More from Portugal with a few more photos.

I promise not to make the weather a theme of this blog, but just a bit more about weather. It was another stormy day Wednesday with high winds, intermittent rain and cool temperatures. The powerful effect of the wind on the ocean and ocean on land can be very impressive and make for some interesting photos. Photos one and two show the pier in old town during the heavy wind and seas - the third is the pier Thursday when the wind had abated, the skies were clearing and temperatures reached around 20 degrees Celsius. Extreme variability of the weather has been the pattern so far this year.

Jean's sister, Ev, arrived on Wednesday just in time for the beautiful day on Thursday. We walked to old town in the morning on the beach at low tide, sat in the sun at Sir Harry's Pub while enjoying coffee and/or fresh squeezed orange juice.

Variability of the weather continues - today is comfortably warm, overcast and quite dark at times though no rain yet. Ruth and I walked this morning, without getting wet, to a photography shop to get some prints of some of her photos for her to paint from.

We are off by bus tomorrow to the town of Loulé to go to the farmer's market to get fresh veggies and local honey, almonds and figs, among other things. Photos of the market in the next blog.

This afternoon or tomorrow John and I plan to go to to the train station to get the tickets for our train trip to Lisboa next Tuesday. We will be in Lisboa until Thursday. We have been there before on a tour so know a bit about it and are really looking forward to being there for 2 1/2 days on our own. More about it after we return.

Two documentary photos of places we frequent - number 4 is the front of our building - less interesting, I think, than the back - a bit of which in photo 5.

Third post from Portugal

Another brief note from Portugal with a few more photos.

Today is Wednesday, March 3. We have been here for 2 weeks - time seems to be moving along too quickly.

Went to the Albufeira Gypsy Market Monday (photo included) and bought a few things. Had an interesting interaction with a woman selling table cloths, of which we bought 2 after some fun "barganhando". Wish I had taken a photo of the woman and the game being played. In the end I think we got the table cloths for a reasonable price, part of which was the price of the entertainment.

The weather guessers are often quite wrong, but on occasion have been correct. On Sunday we did have a storm with heavy wind and rain which had been predicted. The sky looked a bit threatening when the four of us set out on our walk which ended at a pastry shop where we were having lunch when the storm began in earnest. Had to get a taxi home to avoid a real drenching.

Monday was excellent - sunny, warm and not windy. We made our way along the beach to old town at low tide (included is a photo of Ruth surveying things from the pier at the east end of oldtown) and had lunch on a patio in the sun overlooking the ocean.

Today Jean's sister, Ev, arrives and on Saturday we will all go to the town of Loule to the excellent farmer's market there. There will no doubt be photos from Loule which I will include in the next blog post.

Hard not to include more photos from time on the beach so there a few more in this post. An evening photo from a couple of days ago, one from the afternoon and one from Monday evening when light from sunset provided some interesting colour.

More from Portugal

Another brief note from Portugal with a few more photos.

I forgot to explain in the last post that the small "Supermercado" is not where we usually shop for our groceries - it is closer than the Modelo (the much larger super market) so we go there to pick up a few things like milk and juice. The bakery, however, is our main source of breads and yummy pastries - only a about 10 minutes from our home base.

The weather guessers continue to predict bad weather and, fortunately, they have been less than accurate. They predicted a big storm for today but, though it rained for a while this morning it has been dry and quite warm into the afternoon. We went for a long walk in rather windy but otherwise lovely mid morning - until about 1 pm.

We are beginning to rethink our plans - may not go to Evora after all. Ruth wants so continue practicing her drawing and painting so would prefer to stay in Albufeira. We will definitely go to Lisboa, though, March 9 to 11. Hotel reservations have been made and we will take the high speed train from Albufeira to Lisboa - they say it takes just over 2 hours so that should be interesting.

Had a couple of notes about the first post approving the documentary photos so have included a one more here - the 3 palms rotary at the end of the street adjacent to Club Oceano which is where we stay. The street to the left of the rotary leads to the bakery and the Modelo - the main supermarket in Albubeira - about a 15 minute walk from our place.

Next is a sunrise from our balcony followed by three beach shots - a couple of these have been seen by some in an email. The wind is with us again producing impressive spray. The last is tread impressions from the small tractor of the beach clean up crew.

First post from Albufeira - 2010

As usual, click on any image to see a slightly larger one.

Well, we have been here for a week and the weather has definitely been better than expected from the forecasts. It has been cooler than it was last year but we have had sun virtually every day and showers most days but for the most part they have not lasted long. Most impressive has been the amount of wind which has been with us virtually every day - at times very strong. The force of the wind has made the waves, even at low tide, sufficiently high that we have only once been able to get to old town via the beach. But, while cooler than last year, temperatures have at times been quite warm - we had 17 and 18 degrees C couple of days last week and yesterday and today are much more like last year. Today is sunny and warm and the wind has abated - shorts and t shirt weather. I was on the beach this morning at 6:40 am for a lovely sunrise. One photo taken this morning included here.
We are planning a two day trip to a small town, Evora, in the province of Alentejo, just north and west of Albufeira possibly next week, then a three day trip to Lisboa in early March so there will be more of interest for the blog after those trips.
In previous blog posts I included some "documentary" photos of places we frequent in Albufeira - a few more included here, just to give you a glimpse of where we are.
The first photo is from the beach this morning. The next is Johnny Hoopers Saxophone Bistro (we had dinner and entertainment there last year) which is on the way to my internet cafe. The third is the bakery (Padaria - Pão da Aldeira) and the mini mercado (market - actually called "SuperMercado"!), which are in the next two photos.
The last is one of the happy tourists, on the way home from "the Strip" - a bunch of tourist trap shops, restaurants, wine shops and the Internet Cafe.

Dundas Valley Images

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A few more photos from the workshop

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The first photo here is taken at a garden near where we were staying.

The second and third were part of my assignment -"seen from a gazebo" - both were taken from inside one of three gazebos near our inn.

Number two was made in the evening while I was standing in the gazebo near the beach trying to find something of interest. As the fog and heavy overcast began to lift and the sky brightened people I had not noticed before seemed to appear from nowhere and began strolling down the beach toward and along the water. People enjoying the beach and water in the brightening evening seemed like a wonderful New Brunswick scene to me and worth photographing.

Number three - the lupins - was made from the gazebo about 75 feet from the Inn.

Number four was taken on a beach where we spent the morning of day 4.

There were two covered bridges withing walking distance from the inn - I was standing close to one of them when I took this photo of the other bridge.

Some photos from the Freeman Patterson/André Gallant New Brunswick Workshop

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These are a few of my photos taken at the Freeman Patterson/André Gallant workshop I attended last week in New Brunswick.

We stayed in a lovely inn in St. Martins on the Bay of Fundy.

Three of these photos are from areas very close to the inn - two are taken at Freeman's home on Shamper's Bluff about an hour from the inn.

The first and fourth are close-ups of plants in Freeman's garden.

The second, also taken at Freeman's home, looks out over his property to the St. John river. The lupins in the foreground are just a few of the ones on his property and they seem to grow virtually everywhere in this part of New Brunswick.

Photo three is an attempt to capture the fog moving in on the land in the distance, The "beach" area in the foreground will be under water at high tide.

The fifth photo is taken at a fishing boat docking area near the inn. The tide is out so the mud bottom and residual water is visible in the foreground. The upper part of the photo shows the breakwater and a glimpse of the gap in the breakwater where the boats enter and leave when the tide is in. Any boats at the warf when this photo was take are sitting on the bottom, about 10 or 15 feet (my estimate) below where they will be when the tide is in.