Day 7, 8, and 9: In Pontével

 

Arrival in Pontével

We made it to Pontével a little after lunch on Saturday, completing almost 3000 kilometers of driving, and introduced ourselves to Annalies. She is a Dutch citizen and friend of the proprietors, who has been living for 25 years in California, is back for a visit and has been looking after the place for three weeks. She showed us around the property, and explained the various water irrigation systems in place to keep the vines and other plants well watered. It involves maybe an hour of work in the early morning, and with the three of us it goes quickly.

The entrance

Many grapevines

In the garden

View from the terrace

We got ourselves installed in the guest house for the first couple of days, as Annalies planned to stay for an overlap of a couple of days, and only left this morning (Monday). It’s a great house, really well-appointed with a nice kitchen, and the evenings are lovely and cool for sleeping. So far it has been 28 or 29 degrees at the hottest part of the day, which is fine... later this week it will be hotter, getting close to 34 degrees midweek.

As soon as we could we visited Raoul and Lulu next door, our old neighbours from Watermael-Boitsfort!

Maggie and I haven’t seen them since four summers ago, and for Malcolm it had been even longer.  They invited us for a stupendous lunch yesterday and we spent most of the afternoon there catching up.

Today it’s a very quiet day.  We finished up the watering this morning, and I think I have a clear idea of the drip irrigation, so no stress. We have lots of food in the fridge and a good supply of cold drinks.

One last thing: I have often lamented the lack of a good ice cream sandwich in Belgium. I have a fond memory of being a small child staying with my family at Grand-Uncle Desmond’s cottage at Golden Lake, and walking with my Aunts and Uncle over to the little store and eating one. For me that is a sense memory that means “summer”… look what I found in the Lidl grocery store here?

tears of joy

Day 6 - In Porto with Mary and Gregor

 

Malcolm in A Coruña with luthier pals Pablo and José

I feel like Han Solo stashing spice under the floor of the Millenium Falcon, except this time it’s walnut, sapele and cyprus for future guitars

In Porto with a Belleville neighbour from childhood, Mary Wilson

The view of the beach from Mary and Gregor’s apartment

a dapper gentleman on the streets of Porto

The world’s ritziest McDonalds - they even have a falconer at the entrance… why?  I have no idea

Excited about blue tiles in the Art Nouveau train station

having a port tasting at Taylor’s on the other side of the river

port in huge barrels in various stages of ageing

Malcolm at the Luis I bridge, built by Seyrig, a former associate of Eiffel

We left Isabel and Alex fairly early on Thursday to make our way to A Coruña, a beautiful city on the northwest tip of the Iberian peninsula, where Malcolm had been spending a couple of weeks building with his former teacher Pablo and his friend José, a violin maker.  He had a great time and they are already talking about another collaboration sometime in the future, building Irish bouzoukis, which are a kind of octave mandolin. The ancestor instrument to the Irish bouzouki is very popular in traditional West Asian, European and Balkan music.

Malcolm also had quite a bit of wood for building that he bought on this trip, so it will be cheapest if we just drive home with it.  He’s staying on with us in Portugal until sometime around the 18th July or so, and then will fly back to Belgium to resume working on his current commission and other repairs and setups.

We made it to Porto in the mid-afternoon, and met up with Mary Wilson, her husband Gregor and their daughter. Mary was a great host and showed us a walking tour of many cool sights in downtown Porto. It’s a really beautiful city, and I would like to spend more time there in the future. She and Gregor were fantastic hosts and really cool people.

That evening we had a fabuous dinner at a converted fish market, where the diners can go and look at all of the freshly caught fish and seafood, and they will cook it for you… it ended up being a big party of 17 friends of Mary and Gregor, including lots of cool artistic types, mostly Americans, nearly all of whom have moved to Porto in the last few years. They are all taking language lessons and are in the process of applying for citizenship. It was a lot of fun and we had some great conversations with our fellow guests, including a conductor, a soundtrack composer, a number of singers, songwriters, a jazz pianist, a cabinetmaker… really a great time.

The next morning we were up, had a quick breakfast and got back in the car to drive the last three hours to Pontèvel…

Day 5 - San Sebastian to Pormenande with Isabel and Alex

Beautiful Hydrangeas at the campsite near San Sebastian

Eucalyptus forest on the way to the beach

walking Yoshi with Isabel and Alex

heading down to the beach at high tide in Pormenande

Pormenande Beach (one of them)

the water was pretty cold, but extremely clear and clean

Alex doing some experimental bouldering

It’s been an extremely busy time since we last checked in on Wednesday the 9th near San Sebastien… here is a little video of our tapas experience there at a place called Borda Berri…

I was almost overwhelmed by the noise… I cannot understand how Yoshi handled it, but he did, and Maggie managed as well. It was worth it for the food, my goodness it was amazing, kebab of pork, pig’s ear, a fish dish (not sure what but who cares it was great), a risotto to die for; so delicious. The servers behind the bar have Wagnerian voices and I’m still a little deaf from the shouting.

From there we headed to Pormenande to Isabel’s parents’ house. Isabel and Alex are our colleagues from St. John’s; they currently are running the boarding house; Alex has filled in teaching math and science, and Isabel has classes in music and art. She was an intern with me for the first semester during the 2023-2024 school year, and ended up staying on, which is great for our school community. She brought Alex along for his internship this past year and he’s also joining the St. John’s family for the coming school year. They just became engaged so this was a chance to see them and celebrate that together.

We had a nice lunch together at Isabel’s parents’ beautiful house in Pormanende, met some of Alex’s friends who were also visiting, and then did the walks and swimming pictured above. In the evening we explored the town, and then went to a prize-winning restaurant that served the Northern Spanish version of a veal cordon bleu that was as long as my arm. Really delicious.

It’s really nice to have some time with them outside of a school setting, in their “home town”. And after four nights of camping, it was also great to sleep in an actual bed again!  But we had a solid appointment in Pontével so had to keep moving…

 … next episode: the Edgehill Road Mafia in Porto