singing and dancing! We enjoyed the performance for several minutes until it suddenly ended and everyone dispersed. How lucky and thanks to Bob's curiosity!

Went home to put our feet up for a bit before deciding to venture back down to the plaza area in case any of the shops were open in the afternoon, but they weren't.

Time for lunch at Hotel La Union where we know we can get a reasonable sandwich and, now that we seem to be free of the GI problem, a beer.

Then back to my second choice and one of the only shops open on the plaza to pick up a couple of things before leaving Cienfuegos.

Home again for a rest after a strenuous day and to think about packing for tomorrow's departure.  Though our bus is scheduled to leave for Varadero at 10:30 am - based on our last experience, I am less than optimistic. I will let you know.

Cuba - Day 17- January 19th

If you visit Bob's blog you may find that the title of this post is not totally accurate chronologically. The potential for error arises as a result of my not recording our activities each day and, as Bob was more attentive to recording, his notes will more accurately reflect what times we did what. So, if you are interested in chronological precision and, of course, to enjoy a different perspective on our Cuba experience, visit Bob's blog.

My notes indicate that we spent a good part of this day at the pool at Hotel La Union, about which there is not a lot to say. We relaxed and read by the pool, had a lunch, part of which was included in the 20 CUC's we paid for use of the pool side and pool and Bob went swimming. Here there was a changing room, so no requirement for behind the towel acrobatics.

We also noted for the first time, evidence of recycling in the form of 3 bins clearly marked to indicate what material was to be placed in each. We were impressed and happy that there was recycling awareness and some implementation - then watched with not a little disappointment as the waiter repeatedly threw recyclable things into the trash!

On one of our last days, and I don't recall which one, (it could be today) we decided to just stroll north on the Prado to areas of the town that we had not yet seen. So here are some of my reflections on that walk about.

More old cars, which,  obviously,  I, enjoy, for several reasons. Most important, I think, is that they are there - in some ways a metaphor for the amazing adaptability and tenacity that Cubans have shown in accommodating and prevailing in the face of the external pressures of political isolation, economic embargo, military invasion and all manner of incursions by a foreign power over several decades! 

I also like the cars because they are often brightly coloured, even gaudy, and, while I may be reading too much into it, as such they seem to reflect a sense of pride and confidence. And even those that are not so colourful outside may, as I described in an earlier post, be "colourful" inside with hearts and arrows, tiny TV screens and music videos!

And lastly, after 50 years or more, they still work!

Another bit of interest was the tendency to put bird cages (in which there were birds) outside on the street or even carrying them about.

The real reasons behind this we did not learn but possibly it is, at least in part, to give the birds a sense of space, maybe light and maybe to make them aware of other birds. Or maybe they just like to do it.

Further along we came to this interesting building which we thought might house something exotic, only to find that it is the employment office.

This fellow was walking toward us proudly carrying this large piece of pig and he was, obviously, pleased to have it recorded. This meeting reminded me of a missed photo on the first day we were in Cinefuegos. I was waiting in the internet cafe while Bob was labouring in front of a computer screen, when a guy walked carrying a large plastic bag which contained a pig's head!

This is at least the second sign I have seen which alludes to the continuing commitment to vigilance in support of the revolution, which is the way I read this sign. Exactly what that entails I don't know. It could suggest a presence in the community of information and reminders about the continuing importance of the revolution but it could also be a source of eyes and ears of the state. If the latter exists, one hopes it is a lesser component than it likely was in earlier years. I know, a lot of speculation, but such a sign kind of invites it.

At the end of the Prado we ventured over to one of the side streets paralleling the Prado and started on our way back. The neighbourhood is, as you can see, varied with strong contrasts in the structural state of buildings.

One of the things I was tempted to do, if there had been time, was to take photos of the amazing variety of window and door grill work on houses and public buildings. Click on this photo and have a look at the building with the pinkish upper floor railing for an example of a rather intricate web of grill work.