Texting and carrying a pocket knife ...

Kathryn and I are traveling for the next several months to see what the rest of the world is about. 

It's different, and it's the same.

People texting and taking selfies are everywhere. At the museum at the Roman ruins site a young woman was making goo-goo eyes and Blue Steel duck faces at her camera. When I'd finished my meia de leite (half-milk coffee) and croissant with chocolate filling, she was still workin' it. Another young woman, behind her boyfriend on his scooter in downtown Coimbra traffic was texting as they went by. I just watch. I married the woman I run around with so I can have intelligent conversation ('cause she's smarter than I am). Don't tell her I said that.

There is a 12% tax on prepared food in the coffee shops and restaurants. In a conversation with the owner of one such coffee shop, he observed, "yeah, but when I go to the hospital, it's twenty euros." 

Television sports . . . two days ago, munching our sandwiches we saw a mob marching, marching . . . interspersed with police escorting a bus . . . for more than half an hour . . . the bar owner explained that the marchers were sports fans on the way to the stadium; the bus was actually the two team buses headed for the same stadium. Soccer is big time over here, y'all.

I have carried a pocket knife since I was in elementary school. Usually it's been a reasonably discreet double-ender, sometimes with three blades. I left my knife in the glove box of the Ranger in Dallas before we boarded our flight 12 March. Yesterday, 4 April, I was able to replace it. This one's a single blade with a handle that fills my grip. It's cheap (8.5 euros) and it's a honker in my pocket, but by gawd I have a knife in my pocket . . . it's an all-purpose tool.
And this is a farm-worker's knife, not a gentleman's blade.

As I type this, I'm having dessert in our hotel room. That dessert is a couple of pears and some sheep's cheese (queijo de ovelha). Life is really good.

We are not taking a "typical" American trip over here. We are not staying in chain hotels or three-plus star glass towers with ocean views and king size beds. This week's hotel is the second place we've stayed without a kitchen or other cooker in the room or down the hall. We've had one place for two nights that had an elevator. Our first hotel was on the second floor (this is Europe; the ground floor doesn't count; you have to climb to the first floor); two weeks ago we were on the fourth floor (!); last week we were on the first floor; this one is on the GROUND floor. It's nice because there are no stairs to climb. But this is Portugal; it ALL goes up and down . . . in meters, yet. 

The only drawback to the ground floor is that street noises are that much closer. Right here the main street stops about fifty feet up the street, and the road surface changes to the typical Portuguese cobblestones. Think "trash truck emptying the apartment dumpsters" when a delivery van goes by. It fades into the background after an hour or so.

There are McDonalds over here as well, built to the American scale. I haven't been in one yet, and I don't plan to except as an anthropological study. So far the ones I've seen have been garishly out of proportion to the rest of the architecture. The one I passed near in Coimbra had outdoor dining as well, but it was behind a masonry half-wall.

The typical room in Portugal is unheated or air-conditioned. It a rainy, windy 48 degrees in sunny Portugal, the playground of Europe. On the same Atlantic Ocean I sailed on in a Destroyer (DD872, Forrest B. Royal). That is cold. But you know what . . . I'm not tied to a desk somewhere. This is better. Anyway, we stopped at a general store to buy some house slippers. I wear size 47-1/2 over here. When Kathryn paid for hers, she asked the nice lady behind the counter if they had anything my size. The lady laughed, then covered her mouth, smiling, and apologized. They only stocked to size 45. (Sigh.) The floor's cold, and I don't wear shoes to sleep in.

I've finished my pear and cheese.

I'm going to bed.

Because, Life Is Good, Y'all.

04/24/19  photos to follow