Portugal

September 15 marked ten months in Tavira. That's all the fingers (and all the thumbs) of both hands! Did you know there isn't a word for fingers and toes in português? Fingers are dedos das mãos (digits of the hands) and toes are dedos dos pés (digits of the feet). Hand (mão) is feminine and foot (pé) is masculine, and in their plural form mãos and pés.

From stone walls to market stalls, this past week brought us two very different adventures. First, a drive inland to Mértola, where castle walls, winding lanes, and the Guadiana River reminded us how deeply history runs through Portugal’s smaller towns. Then back to Tavira for the XI Feira da Dieta Mediterrânica — a three-day celebration of music, food, and traditions that filled the streets along the Rio Gilão.

Free Roaming is not just for phones anymore. Now that we have our 2-year temporary residence cards, we can now freely move about the Schengen area in the EU.

Vindima is the picking of grapes for wine production. But it’s not just agricultural labor — it’s a seasonal ritual. Our former landlords invited us to join, and we enthusiastically added it to our calendar.

It started as a simple idea: reserve one day each week for unstructured exploring with no rigid plans, no must-see lists, just a loose sense of direction and a willingness to follow whatever catches our eye. Somewhere along the way it became Adventure Day — open maps, open minds, a few happy accidents, and always worth the detour.

August has arrived with an influx of vacationers and elevated temperatures. It is also when we get alerts for potential river flooding, and increased fire risk. We have no choice but to take it in stride. We have learned the roads are a bit more treacherous with hurrying tourists and walking into town is a decidedly sweatier endeavor. It's the season for two daily showers with at least one of them frigid cold (and loving it).

Estou a estudar português but I still get tripped up by the word no sometimes. Looking at a menu the other day, I saw the words no pão and automatically read it as no bread. I shrugged thinking it was probably a good thing to cut back on carbs anyway.

We drove to a lot of obscure points of interest in the past few weeks which leads us to a new blog segment: Driving the Backroads. Perhaps more appropriately, the "are you sure we should be driving here" series, where the driver says it'll be fine and the passenger's knuckles turn white.

In a world where you can be anything, be a person who is enamored by peafowls. The peafowls you see in Portugal, including those in Évora's Public Garden, are Indian peafowl introduced during the Age of Exploration. They became a status symbol, placed into gardens of palaces and estates. If I had knew this before visiting Évora. the surprise I got when encountering them wouldn't have been as delightful.