The big news from this weekend is...Alex and Jamie are engaged! On Saturday morning we received a picture of her hand wearing a beautiful diamond ring. I immediately emailed back to make sure we were reading this "wordless" message right...We were! We are so happy to welcome Jamie into our family...she is a wonderful girl and it is obvious she and Alex are devoted to one another.
On Saturday Mike and I went to visit Sintra Palace...this is a palace upon a high hill that can actually be seen from the backside of the hillside where we live...but is a forty five minute drive to get there. It was one of those fall days when the wind is a bit blustery and the clouds are moving quickly across the sky. One minute it is sunny and the next it is cloudy or misting rain...we even saw a rainbow on the drive out to Sintra. Due to the mix of sun and rain and clouds here rainbows are fairly frequent. Nina commented the other day that maybe that is because the Portugese need to frequently be reminded of their covenant with God.
Sintra is a place many tourists visit and this weekend was no exception. We wandered through the little shops and ate lunch in an old cafe that upon entering looked somewhat like a hole-in-the-wall. But as the waiter led us into the inner workings of the place it proved to be a popular, nicely decorated establishment. As with most cafe's in Portugal cheese, olives, bread and a few other tempting things were placed upon our table. The rule is, if you eat any of these you pay extra for them, if you don't eat them there is no charge and they remove them before the entre is brought out. A few other customs we have learned are these; you leave your napkin on the table (not on your lap), the Portugese do not touch their food with their hands, for example a sandwich or pastry is picked up with a napkin or these special little papers that are on the table, you turn you fork upside down and lay it across your plate next to your knife to signal you are finished eating, you must ask for your check or they will not bring it, and tips left are small or not at all.
Once we were back outside we were serenaded by a street singer playing love songs on an accordian. We thought of taking a carriage ride up to the castle but decided we would save that for another day when the girls were with us to enjoy it.
After lunching, shopping and exploring the only thing left to do was finding our car (parking is always an issue) which we had left along some alley way or street (it is sometimes hard to tell them apart). We did eventually find the car and headed out to pick up Kati who had slept at a friends house on Friday night.
N
On Saturday Mike and I went to visit Sintra Palace...this is a palace upon a high hill that can actually be seen from the backside of the hillside where we live...but is a forty five minute drive to get there. It was one of those fall days when the wind is a bit blustery and the clouds are moving quickly across the sky. One minute it is sunny and the next it is cloudy or misting rain...we even saw a rainbow on the drive out to Sintra. Due to the mix of sun and rain and clouds here rainbows are fairly frequent. Nina commented the other day that maybe that is because the Portugese need to frequently be reminded of their covenant with God.
Sintra is a place many tourists visit and this weekend was no exception. We wandered through the little shops and ate lunch in an old cafe that upon entering looked somewhat like a hole-in-the-wall. But as the waiter led us into the inner workings of the place it proved to be a popular, nicely decorated establishment. As with most cafe's in Portugal cheese, olives, bread and a few other tempting things were placed upon our table. The rule is, if you eat any of these you pay extra for them, if you don't eat them there is no charge and they remove them before the entre is brought out. A few other customs we have learned are these; you leave your napkin on the table (not on your lap), the Portugese do not touch their food with their hands, for example a sandwich or pastry is picked up with a napkin or these special little papers that are on the table, you turn you fork upside down and lay it across your plate next to your knife to signal you are finished eating, you must ask for your check or they will not bring it, and tips left are small or not at all.
Once we were back outside we were serenaded by a street singer playing love songs on an accordian. We thought of taking a carriage ride up to the castle but decided we would save that for another day when the girls were with us to enjoy it.
After lunching, shopping and exploring the only thing left to do was finding our car (parking is always an issue) which we had left along some alley way or street (it is sometimes hard to tell them apart). We did eventually find the car and headed out to pick up Kati who had slept at a friends house on Friday night.
N
Cute picture mom.
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