Helen and Peter in Portugal

Meet Lord, our temp dog. We've adopted him until some neighbours return to Pera permanently in April 2011 or until some other neighbours arriving in October want to take him permanently. Lord was living in the village with an elderly couple who both had to go to hospital in Lisbon. Their neighbour looked after the dog in the back yard, by feeding him and clearing up after him. This was supposed to be a short term solution, but the couple are still in hospital and will be for some time. Poor Lord was left outside on a very short chain, never walked and surrounded by his own mess. Lord was covered in ticks and fleas and his ears and eyes were very eaten by fleas. In the end Jon and Laural cleaned up the area Lord was in, Joaquim and Ana gave him a new dog house and together he was bathed in de-flea solution. Peter and I started to walk him once a day and he was getting much happier, excited to see us, not nervous and really enjoying his walks. Peter and I adopted him last w...

It's been a busy time over here in Portugal. Peter surprised me with a trip to Porto, we stayed in a manor house castle which was at the top of the hill. We dumped our bags and went to explore this ancient and beautiful city, with small streets full of houses to the river front and the tourist restaurants and cafes with the bright coloured umbrellas and the ancient churches and buildings with litter the whole city. First stop, as always with us is the local market. Here this subterranean space was full of vegetables, fish, meat, olives, bread, garlic and plastic flowers! Yep, plastic ... maybe for all the saint shrines? Once the market was well and truly photographed we went on to explore the inner stree ts, it is totally stunning with the tram running up the cobbled streets. We had the trusty Rough Guide with us to help us, but as normal, hardly ever looked at it (only when we wanted a place for dinner really). Instead we climbed up to the look out point on the top of Port...