Quem arrisca não petisca

Or, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Another week has sped by, bringing the usual combination of work and play. I hope you find an interesting nugget in here, or at least enjoy the pictures.

Blue skies, blue river, red bridge

Office life continues as normal. I did add a little excitement on Friday by going out for lunch with my ex-colleagues, which was entertaining - lovely to catch up with them. Otherwise, more translations, research tasks, gym classes, and café meals. The office was recently named one of the 20 best places to work in Portugal, so I really have nothing to complain about!

This is why I row (hopefully better than these people)

Rowing has been fun this week - particularly  yesterday (Saturday), when we rowed in the opposite direction from normal, up past the Praça do Comércio. It was very scenic and sunny. I sadly missed Monday's session (just missed a bus...) so did an erg on my lonesome, but we managed to have an outing on Wednesday evening, which was beautiful in the moonlight.

Sopa do dia

Now to describe the rest of the weekend! After rowing I met Carly and we enjoyed a delicious meal near the boat club, including vegetable soup, steak and garlic sandwich (for me), octopus (for Carly), Sumol (for me), wine (for Carly) and coffee. All very Portuguese.

I promise Sumol don't sponsor me, I just love it so much...

We then walked up towards Belém, still enjoying the sunshine, and even spotted a replica old-style Portuguese sailing boat, which I think was a caravel, but I may be wrong. We visited the Museu de Electricidade which had various interesting exhibits - lots of information about the old power station, some artwork, and even a Science Museum-type hands-on section for children... which of course appealed to both of us (very young at heart).

After getting the bus back into the centre of Lisbon we got some food, then I went home for a while, before going to cook and eat with Carly - we had been intending to go to the cinema or have a drink out later, but ended up staying in, before I went home.

Who's that person in the way? Oh... Carly...!

Of course, we met up again this morning in church - I read the first lesson so Carly and I were on the coffee rota as well, with its associated entertainment. We didn't leave church until about 1.45 - it was a long service to begin with, and people took a while to leave... so the washing up went on a bit! Eventually we left, picked up supplies from Pingo Doce, and got the 727 bus to Belém again to have a picnic in a pretty spot we´d seen yesterday. Again, plenty of sunshine and food to make us happy.

Carly and Jesse

We then got the bus to Praça da Figueira and walked to Martim Moniz where we met our new friend Jesse (from church - yes, another new church friend), then walked all the way up the hill to Carly's favourite Miradouro - Nossa Senhora do Monte - to watch the sunset and discuss all sorts of things (including Fernão Mendes Pinto, Portuguese Renaissance author... a bit of a niche interest...). It was a perfect way to end the weekend.

Night arrives in Lisbon

As always, thank you for reading!