Last Days In Lisbon

I have arrived in Madrid...here is the posting I wrote in the Lisbon airport for everyone to enjoy!



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I do believe that the last time I wrote I was on my way to the family farm to pick the grapes on the vineyard. Well, it was a success… The drive from grandma’s house to the farm is about 2 hours more or less. About half of the driving is on the freeway and the last half is on rural country roads. The closest village to the farm is Villa de Frades, which is a cute little village full of white house’s with different colored trim painting around the windows (blue, Green and Yellow typically). All though it is cute, we have to do most of the shopping in the next village over, Vidiguiera which is only about 4km away and not a whole lot bigger.

When we arrived at the farm, we opened up the old ranch style house that must have been built in the late 1800’s. It has started to fall apart withing the last 5 years or so, but it looks about the same as it did last time I saw it (some braces holding up the ceiling in the living room that is no longer used (probably for the reason). After getting the house ready, Grandma and I went shopping. The first stop was the cheese lady in Villa de Frades, unfortunately she didn’t have any fresh cheese and wouldn’t be making any for the rest of the week. We stopped at a few other places with no luck until we finally stopped at one of the local markets that had some fresh cheese made by a different person. I am not a huge fan of fresh (I think it was goat cheese?) but I tried it and it was actually not too bad. I don’t think I would eat it everyday but I would have it again if I was a guest somewhere and felt it would be rude to decline!!!

Next, we went to the bread lady in Vidiguiera to pick up a couple of loaves of fresh bread. Not really anything else like it! It’s just a couple of little old ladies that have no sign above the door of their shop…when you pull up it is just an open door in the village, usually with cars illegally parked all around from people stopping in to get their bread for the day. We picked up two loaves fresh out of the oven, still warm, ordered a few more for the next day and went on our way.

After shopping and returning home, my Aunt Nicha arrived at the farm with her three kids (David, Teresa, and Maria) and Teresa’s boyfriend Francisco. After about a half an hour of chatting, having a snack of fresh bread, and changing clothes, we hit the vineyard to start picking the grapes that the picking machine could not get to. It was a slow start until we got a process going and figured out the most efficient way to pick. There were just 5 of us picking, three on one side of the vine and two on the other, three people (two on one side, one the other) would clip the grapes and let them fall to the ground. The other two people would trail behind, picking the grapes up, putting them in buckets, taking two full buckets at a time to the place where the truck would pick them up the next day. We only ended up picking grapes for about two the first evening because it started to get late, we had a nice homemade dinner, and called it a night.

The next day I was the first one up, 6:00 a.m. sharp. Sickening, maybe a little, but it was absolutely beautiful. The sun had not risen over the hills in the east, the rooster was just starting to do his thing, and the air was crisp and still. Not too long after, everyone else was up and moving around, I had already sliced a loaf of the fresh bread and started making toast for everyone. We had a few pieces of fresh toast with butter, and fresh honey, and were again off to go pick. By the time that we made it out there, the grape picking machine had beat us to the punch and was already harvesting. We picked as fast as we could until the very last moment that we could (we had to stop at the same time the grape machine did, to load the grapes that we had picked onto the same truck to take to the processing plant). Apparently, the processing facility that my aunt is using has a 8000kg limit for each day of harvesting so the machine only picks a certain number of rows. We ended up doing pretty well, and hit that limit right on the head after we loaded all of our grapes and the machines grapes into the truck.

After cleaning up, we all went down to the processing plant to fill out the paperwork on the delivery of our grapes. I’ll tell you what (Insert Hank Hill accent here!), things are much different here in Portugal than back home; we were allowed to go all over the processing plant and look at all the different processes of the wine making. We watched the grape be unloaded and put through a separator; taking the leaves and stems out, leaving just the grape. We got to see all of the huge fermentation barrels that the wine is made in; and we got to go into the packaging station with all of the automated conveyer belts, taking the bare bottles out the cases, cleaning them, labeling them, filling them, corking them, repackaging them, and finally stacking the cases of wine onto pallets for distribution. It was really quite something, we walked all around and touched whatever we wanted and saw everything!

Well, after having a nice lunch under the wisteria covered trellis of the house, it was off to pick up my nanny (Felicia) in her village a little ways down the road, and then take her back to Lisbon with us. It was about an hour drive to get to Entradas, the village that Felicia is from, but it was a beautiful road through the country side and several other small villages. When we arrived she was all ready to go. She spent the whole month of July and August with her niece in the village and missed being home in Lisbon. The drive back to Lisbon went relatively smoothly; whoops I forgot to mention that my Grandma’s car’s air-conditioning was not working and we were in the desert of Portugal this whole time! Well it was not the most comfortable thing, but not terrible, we had reasonable weather, 32’C, don’t know the conversion (+32 and times something?)! We arrived home without any problems and had a nice dinner together along with my Uncle Joao. After dinner, I again scoured the internet for Apartments to rent in Madrid, and came to the conclusion that I will wait till I arrive so I can see it and make sure it is what I want.

This morning I booked a hostel for two nights, so I have a place to stay for orientation, and then hopefully I will have either found a place, or will stay with some friends. Well, it is about time for my flight. I don’t have net right now so I will post this when I arrive in Madrid. I hope all is well with everyone.

Until Next time,

Philip

0034-676-209-533 (cell)

P.S. I thought this was going to be a real short and sweet post, I must just be rambling on and on… sorry if I bored anyone! (I DON’T FEEL BAD IF I DID!!!)