In Portugal

We hired bikes yesterday and rode the streets of Seville a little further away than our feet carried us on the first two days. The cycle system is very good with lots of paths for riders, more room in fact than for walkers in many places.

Before leaving this morning Seville, I popped into a fruit shop to buy some bananas and was greeted by a Spanish/Indian shopkeeper who asked me,

“Where ard you from?” and when I told him, he said,

“Wicky Ponting! Veddy Veddy strong!” making very correct high-elbowed forward defensive strokes with my bag of bananas.

I tried to talk cricket with him and discuss the upcoming ashes tour but his face went blank and I soon realised his grasp of English was limited to Tasmanian cricketers.

We left Seville behind us and have headed on the road again, this morning crossing the border into Portugal. We had lunch on a lake after buying supplies in Moura where my first attempt at Portuguese was met with laughter from the check out chick!

We are staying the night at Evora, another old town with interesting plazas, churches and streets. One chapel we paid to see was lined with the bones of 5000 residents who the monks decided to dig up and decorate their walls to remind them and us what will meet us all.

There were even the mummified bodies of two people hanging from the wall, one an adult, though small and shrivelled, the other a very small child. The monks had decorated skilfully by placing femurs, ulnas in rows and then a row of skulls to top them off. They probably thought they were being clever, but I didn’t find it humerus at all.

Sharon did some window shopping but most things were way too small for her.