Salema, “Beach Beach Beach”

As you can tell the pace of the blog posts has picked up a bit recently, as our internet connections have become a bit more reliable. Thanks for all of your congratulations to Laura about passing the boards. We appreciate all your kind words.

Laura and I in our really neat house/condo in Salema

Today we are going to tell you about our time in Salema, a wonderful little beach town on Portugal’s south shore, but before that we want to say hello to a few people. Robin and her friend Debbie will be coming over to Spain soon for a trip to Seville. We are looking forward to seeing you guys, and are also excited about going to Seville. We had to drive through it on the way to Salema, and it was hard not to stop. That should be a fun town.

The view from our kitchen window

Additionally, even sooner than Robin and Debbie come, our friends Truman & Lauren are visiting. They are first going to Belgium where Lauren is going to follow up on a really interesting series of old love letters from the early 1900’s that she acquired through an old family connection. Then they are coming to visit us in Barcelona and accompanying us to Toledo, a small little town about hour south of Madrid. We look forward to seeing you guys also. Truman and Lauren are some of the few people that made the harrowing trek to visit us in Santo Domingo for some fun in the sun (and a little amoebic dysentery). =^) Can’t wait to see you guys!

Laura sampling a local dessert wine called "Moscatel"

Now about Salema. Most of our trip so far has been enjoying incredible old towns with interesting culturs and architecture. Salema was totally different. Instead of going site seeing, we spent our time relaxing on the beach, enjoying excellent food, and soaking in the experience of an old Portuguese fishing village. Of course it is not entirely authentic, but that was a good thing. The extremely small town is probably about half populated with tourists and ex-patriots, which made the environment even more relaxed.

The walk down to the beach from our place

We loved our time in Salema. For me it was the first place where I really didn’t want to leave. We had a great room with a perfect view of the ocean, comfortable beds, and a relaxed atmosphere. This was probably the most relaxed I have felt since we were in Tahiti for our honeymoon in April.

Beach Shots

From here I am just going to show you a bunch of pictures, because words don’t really do it justice. Of course, even the pictures don’t do it justice, but this is the best we can do.

And as always, one last one for Manuel (Jr). Welcome back from your road trip across America!!