29th June CASTELO BRANCO

Two days off in a row!!! We mooched around Castelo Branco in the morning, I bought some really nice glasses (I’m allowed now we’re not travelling), 1.95€ each, they’re much nicer to drink out of than plastic (everything in camper has to be plastic to keep weight down).

I like bubbles in glass

Then we had lunch, sitting outside, in the square; we both had ‘menu de dia’; grilled fish (no idea what it was called but we’ve seen it on the fish counter), boiled potatoes and green beans – every time we’ve had vegetables in Portuguese restaurants they’ve been over cooked, but it was cheap 4€ each plus drinks (and we could have had soup and fruit salad too).

After lunch we went up to the very top of the town to the Castelo (a ruin); the views up there were spectacular, you could see for absolutely miles right into Spain, and we saw swallow tail butterflies again.

Me being Rapunzel!

It was a bit hazy but you could still see for miles

Swallowtail butterfly

It’s been lovely having some time off and now I’m quite ready to get back to work again – as long as it’s not at the same pace as before. This week I’m going to concentrate on getting some vegetables going and seeing if I can find some trees and herbs too. We have looked at fruit trees; there appears to be only one place you can buy any in town; there’s not much choice and the lemon trees were, I thought, rather expensive – 10€ for a very spindly tree about ¾ “ thick X 3’ high so it won’t produce any fruit for several years or 64€ for quite an established tree 2” X 4’ tall; I want something between the two for about 20 - 25€, so I can buy two or three. I might post a question on the expat forum and see if anyone has any ideas.

Tomorrow Glen has suggested that we all take a taxi into town and have a few drinks and a meal out; it will be enjoyable to do a bit of socialising, he also wants to ‘pull some birds’ – I don’t know about that bit!