The End of Summer

I hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day. Anyone have any special plans? Nothing too exciting here today, just enjoying the day off.

Since Labor Day marks the winding down of Summer and the start of the school year, i thought I would post on some of our end of summer activities. The first I want to mention is the Doggy Pool Party they held at the base swimming pool last weekend. You know summer is over when the pools are being shut down. The last day of the pool being open on the base they threw a pool party for all the dogs. My dog has NEVER been in a pool before. Can't you tell by how she is contemplating this and thinking- I don't think so mommy! But she did get in. And then tried to get right back out.

After some time she did get used to it. She didn't enjoy it, but it turns out she is a good swimmer. The pool party was a neat idea. They had dog treats and raffles for dog grooming. A lot of families brought out their dogs for the fun. The next day the pool was drained and we will just have to wait until next summer to use it again.
If you remember my post on spearfishing from the other day you will know that this is a popular sport here. The guys really enjoy this. I just like to snorkel, so I go along for the adventure. At the last minute we decided to go again yesterday. So this is what we spent most of the holiday weekend doing. This is a different location than from Saturday. It was really beautiful here. This is the coastline in Praia.
I had to take a picture of these. To me they look like GIANT concrete jacks. Behind it you can see the remains of the wall. I wonder if this used to be a fort.

Here is one more shot of the location where they went spearfishing. If you look closely you can see Ryan in the water straight ahead. Just the top of his head I think.

After the spearfishing and snorkeling adventure we decided to go back to O Pescador for dinner. Only one problem though. Not open on Sundays. Well, lesson learned. We wandered over to the restaurant nextdoor, La Barca. We thought this might be the Italian place that had been recommended to us previously. It was!!! So here is the yummy bread that started the meal. Every meal starts with bread. If you really do not plan on eating it, let them know ASAP since you will be charged--per person!

The we had our favorite appetizer, bruschetta. This was yummy and I would order it again. I noticed they also served the Fontinhas organic salad. It was priced at $4 euro, and if you buy the large salad at the market it was only $3.50. Not as bad of a mark up as I would have expected.

Then came dinner. Ryan had penne with vodka sauce and chicken. He liked it, but did say it was super creamy. It was nice to see they offered chicken since this is not as common in restaurants.

Here is my delicious dinner. I ordered the pasta primavera. Pasta lightly tossed in garlic and olive oil. There were a lot of ymmu veggies here- mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, broccoli and black olives. I would definately order this again. It was a generous amount of vegetables and cooked just right.

This was the perfect end to a nice relaxing, vacation-like holiday weekend, and we still had today off. Very laid back today. Just got caught up on some shopping around town since they were of course open. It was an American holiday, not a Portugese holiday!

QUESTION: How did you spend your Labor Day?