Monthly Archives: August 2022

The songs of Portugal

My introductory post to this trip alerted you to the presence of musical references so, if you had this in mind, you needn’t have been especially observant to have noticed at least some of the song puns and references throughout …

Posted in Portugal Spring 2022 | 2 Comments

When will you realize…

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Habits, once made, aren’t easily broken. Thus it is, that after more than 20 years of waking up early enough to be in the office before 07:00 and another 10 since my retirement of living with a cat who considered …

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A porcelain garden and walls of whimsy

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When I’d told Ana that one of the places I was eager to see was the Jardim Bordallo Pinhero, she reacted almost giddily – telling me this choice, combined with my preference for Sagres beer, practically made me an honorary …

Posted in Portugal Spring 2022 | 2 Comments

The Cemetery of Pleasures

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Cimetério dos Prazeres. Cemetery of Pleasures. An intriguing name, no? And an intriguing sequence in this blog to be writing about a cemetery called Pleasures immediately after writing about the birth of fado in Lisbon’s taverns and brothels. Sadly, the …

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Do-Re-Mi-Fado!

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Let me get this out of the way from the start. Just as no native Portuguese would rhyme Chiado with ‘shadow’, neither would they rhyme fado with the first note of the musical scale. Rather, they would pronounce it more …

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