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| Our favorite photo from yesterday’s outing. Look at the gorgeous fuzzy buds. |
After days and days of research and fine-tuning, rental terms and conditions of agreements with property owners in the South Pacific and, booking several cruises, we’re happy to be back to the remainder of our time in Madeira.
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| The flower from above was part of this grouping. Certain flowers continue to bloom as the flower season winds down on the island. |
With only 20 days until we depart for Paris, we begin to think of winding down our time in Madeira, Portugal. How many more trips will we need to make to the supermarket? Where can Tom get a haircut? What additional cuts can we do to reduce the weight of our luggage before we begin packing?
(A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I need to lighten my luggage weight. That day I dumped 10 pounds, 4.5 kg to be donated to a local charity. The number of items it took to get to this amount was an astounding 18).
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| It was another cloudy day as we walked along the boardwalk. |
There’s no doubt, we’re always coming or going with seemingly little time in between. The days pass quickly. Is it due to our advancing age or is it a result of the pleasure we find in each day of our lives, as they say, “time flies when you’re having fun?”
Regardless of the reason, one day rolls into another and all of a sudden the time comes to leave yet another place we’ve so readily called “home.”
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| Even in the gentle hills of Madeira, a hamburger joint can often be found to satisfy the tastes of the tourist crowd. |
Yesterday, we jumped into the car to leave Judite to clear the house with us out of the way and just started driving, as we often do. With no particular destination in mind, driving up, down, and around the hilly, winding roads, finds us in an unfamiliar area, so different and yet so much alike that which has become familiar over these past few months.
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| Few swimmers took advantage of the thatched umbrellas. |
Would we ever return to Madeira? As much as we’ve loved it on this island, we still have so much world left to see. Tom counted only 26 countries we’ve visited in the past 21 months. We’ve barely touched the surface, literally and figuratively with over 200 countries in the world.
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| A crane was working along the shore while a bather was lounging on the rocky beach. |
We’ve seen so little and yet so much when we peruse through the archives of previous posts. As mentioned in an earlier post, we’re not in a competition to see how many countries we’ll eventually visit. But, it is fun keeping track by logging where we’ve been on Travelerspoint.com, an online travel tracking map.
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| A few visitors relaxed on the beach. |
As we drove up and down the mountains we continue to be enchanted by the beauty of the ocean, its massive cliffs, and the ever-changing sky above. One thing we know for sure is that the ocean will always be a draw for us as was enthusiastically illustrated in yesterday’s post of our long away visit to Bali in 2016.
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| This appears to be a yellow hibiscus, our first such find. |
We share today’s photos with the same passion as when we first arrived. It’s a beautiful and enchanting place and we’ll especially always remember our time in Campanario, this quaint little village with friendly people, exquisite flowers and the finest organic produce on the planet.
Part of the joy of our travels is the quiet time, the peaceful surroundings amid a gentle life of few expectations, simple comforts, and the companionship of one another we so easily embrace. Life is good.
Photo from one year ago today, July 11, 2013:
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| We often drove to other villages in the mountains of Tuscany. Tom walking along the guard rail overlooking a village as we checked out the scenery. Our time is Boveglio, although pleasant was a little too quiet for us living so far from civilization. For details of that day, please click here. |