Hello to you all! We had a lovely week of exploring and relaxing. We traveled to Portugal for a few days to visit friends and we even managed to squeeze in a couple of little outings in Germany. And…we also welcomed a new grandson!
Portugal
We planned to visit the southern coast of Portugal, aka the Algarve. Our friends Kathy and Dave Langr bought a place there a while back and we lucked out that we could visit while they were there. But not everything was lucky, since we found out the night before we left that Kathy had tested positive for covid. Bummer! We had hoped that we could spend time with them exploring the region and dining at their favorite spots.
Armed with our masks, we flew to Faro and picked up a little Fiat to buzz around the beach towns. We visited the Algarve briefly during our trip in 2019, but for some reason it had not charmed us much. Maybe because we had fallen hard for Spain and Portugal had to compete with our first love. Anyway, this trip corrected that opinion a bit. We hiked the Seven Hanging Valleys route along the shoreline cliffs. We kayaked to Benagil Cave and enjoyed the PERFECT weather. We visited Sagres, the westernmost point of Europe and sent strong vibes across the ocean to all of our family that we miss so much. We enjoyed eating fish and then more fish. Any we even managed to spend time with the Langrs, despite Dave also coming down with covid a couple days into our trip. Sometimes we were masked and sometimes we just did things outside. We hung out on the beach together and we had pizza in the plaza 6 feet apart. Although it turned out differently than we had hoped and planned, it was a nice trip.
The last bit of that adventure happened as we waited to take off on our return flight. The flight had been slightly delayed and the pilot informed us that the delay was due to the plane leaving Frankfurt late. Construction crews at the Frankfurt airport had found a WWII bomb that needed to be defused, so several runways were closed and some evacuations took place. They delayed us further to add more fuel in case we needed to wait for a chance to land. But in the end, they did have a runway available for us since we weren’t in a huge plane. The terminal was open and we weren’t home much later than expected. We hear stories of those unexploded bombs and now we have experienced that part of living in Europe.
Germany
We took a trip across the Rhine to the town of Wiesbaden. We were hoping to catch an organ concert, but it turned out that it wasn’t at the church we were expecting. But we had a very pleasant walk around the spa town through their gorgeous parks and along lovely streets. We also had a tasty lunch of stir fry and sushi at a Vietnamese restaurant.
Another quick trip took us south a few miles into the vine-covered hills and the gorgeous town of Bodenheim for their St. Alban’s Festival. It’s a wine festival, but there was promised live music and good food, so we went. We ate a few good things and enjoyed a schorle (grape juice mixed with sparkling water). But the music started late and we tired of the hard benches and smokers, so we ambled back through the lovely town to the train station to return home via the döner shop.
Baby!
We were on “baby watch” all week, since our daughter’s due date was June 15th. Being her third baby, we expected him to come early. We got home from our trip and slept hard only to wake the next morning to find that Lauren and Bo had made it to the hospital, labor had progressed, and the baby had been born without us knowing anything was going on! We were so excited to see the first photos of our fifth grandchild, Hugh Linnell Bauserman. He definitely looks like the little brother of Huck and Piper, but he has his own look. We got to meet him over Facetime and we are really itching to meet him in person very soon. Everyone is healthy and doing well and we are thrilled for Lauren and Bo.
The End
We are now in our last week of this chapter and we have a few things planned to close out our time here in Europe. Talk to you next week!