Away

One of the reasons why there were no posts in November is that we took a lovely autumn break and went to Portugal.

Still beautiful, still fascinating, yet way more crowded than ever before...

If I counted correctly, this is the seventh time I visited the country.

But I will visit it again, for sure :-)

And no, I haven't yet had the courage to try wave surfing, my men, however, loved it!

Sea and ceilings

Well, first of all, I was away. 

The coast was beautiful ...

... but the beaches even nicer when immersed in fog!

 

I've seen also a lot of interesting ceilings. For example one in Batalha:

one in Monserrate:

 

 and another one in Sintra:

 

The Teenies

There is no point in even trying to summarise a whole decade in a post.
Especially such an eventful and intense decade.
With lots of ups and downs and ups again :-)

But I will give you some of the most beautiful sunrises (in no particular order):

Lisbon, 2014

Turkey, 2013

Italy, 2018

Jordan, 2010

France, 2019

Scotland, 2019

Just looking at the pictures, my heart is filled with warmth and joy.

And yes, there are people who see these sunrises every day.

I just hope they appreciate them!

As usual.

I am about to have quite an important presentation tomorrow. Which means that I should probably be working on it.

Yet my mind ...

is someplace else.

PS. This is my first miniature puzzle. I was squealing from joy when I saw the tiny pieces :-)

Insane!

There is a place that just doesn't stop to amaze you. You never know what's coming around the next corner and probably it will be something unexpected and wonderful.

I mean, I've seen my share of the world but I have not yet seen anything like that.
Seriously.
Like, seriously.

Oh, did I say this is Sintra?

Portugal, part II

A few more images from Portugal that can be labelled as my favourite ones.

Can you tell what's wrong with the first one? Solution below.

OK, this one is rotated by 90.

So, so beautiful.

Oh, the solution: the picture is actually a reflection in the Douro river. I just rotated it for 180 degrees to fool you :-)

Portugal, again

Only two days in Portugal and I've already shot almost a thousand photos... I cannot decide which is my favourite, but this one is surely very high on the list...

No photoshop. Just purely out of a Victorian novel.

Coming home...

After a week of almost constant rain, the sun came out.

Finally!

So no wonder I started shooting like crazy. I came home with over 2500 photos. 

Oooops!

I was able to get some panoramic shots of the riverfront. The originals are about 15000 x 3000 px :-)

 

Oh, and I have to mention the hotel I stayed in: the Grande Hotel do Porto.

Charming.

And then came the long way home. For the first time in my life, I missed a plane. So I had to spend the night in Amsterdam. And - the next day I missed another plane. So I had to spend the day in Vienna. I visited my aunt and came home with a 22-hour delay.

Oh, well.

2016!

Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted anything in 2016 yet. Well, I have a good excuse. I was working really hard to get everything done before ... leaving on a jet plane :-)

I've only been here a couple of days and have already way over 1k photos! It will take me ages to sort them, but here is a sneak peek.

It finally stopped raining after a couple of days so I could make some decent photos.  Oh, did I say I quite like it here :-)

Feeling Christmassy

Getting in the mood...