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| Fabulous crochet in Vila Nova de
Cerveira |
Today we crossed into Portugal and it wasn’t till Jilly told
us we would be arriving at our destination, before we left that I discovered
that Portugal is the only European country that has the same time zone as UK. Time
to put the clocks back an hour which certainly makes much more sense with it
being so dark in the mornings.
We had a wonderful night beside the sea but by the time we
left the sea fog was rolling in, lucky we had such a great afternoon yesterday.
Did our wastes at a nearby garage before heading to the supermarket in town, we
had passed Eroski yesterday and noticed they had 6 spots dedicated for
motorhomes, very impressed. Drove in to find that the car park was full and
camper spots were all taken by cars. We only had to wait a few minutes until
one of them left and we got our park.
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| Sea fog blanketed the town |
I set Jilly to take us over the border to Vila Nova de
Cerveira, which I had read had a really lovely old town, lots of art
installations and had a huge carpark suitable for campers. Perfect. Arrived and
the town was really busy, could see the carpark was full of campers, cars and
buses but managed to get a spot. There were people everywhere and when we
walked into town we realised that the weekly market was on, and it was huge and
very impressive. Spoke to a guy who said it was a traditional Portuguese Market
and it certainly was a huge step up to the ones we had seen in Spain. There
were rows of stalls selling everything from cookware, crockery, shoes,
clothing, linen, furniture and food. Meandered through the rows just amazed
with the people that were buying and the amount of stock for sale.
But we hit the jackpot as it was the town’s biannual art
festival and everywhere the town was decorated with crochet art, there were
larger than life crocheted people including Minnie Mouse and Pinocchio, facades
of houses were covered with crochet and so many of the businesses had joined in
with their own displays. I just couldn’t stop “clicking”. And the old castle
was the centre with entries in the art festival. It was such a fun place.
Walked back to the van for a very late lunch, Ian put his
feet up and I walked back in and visited the exhibition and checked out some of
the local shops. Such a great place to get our first taste of Portugal. We
could have stayed the night in the town with a huge number of other campers but
decided to take the coast road a little further south to Viana do Castelo, a
big city on the river that had a large parking area for campers in the centre
of town beside the marina.
We really enjoyed the drive and our first impressions of
Portugal are very good. There seems to be a lot more modern buildings and there
is a real air of affluence, it will be interesting what we think in the next
few weeks. The seas fog was hanging over
the hills as we arrived in town, and have certainly got a great spot, we are
parked close to a dual road/rail bridge looking out over the river, along with
about 40 other motorhomes. And surprisingly it is not too noisy.
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| Arriving in Portugal |
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| Street market |
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| And crochet throughout the town |
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| View from the castle |
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| Vila Nova de
Cerveira |
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