It's Singer again, reporting for the sicklings of the group this weekend. While most of our friends went to Sao Miguel for the weekend, Fei Fei, Chris, and I spent it in bed. Well, maybe not the entire weekend...
On Saturday we went to the local museum for an afternoon of education and entertainment. We learned a few of the city's secrets and played with statues and artillery in the exhibits, all while trying to keep our voices down. The museum is actually a converted monastery, and is in fact still attached to the monks' original church. It turns out that people still use the church today, as we discovered while wandering through its ornately decorated service gallery. The presence of religion and faith was evident in nearly every exhibit we saw (save maybe the artillery room), showcasing the extent and preservation of their traditions.
And on the topic of traditions, after visiting the museum and eating out at our favorite hamburger joint with the waiter who knows us all too well by now, Chris and I raced up to the top of the jardim to see one of that evening's touradas. This bull run was different than any of the previous ones we'd attended, however, since it was in a more upscale neighborhood. The crowd was slightly smaller and significantly less rambunctious (read: drunk). And the bulls weren't too rowdy, either. It was a nice setting, though. I rather enjoyed not worrying about getting permanently injured by a raging animal.
Yesterday, the three of us scaled the smaller fort on the island. Okay, okay, we didn't really scale it per se, but we definitely tried our hardest to kill ourselves, or at least it seemed like it at the time. We walked over to the Porto dos Pipas marina and climbed around the rocks behind it to get a different perspective of the fort. By the time we realized it was dangerous to walk across a six-inch slab of cement hovering over ten feet of even more cement and sharp, pointy rocks. Our pride took the better of us however, and we decided to scooch (literally) across this precarious cement balance beam. After making our way across the beam, we jumped down to rocks hugging the fort's southern wall. We rounded a corner and discovered we couldn't progress anymore (later we found out that that was because one of the walls had fallen into the water last year). Not to be deterred, we retraced our steps, scooched back over the beam, and walked over to the other side of the fort to see if those rocks were any more promising. Luckily they were, allowing us to spend the next hour or so climbing up and over large volcanic stones overlooking the bluest water I'd seen yet on the island.
Between fort-climbing and the Chateaubriand steaks we ate for dinner last night, I'd say we had a pretty lovely weekend despite missing our friends on Sao Miguel. I know the three of us are excited to hear about their weekend and see what they've been up to down south!
No comments:
Post a Comment