CRUISING, BOOZING, AND CASTEL RODRIGO

View from our window in Barca d'Alva

Today's itinerary

Leave Pinhão for Barca d'Alva

Learn to make pastel de nato with the chef

Learn the entire history of Portugal in a half hour

Shore excursion to Castelo Rodrigo

Viking explorer society (me, not john, LOL) cocktail party

Captain's cocktail party for the hoi polloi

Captain's dinner

This is the night I may have to change clothes for dinner. Oh, no! 

Pastel de nato

John relaxing.  This is our room.  

I just realized that the only birds I've seen are seagulls and bats. You would think that with all these vineyards there would be rats or other food for raptors, but there must not be. 

However, today at our dock there were a lot of swallows, and when we went up the hill on the bus to the castel, there was a stork nest with the stork and a baby in it.  

Then in the town, we saw the belfry where the storks nest, but I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus for a picture.  

Stork story. Baby stork on first flight crashed onto the church roof. The .priest heard it hit, called the firemen and they took it to vet.  Saved but couldn't fly.  Firemen took it, got it baptized with the name of Joanna.  Grew more confident, started walking around FD.  Became an icon.  A documentary made.  Had a fatal encounter with a dog.  Firemen decided to embalm Joanna, and found out she was John.

The castel town is a tiny place with what appears to be a population of about 50 or so, though there is a kindergarten there.  The old ruined castle is surrounded by typical Portuguese red tiled roof houses, some of them built into the rock.

These pictures are really dark.  We brought our old camera, and the day we got here it stopped having any kind of display while you're trying to take a picture.  When it's kind of dark, you can still adjust the settings better than the iPhone, but I didn't realize I did that a couple of days ago.  But you totally can't see what you think your photographing.  

 I particularly liked the one with roof tiles around the rock and plants growing out to the rock.  And that looked like a house someone was living in.  This area, in addition to grapes, has olive trees and some almond trees.  There is also a place very near the road where the compostela trail is visible.  The little round building in the back is a dovecote.  There are lots of them around here.  

We went to both the cocktail parties.  Both were boring.  

Tonight we are trying to go to bed early because we have to be on the bus to go to Salamanca in the morning at 8:30.