Baking stones and other things

Holidays, no more

Well, there will be more holidays I guess, but no more posts about them for the time being, except to say that we LOVED Portugal.  Not just the lovely weather, but the friendly people and the general helpfulness all around.

Starting with the fact that just about every set of steps anywhere had a matching ramp so making buggy (or wheelchair) access simple, to the desire to help you get where you want to go, to making you as a customer feel welcome, even if it means a bit of extra effort on the staff's part.

Arriving back in Belgium at the *lovely* Charleroi airport (in the rain) to be greeted by a grumpy, unhelpful bus driver just highlighted all the more what a helpful place Portugal is. 

No pictures of helpful Portugese people I'm afraid, but here's the man in his buggy that they were being helpful to :)

Holidays, part 2

Part two of our Portugese trip was to a lovely spot just outside Lagos, a couple of kilometres in from the coast and on a hilltop.  We found Quinta da Alfarrobeira on the Responsible Travel website. 

Responsible Travel say on their website that:
We believe responsible tourism is a better way to see the world. Not only do you get a more authentic experience, but your holiday benefits local people and the environment.

Having now found four different holidays through them we can also say that we've been impressed with the level of care and just the quality of the places we've stayed.   We've so enjoyed seeing people commit to their local communities and try to invest in their future by providing (hopefully) sustainable (and comfortable) accommodation for tourists.

Apart from that, Quinta da Alfarrobeira was just such a nice spot - my favourite thing about it was the choice of outdoor seating available - there was something there to suit all different times of day.  My favourite was the hammock tied to the old Carob tree - being rocked to sleep by the wind was lovely.  (I got to do that just once!)

Here are the two guys in the hammock:

We also enjoyed the pool and getting Joshua into the toddlers pool, here he is with his swimming trunks on for the very first time (thanks Aunty Ruth!):

 

Holidays, part 1

We're just back from two weeks in Portugal, part 1 was for the wedding of Jonathan's brother Andrew to the lovely Punita.

My camera ran out of juice before I could get a picture of the beautiful couple in either of their stunning outfits - first Indian, then 'western', but here's a picture of us in our Indian gear at the wedding venue. It was overlooking the Med, an amazing spot.

As Punita comes from a hindu family, the first part of the day was a (shortened) hindu wedding  ceremony.  Apparently these normally take anything from 3 hours to days to complete, but this one was just an hour and a half - enough for the essentials to be included (and explained). 

Jonathan and his other brother Peter were the best men so had roles to play in the procedings, not least to stop the bride's family from stealing the groom's shoes (no shoes are worn on the wedding dias, so the removed footwear is vulnerable).  Needless to say they didn't do a very good job of this, but i'm not sure if a ransom was demanded in the end. 

I was also asked to play a role in the procedings as 4 married women have to whispher blessings in the bride's ear at one point = I thought that's quite a wise touch to the procedings - involving those ahead of you on the journey of marriage.  Not that i'm saying i have any particular wisdom on the matter!

In the evening, before dinner, the groom's family served a Christian blessing to the couple.  1 Corinthians 13 was read, a word was given, four of us prayed for the couple and then we all sang a blessing over them.  It was short and simple but very moving and quite a mighty moment as we did this again overlooking the sea, as the sun set beautifully.  A wonderful reminder of our creator God.

Things we learnt this week

We just spent a very relaxing week in Normandy, where I didn't go anywhere near the internet and listened to a myriad of birds instead.  Very calming.

We did learn a variety of things however, even without the internet, including the following:

- it is hedge cutting (and burning) season in France

- the Bayeux Tapestry is really really quite astonishing - wonderful detail and incredible 1000-year old craftsmanship

- Normandy is full of quaint timber-framed buildings

- Normandy is also full of memorials to those who died there during the Second World War, particularly during the D-Day landings along the beaches

- really fresh seafood really really does taste better (knew that already, but it's always good to be reminded!)

 

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, and no I didn't get the camera out on the real thing, this is my picture of a picture they took and had put outside on an information board. 

Details

I'm going through our 1400 photos (I'm down to 1000 so far..) so that showing our album off won't take forever ;)

Looking at all these old buildings again through my photos reminds me of the incredible details that each of them show.  All of the old buildings (forts and palaces) we visited date from around the 1600s and the most spectacular example is of course the Taj Mahal, but others were wonderful architectural achievements too. 

For a start, the gates all had to be tall enough for an elephant with a canopy on top (to shade the king) to walk through, so that's pretty tall.  And then the walls were basically covered with carvings of all shapes and styles.  The 6-sided star was much in evidence.  In one fort we were told this is a hindu symbol, in another they said a symbol of judaism, in yet another it was pronounced a muslim symbol.  Being in India we took it as the hindu symbol..

Before we visited the Taj Mahal we visited the Red Fort in Agra.  At first we wondered why, but seeing the fort, which was built before the Taj Mahal, helped us to understand some of how the Taj Mahal was built.  The main example for me was the stone inlay work.  At the fort, we saw early examples of this which bascially looked like Roman mosaic - bits of tiles glued onto stone.  As we went around the fort we were shown details of more and more sophisticated inlay work, so by the time the Taj Mahal was built, the stone workers were able to inlay precious jewels directly into marble.  This made seeing the Taj Mahal even more impressive, to see that it wasn't just something designed and built, but was the result of many years of learning by skilled workmen.  All that to say that I love all the details of all these buildings.  More photos will follow as soon as I compress them a little..