Punta da Piedade--a Photo Journey

Between the cliffs, and protected by the pillars of sandstone, we found a beautiful little sandy beach, complete with tunnels through the rock to other parts of the beach...

Another view from the top of Punta da Piedade, looking back toward the Northeast.

Punta de Piedade

On our second day, we visited the town of Lagos, on the Barlavento (windward) side of the Southern Coast, and then, taking the advice of one of our guidebooks, went to check out Punta de Piedade, a little peninsula jutting out just southwest of the city which was supposed to offer some nice views. It was UNBELIEVABLE. Neither of us expected what we saw: beautiful pillars of rust and mustard-colored sandstone jutting up out of the ocean, holes and arches carved into the stone by eons of wind and wave. The cliffs and pillars spread out in a v-shape from the point, in both directions.

The above photo: Just to the east side of the very tip, a set of stairs had been carved into the stone (you can see the staircase in the bottom left of this pic). It was an afternoon when things just kept getting more and more shockingly beautiful--in fact, the whole trip was sort of that way. We would find ourselves breathless, then turn around to catch a different perspective, which couldn't possibly be better than the first--but then, it was just as spectacular!

Catch of the Day

For all of you who are wondering, we did, in fact, spend a lovely long weekend in Portugal's southernmost province, The Algarve. I know, I know, we spent a lot of time before we left hyping up this little vacation. We were rather excited for our first trip outside of England. So, yes, it is now February, and we are (finally!) reporting on a trip that we took at Thanksgiving. But, give us a break--we were back home over the holidays, busy visiting all of you lovely people!!! :)

So, Portugal: final word on it is if you ever get a chance, GO. The people there are as friendly as can be (and most of them speak English, and if you have a basic understanding of Spanish it'll be cake to get along), and it's absolutely staggeringly beautiful.

We took over 400 photos, which was miraculous because we had forgotten to pack the camera charger. We made it to the very last sunset, got one shot of it before the camera made a pathetic whirring sound and died. Otherwise, most of these photos speak for themselves but we'll give a little caption on each.

Above photo: This was our first night in Portugal. We had just checked into our hotel, a quaint little place off the beaten path called Montinho del Ouro (pronounced Mon-teen-yo del Or-o) (which means, we think, Mountains of Gold). The Portuguese language is absolutely beautiful--some of it sounds very similar to Spanish, but written it looks a bit different. Anyway, the town in the background is Luz, which was just five minutes from our hotel. There were a few other people walking along this beach just before sunset, including some fishermen who were bringing in their catch for the day. You can buy fresh fish, caught the day before, that are grilled in the markets, and supposedly they are delicious...

Those Lesser Provincial Colleges up in Oxford...

I'm pretty sure Howard Davies (the LSE's president) or some other authority figure described the schools in Oxford or Cambridge, or maybe both, in this way when comparing them to the LSE during one of my orientation events. In any case, Oxford, in my opinion, was pretty incredible and I've heard that Exeter and Christchurch and the many other schools there are rather prestigious (eat your words Davies!). In any case, Laura and I had the opportunity in the middle of November to go up there and visit with some friends of mine from SDSU (Shane and Wendy) who are both in Ph.D. programs as well. We went via bus early in the morning and spent most of the morning and afternoon just wandering around the city. It's rather incredible. If you didn't know, Oxford is not, in and of itself, a university. Rather, it is a small town which contains about a dozen universities all of varying age, the oldest of them being established in the 1200s. This means, that there are numerous old gothic buildings from the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries scattered around the city. They're incredible! The LSE has nothing like that since it was established in the late
1800's. Indeed, the whole town just has a much more old world feel to it than the hustle and bustle of London, so it was a nice break for us. In any case, that afternoon we met up with Shane and Wendy for a beer in the smallest and one of the oldest pubs in Oxford, Ye Olde White Horse. It was great! We later had supper with Shane and his girlfriend at a spectacular Greek restaurant and finally hopped back on our bus back to London just in time to catch the tube home before they closed for the night. Overall a spectacular trip. Just a note on some of the pictures, the hazy one with the square building is Christchurch Uni, I believe, the one of us is inside the White Horse, the one if the round building is the Bodleian Library, and the last one is a big vine growing up a university building, but I can't remember which university.

Cockney Rhyming Slang Phrase of the Week

The first person to successfully interpret the phrase into proper American English will receive, in five years time, a Little Orphan Annie Secret Cockney Decoder Pin.

This week's phrase IS:

Wait a cock linnet while I put on me weasel, then we'll be out the rory.

Good luck!

The Thames is a Tidal River

I bet you didn't know that! Well, we didn't. One day we were crossing the millennium bridge and noticed the river was moving toward the East, and the ocean. Which makes sense. Then, several days later, from the top of the Tate Modern museum (when we took the Blog Title Photograph above!), we noticed that the tricky Thames was moving in a westerly direction. WHAT?!

We were confused.

Then, we went to a little town called Southend-on-Sea. It's kind of like a wannabe Atlantic City crossed with a Chuck-E-Cheez. But it's also quainter. And it's on the ocean--actually the Estuary of the Thames. And accessible by train, and one of the less expensive destinations from London. It was here that we discovered that the River Thames is, in fact, a Tidal River all the way to London, and perhaps farther inland than that. This means that the ocean tides affect the current of the river.

Southend-on-Sea also has the longest pier in the world! It's about 1.34 miles long. There it is, stretching out behind us toward shore, where there is a lovely, cheezy amusement park!

The most excellent Bloggers in the world

Yep, we're back. Did you miss us?

We're currently digging through our pile of photos to see which ones we should put up next...and we're trying to decide if we should opt for chronology or favoritism. Or entertainment value.

Well. If we don't start toward the beginning, we may never catch you up. Which, incidentally, may be just peachy. Still, here's the short version. We've been to:

The British Museum. (which looks like THIS on the outside!)

And which houses artifacts of all kinds, including the Rosetta Stone, some incredible mummies, parts of the Parthenon and other Greek and Roman sculptures, and, okay, well it's just so huge that's all we've really seen yet. Good thing it's free! We've already been there 3 times.

Here's Kyle on a bad day. Actually, it's some old Egyptian who, apparently, made too many pots. And was buried with them. Luckily, the sand almost perfectly preserved him and his spiffing pots, so that we can now observe him encased in this lovely glass...or, really hard sand. Huh.