My Face Hurts From Laughing so Much!

Well Monica, her dog and cat have arrived, and we now also have Gonzalo’s dog here as well. It is a full house and we are all getting used to each other.

After lots of sleep and recovery from the trip, Monica and I decided to go into town to get some stuff she needed, but that, well, didn’t really go to plan.

We left a totally exhausted Gonzalo at home with the animals and took off to catch the bus. Didn’t look at the bus schedule though! It’s different on Saturday 😳. luckily we bumped into our next door neighbour who was waiting on the corner for a taxi, so we all piled in and went into town.

First stop was a desperately needed coffee. The streets are beginning to fill with pilgrims from all over the world and different accents float musically through the stone arches and laneways. There is an electricity and buzz in town now and you can feel the excitement of the pilgrims arriving. We wandered through the streets, the square in front of the cathedral, up the stairs through the arch and on to Costa Vella, a beautiful oasis on the other side of town.

By then it was 4.00 so we cast aside the thought of coffee and proceeded to imbibe in a little Ribeira Sacra (local wine). It was delicious. One turned into a few more and as we sat in the sun, surrounded by sparrows, underneath the vines, we chatted easily and Monica began to relax. Nothing like a glass of wine in the fresh air to put a bit of sparkle in the soul. Those of you who know Monica, will know how much she needs this.

Before we knew it, 3 hours had passed, we had solved the problems of the world and our conversation had turned into hilarious laughter. We thought we were so funny!

We changed tables to get a different view of the garden 😳. Enter Rui, a Portuguese friend, and the conversation calmed into something more civil.

We had more wine, chatted for another hour or so and Monica and Rui discovered that they had connections. (The old six degrees of separation).

It was getting late and we needed to go buy some meat for Monica’s dog, so we took off to the supermarket. You can’t take her anywhere! I was busy looking at the foreign stuff on the shelves, trying to decipher the labels, and found her at the deli counter trying to tell the butcher that she wanted beef and not pork. He kept insisting that pork was meat and it was the same. We then had the whole shop watching and laughing at us as we mined what we wanted – me putting my fingers on my head to fashion horns and Monica mooing like a cow, Shaking our heads and snorting like pigs. As we left the store, I turned around to see the staff lined up pointing and laughing at us. At least we brightened their day.

We stepped out into the evening light, realising we had been gone for something like 7 hours and we could luckily catch the last bus out of town, so we wandered over to the park to fill in half an hour. Monica talks to everyone and it doesn’t seem to matter that she can’t speak Spanish. She is so funny. Here she is showing a total stranger a picture of her dog!and finally sitting at the bus stop, still laughing about our encounter with the butcher. (wish you were here Patti Pie)