Long time no blog!
When last we posted, we were readying to travel from the Czech Republic to Portugal, where we planned to spend 5 weeks before returning to the States in mid-September.
We departed Prague sadly. I know many of you are envious of the length of time we have been able to spend in our rented flats in European cities, compared to the average ‘vacation’ stay. But we felt we had taken too little time in Prague, and eastern Europe in general has piqued our curiosity mightily. We want to go back to get to know Krakow and Budapest, among other places.
But Lisbon did not disappoint. Or, well, I should say, other than the food, Lisbon did not disappoint.
View from the rear window of our Lisbon flat
It’s not that you can’t get good food in Lisbon, which is a large metropolis, pulsing with life, its streets and squares flooded with revelers all night long. It’s just that you have to work harder to find a good meal. Unless you really like sardines… a LOT… or heavily battered deep fried food, or an almost complete absence of seasoning, let alone heat.
We had three weeks in a fantastic little flat right on one of the main squares of the old city, Praça Luís de Camões. We’ve found that it’s after we’ve checked off all the must-see sites and activities, that we really get to know a city. For the first ten days or so, we enjoyed almost daily sight-seeing, walking our feet off and marveling at the history, the architecture, the culture. But the last ten days is when we fell in love with the place.
View from our front window around midnight
Our neighborhood in daytime
We left the city in a rental car to tour the countryside for a couple of weeks, mostly the Alentejo region, known for its wineries, cork-forested rolling hills and well preserved medieval walled towns, some of them made entirely of marble.
Evora, the plaza, with lovely clouds
Sunday afternoon gossip session on the plaza
But we didn’t get very far into that adventure. After a wonderful few nights in Évora and then one in Estremóz, we got news that Stan’s mother Maxine, whose health had been declining, was doing very poorly and we needed to get back. She had recently been diagnosed with a progressive, untreatable neurologic disease. She had deteriorated rapidly before our departure and we left knowing there was a possibility she would not make it through the summer. But the speed of her decline shocked everyone, and we found ourselves on the road in the hilly Portuguese countryside, with no internet and patchy cell service, trying to route our way back to the States in a big hurry.
It proved to be very costly, and truly exhausting, requiring us to drive all day and overnight without stopping for a meal, but we made it to Madrid in time for the only available seats to be had, and from there to London and Los Angeles. It was worth it for Stan to be able to sit at her bedside for her last few days. She was in no pain, but death is a difficult, emotionally draining process for all concerned.
We will remember Maxine the way she was only a year earlier, opting for an overnight passage with us from Mazatlán to Puerto Vallarta at age 88, and loving every minute of it.
Drained after her funeral, we scrambled to shift gears entirely, in order to focus on Stan’s daughter Kari’s upcoming wedding to Bret in Scottsdale on October 15. And we got to meet Bret’s parents, Gary and Chrissie from Colorado, for the very first time. Kari is quite a competent event planner, as it happens. The event was beautiful, inspiring, non-traditional, romantic, elegant and playful all at the same time… all the things they wanted it to be. Bravo!
Stan, Kari, Kristy and Val at the rehearsal dinner
By then we were well and truly ready to be back aboard Pax Nautica, chilling in Costa Rica and provisioning for a season of cruising.
Well, we didn’t get very far into that adventure, either. We were back aboard the boat long enough to fill the freezer and start on our boat list. But within 4 days, Stan’s heart rhythm was very abnormal again. He had been plagued with atrial fibrillation for ten years before having an ablation procedure performed before we left the States in 2009. His heart muscle is healthy, just incorrectly wired, as he likes to put it. The ablation procedure consists of snaking probes up the major vessels in his thighs all the way into his heart, then mapping the offending areas of the heart lining that are causing the abnormal rhythms and either freezing or frying them with the probes. There is a 30% risk of recurrence though, and Stan turns out to be in that 30%. So back to Cedars-Sinai we trekked.
A couple of weeks and eight hours of anesthesia later, we are finally back aboard with Stan tiring easily but recovering more strength each day. And his heart is thumping along flawlessly.
Our local friends Darrell and his Tica wife Nasira were kind enough to invite us to a feast in their condo for Thanksgiving dinner.
Darrell and Nasira
With Karen, and Nasira’s very first turkey
Darrell, Val and our wonderful marina manager Dan
It’s bad luck to start a passage on a Friday, so today we will do some last-minute provisioning of fresh food. Then Saturday night we’ll leave for points south. There are some anchorages in the Gulf of Nicoya we will be checking out, so no internet access for the next week or two.
But Pax is looking great and we are… finally… good to go! This has been a tough stretch for us so please forgive me for procrastinating, but I promise to update our blog more faithfully from here on.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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