RogiLife.Com

I’m getting to have a large collection of photo odds and ends laying around that don’t seem to fit anywhere, so I have rebooted my Flickr account.

I have also added a new page here to the site that displays the latest ten of my Flickr uploads.

Go Flickr.

Above is the view out of the wndow early this mornng as I sit here in the Algarve waiting to watch the Formula One from Malaysia on the TV.

I’m hoping for three things right now; firstly that that sky soon becomes a clear bright blue (which it almost certainly will), secondly that Jenson Button wins the F1 race, and lastly that there is no repeat of last week’s Formula One Fiasco.

Time will tell.

Having said in my last post that Portugal cannot be beaten, there is one way in which Spain is a whole lot more attractive than Portugal, and that’s in the price of gas.

Spain is on the left. The price of gas in Spain is around 25 cents per litre less expensive than it is in Portugal.

That makes it basically free for me to drive to Spain and back, as long as I fill my gas tank when I am there.

Good luck to the Spanish, but that kind of price difference really shows just how badly we here in Portugal are getting ripped off every time we pay for gas.

I woke early this morning, as I mentioned on identi.ca, and as I had nothing much planned for the day, I got to thinking of things to do.

I started thinking about relatively normal things; go to a beach, maybe go for an explore locally, and so on. And then I got a bit more ambitious – and decided to go to Spain.

That’s not as crazy an idea as it may sound as where I live in the Algarve, I am only about 45 minutes drive along the A22 freeway from the Spanish border.

So after a couple of cups of coffee I went, and around an hour later there I was driving across the border.

[singlepic id=267 w=320 h=240 float=]

Great. So what is the point of this post?

There are several points; the first is no matter how long I live here in Portugal (I have been based here for nearly eighteen years), I still can’t really get used to the idea that waking up in the morning and deciding on a whim to go to Spain, or to go to a great beach, or to go to a café and hang out with people who are there to just relax and enjoy themselves, is not only perfectly realistic but is also perfectly normal.

The second thing is to remind myself in the future that today was the day that I just woke up and went to Spain for no reason whatsoever.

The third is to mention to you out there that I have decided to explore Spain a little more often and so have added a new Spain cameraphone gallery.

And lastly, to wonder to myself out loud; why doesn’t everyone live here in Portugal? You really can’t beat this place.

This post is a follow-on from this Praia do Almargem post earlier today.

The last part of the road to the beach has maintenance trucks all over, so in the end I went to Praia do Trafal and walked along the beach to Praia do Almargem. It’s not far, maybe a kilometer or so.

Here is a cameraphone photo of the beach at Almargem. The place could not be described as busy. Click on the image for a slightly bigger and clearer version.

And here is a Nokia cameraphone video. Excuse the wind noise (which makes it sound a lot windier than it actually was), next time I will remember to shield the mic with my hand.

And there you have it, Praia do Almargem, captured for posterity.