Days.

Abandoned Cinema.

The Old Center of the City. That is a statue of one of the old kings of Portugal and behind is an ancient cathedral.

Derilict Aristocrat.

Hole in the wall Tabern 18.

Cluster.

Old Gate.

Old Stairs.

An old house over the mouth of a parking garage.

This House is situated off of an alley way in the middle of the old center of Viseu, the amazing thing about this house is that to get to it you litterally have to walk through a maze of alley ways only about five maybe six feet wide for about three blocks. Two get the whole house in view, and actually I didn´t get it all, I had to put the zoom on my camera all the way out and hold it against the wall on the opposite side of the alley. Here is an attempt at a panorama.

These past few days have been great. On Saturday I woke up met a girl here in Viseu on exchange from Massachussettes, went to tennis, left tennis early and went on a tour of Viseu for Fun Languages (My parents language school) with the girl and english students from the school. We talked with the students in english and used the tour as the inspiration for discussion. It was fun but I had already seen all the monuments. After that I went on a run. I ran pretty far, I´ve been running semi-often because it´s good exercise, get´s me out of the house, and I can see a lot of things. I have been looking for a used road bike to buy and fix up so I can cruise around faster and farther than by foot and biking is good exercise. I´m not really willing to pay more than 1oo euros for one and a new bike would cost over 200. On top of that I haven´t even found a used one. But running has been fine, it´s harder to motivate myself to run than I think it would be to bike. Well after that I came home and prepared for dinner. We went out to a big restaurant outside of Viseu, it was very good and I ate more than I should have. By then I was really tired and just went to bed. Today I went out to Villa Nova, a town outside Viseu where my Grandmother lives. She owns a farm there that dates back to around the 1880´s. I think that is my favorite place I´ve been so far. There are three buildings, two of them houses and one of them an old traditional kitchen with a huge granite oven, that surround a courtyard with an ancient tree in the middle whose branches stretch over the entire courtyard. The courtyard opens out onto the farm on one side. The farm is more like a mix of yummy fruit and nut trees laced with fun little games and paths and what not. For example, there is one path that circum-navigates the entire property, it ducks and weaves between fig tree´s that are dripping with perfect figs, chestnut trees, and is almost always walled on once side by grapevines complete with fat juicy grapes; the path makes stops at little shelters housing games such as ping-pong and foosball. The farm also has it´s own soccer and vollyball field. Another part I really like about the farm is that their is a giant dog who lives there. I can´t remember his name but I think he is an Estrela. He is very nice and gentle, just like Rocket. I like him very much. Well I´m sure there are things I´ve forgotten and it annoys me, but oh well. I hope you enjoy the pictures and question´s and comments always spark my memory and such. Até Já.