Ride to coast and picnic lunch; 50th anniversary celebration

The day sheet for today is all wrong because everything is changed. We do an out and back ride to the beach at Carvalhal for a delicious picnic lunch organized by our leaders. We sample local cheeses and Tall Luis grills local sausages in a grappa grill. It is a small ceramic dish which is filled with grappa and lit to grill the sausages. (See picture.)  Isn't that a good use for grappa? It is a beautiful beach, almost empty today on a Monday. The water is cold. I do enjoy putting my feet in. Susan and Dave throw the football on the beach. 

I ride the e-bike all day. It's really great! It was very windy coming back and rained a little. It would have taken me much much longer to get back and I would have been exhausted. As it is, I get back with time to relax, shower and have a few minutes to myself. It only rained a few minutes but it felt great! The cloud cover made it a bit cooler which I appreciate. We ride a total.of 70km today.

What a magical special evening we have! We meet on the patio area outside of our rooms for a port wine tasting before dinner. Philipp talks about port and we sample a white port, a tawny port and a ruby port. He toasts to Dave and me for our 50th anniversary and I tell about how we met and pass around some pictures from our wedding album. Jim and Sari sing two songs for Dave and me with Jim on the ukulele of course. We have dinner at the hotel and the food is really good. We seem to have the whole place to ourselves which is nice. A selection of desserts is served buffet style. 

As we are finishing dinner, Philipp says they have a surprise for us and introduces two fado singers! The woman sings and the man plays the accordion. Tall Luis tells a little bit about fado singing. Explains that there are two types, Lisbon style and Corimbra style. These singers do the Lisbon style. What fun! Fado singing is traditionally sat yearning singing but as time has gone on there are happy songs too. This is "party" fado. At one point Small Luis gets up and does a duet with the woman. Then, Jeanne Evans does a dance with Small Luis. Finally, they play a slow song we can all dance to. I dance with Philipp as well as Dave. I had told Philipp I hadn't yet heard any fado singing and the leaders went to considerable lengths to arrange this! It was a wonderful, wonderful evening! 

Unfortunately, it was too dark to take pictures of the fado singers.

                                          Sausages on the grappa grill

                                                  The Atlantic Ocean

                                                 Our picnic lunch

                                                 Port wine tasting (and some other things, too!)

                                     Philipp telling us about port