Pai Mae

Pai mae is the name of the ancient chinese kingfu teacher in Kill Bill pt 2. but it also means Pai-father, Mae-mother in portuguese. This is Marta's parents.

The next installment

These are a couple of pretty things I've dredged out of the mountain of pictures I've taken in the last 2 weeks. They relate to nothing but I find them beautiful.

Nini

This is marta's sister Nini. She is a sweetheart.

Castle of Cheese

This is what you will find at Castelo do Queijo. It was a naval base built in the 11th or 12th century. Now it is a kind of museum surrounded by old card players.

Lisboa

These picture were from a couple of weeks ago but they deserve to be here. These are mostly of the region Orient. It was where they held the World Expo '98. I kept trying to convince Marta that the Brisbane World Expo '88 was probably better. It probably wasn't..

A bit of Porto

Ok so this is the Ponte da Arrabida, to me I only know it as the big white main bridge with the motor way going over it. I stumbled down a hill and took this picture while a couple sitting in a car next to me smoked spliffs. As I passed them one called out "Hey! where you from?" Damn he knows I speak english, just keep walking and pretend to be german or somthing.. It was a rough part of town, not just me being a snob. Carrying a camera, backpack and blonde hair screams "tourist" around here..
A creative variation to barbed wire over a wall. quite pretty really..
My wife's school where she studied architecture, just one of the buildings. The Faculdade de Architectura was designed by the Portuguese Guru of Architects Álvaro Siza Vieira. The portuguese architects I know (which is most of the portuguese population of London) go a little weak in the knees when you speak of Him, they also drool a little.. I went back there today to the school because apparently I missed an amazing part of it. Some old pink buildings and a garden. I looked and almost got eaten by a dog, I saw the things I missed but it wasn't really worth the 2nd trip there. probably I'm still missing something.

The picture above was meant to be underneath the one next to this but I couldn't work out how.. This is the Casa da Musica. A beautiful building that reminds me of a space ship. Inside, the background of one of the stages is a beautiful sunset distorted by curvy glass.

Porto!

Beautiful Porto. I have managed to wake early enough to see some sun today but why do I find myself constantly in front of this machine?
Today is a trip to Foz to see the beach then a visit to Serralves to a beautiful 1920's mansion-turned-museum.

These pics are of the place I am staying.

Art Deco Post Office

This is the Correios in Vouzela where my wife is from.
I absolutely had to make a picture of it.

p.s. I've been informed that this design is actually post-modern since it was built in the 80's but art deco influenced.

Village in the hills

This village is so remote that when there was the revolution on April 25th apparently they had to fly in by helicopter to notify the residents.

Pirate Cemetary

Ok, it had a skull and cross bones on the front. Normally I had only seen that on bottles of poison or pirate ships..

So Far So Good

I have reached the final leg of my portuguese journey, Porto. This is where I arrived about 2 weeks ago with the sun rising and the plane flying a complete circle around the city, absolutely breath taking. So much so that I foolishly didn't take a picture of it.
After snapping my way back here the pictures I'm most interested in are ones taken and forgotten some time ago in London and other places. A scan of my hard drive revealed some gems that I had overlooked.

Luckily I am in a city with fantastic architecture and the sun will apparently be shining all week so let's see what that brings. Sun is such a luxury. London has a great deficit.

Til then..

The First of Many

This is my attempt to produce a blog. At this point there cannot be any promise of regularity of posts but I can say for sure that I will be posting.

The purpose of this blog is to show what I've been working on most recently. It will be kind of like when a child has made a macaroni sculpture and is holding it up to it's parents for recognition... hmm yep, exactly like that.

Starting from Vouzela, Portugal here is one scrap-book image of a nearby town. I had just touched the head of very smelly dog and visited a cemetary that had a grave with photos of a baby in a hospital with tubes coming from its nose.. The front of this strangely balanced house has an entrance with 2 plaster lions painted in the Lisboa football club Sporting's colours, holding footballs under their paws.

Ok not much of a debut post but let's see how I improve on it.

Jonathon