nov, 17th - portugal: alcácer do sal....

day 1376 / 475:

we fell in love with the town of Alcácer do Sal in Portugal.....with it's pretty, crumbling facade, river promenade, interesting restaurants and history.....it had us completely intrigued.

it seems to have passed through many hands: Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Portuguese, it strikes you as the type of place that keeps getting reborn. it looks like it's ripe for regeneration once again....

oct, 23rd - portugal.....

day 1351 / 450:

last month, we visited Portugal for the very first time......our destination was all about the house that we had hired. we went with two other families and all three of us had stumbled across the same property and fallen in love......

the place is called Casas Na Areia and is an hour and a half South of Lisbon.....it's in a rural spot near the beach and captivated us with its rustic and relaxed, yet chic, beauty. 

the land used to belong to fishermen and rice farmers and you are still surrounded by rice paddies and sand dunes......

the layout reminded me of going to game reserves in South Africa where there are individual sleeping huts and one main communal house for cooking and relaxing......

  

each family had there own thatch roofed hut, with a gigantic sandpit in the middle....the main hut, made of reeds and wood has a kitchen, large linen covered chairs for lounging in and a big communal table........the main feature of the main hut is that it has a fine sand floor table....made cosy with underfloor heating.....

in the sleeping huts, there are king size beds, slick bathrooms and cement floors.....this is rustic living with serious style.....

 

 the kids were obviously blown away with being able to play with buckets and spades in the living room and it has to be the first and only time that I will ever say.....'try and keep the sand inside girls'.....

i will share some more of our trip (and the area) over the next couple of days but we came for the house.....and certainly, it was a big part of what made our visit to Portugal so spectacular.

casas na areia

feb, 5th - beach house.....

day 1085 / 184:

Limi's beach house....which is about as big as the Shoebox but with a much better view. i love this playhouse. it was part of the h&m UNICEF range {see day 989 / 88} and Limi opened it on Christmas day......after that, we were all coerced to spend ages in the house even though it felt a bit more like a sauna in the summer heat.

we haven't used it as much since we got home as it starts to feel a bit like a Russian doll house when we put it together in the Shoebox.....

feb, 4th - monkey temple....

day 1084 / 183:

i have a couple of final posts from our Asia trip (i promise to get them out the way before the end of Feb and move on).....

while we were in Thailand, we went to visit Wat Suwan Kuha also known as the Monkey Temple which as the name suggests, has a troupe of monkeys (one of my favourite collective nouns) that play on the hills outside. you can buy bunches of bananas to feed the monkeys. we avoided this as two coaches of visitors were just leaving as we arrived so, we figured that the monkeys needed time to digest.....

the temple is in a cave with a charmingly faded entrance. we obviously timed our visit (not deliberately) between coaches as we almost had the whole place to ourselves.....bliss.

there is a giant, reclining, golden buddha in the cave but personally, i found the seated buddhas arranged along the walls far more beautiful. you can explore the caves but with a buggy and a toddler this was slightly tricky. maybe next time.....

jan, 18th - another visit to the market....

day 1068 / 167:

while there are flurries of snow outside...actual flurries, i am still reliving the last couple of weeks of our holiday in Asia....there are still so many photos that i'd like to share with you of our time out there....i'll try and mix them up with some usual posting on life back here.....and hopefully it won't be odd to jump between sand and snow......swimming and sleighing......

whenever we spend time at my sister's home in Thailand {see day 794}, we visit the local fresh food market at least once {see our last visit on day 766}. i love that it's not at all touristy but a real market for people who live and work in the area.....it also sells the hottest curry pastes i have ever tasted....they are in a league of their own.

 

there are cafes dotted around the edge of the market that service the market workers. i'd be very keen to try one as they must have some of the freshest ingredients around.....

A and i both love to cook asian food so it's always exciting to go and touch and smell some homegrown ingredients.