Wednesday November 4

We are on the road by 9:30 for Seville, Spain.  We didn’t manage to see or do as much as we thought we would in Portugal; the rainy weather and catching a cold put a bit of a damper, no pun intended, on our visit here.  Too bad, but it is what it is.We stop in Tavira, Portugal for lunch and find this lovely little garden behind an old monastery.  There are trees here from all over the world with identifying tags, including this poinsettia tree.

We walk around after our picnic lunch and discover this old castle with a park in its center.  We climb the steps to the top of the old walls, very narrow steps without any railings.  We have noticed that Spain and Portugal expect visitors to take care of themselves.  There are often no safety rails or fences in quite dangerous places. Back home this would not be the case. Can you see Bob at the very top of the stairs, where he stumbled? The view from the top of the castle walls over the roof tops. Two pictures of the same tree.  Can you spot who is hiding in each one?

Tavira has lots of tourist attractions but we notice that there are many empty store fronts and houses for sale.  This is something that we have seen repeatedly throughout Spain and Portugal.  Their economies are suffering with high unemployment and the villages and towns are losing young people to the bigger cities.  We have also noticed how often there are abandoned derelict houses, businesses and factories right beside nicely well maintained buildings.Notice the tree growing out of the window on the second floor of one of the building in this picture for an example. There are lots of ‘fixer uppers’ in Portugal and Spain!Soon we are approaching Seville and our next apartment.
Thursday, November 5

Travel days are kind of hard on me, so I stay home today and rest and Bob goes to check out the tourist sights and figure out the bus system for our outing tomorrow.  I spend an hour or so watching a worker climb up inside the leaves of a palm tree and then trim it.  It looked like a very difficult, dirty job, but it was very interesting to watch.