Day: April 20, 2023

Post by Wynette:

Yesterday on our crazy walk into Bares, I spotted this at my feet:

I’m sure you can guess what I thought it was. But it looked kind of dry so I poked it with my pole and it didn’t budge. I looked at it more carefully and finally realized it was a mushroom. I called Charlie over. We spotted another clump.

I wondered if they could be truffles. But Charlie said “Aren’t truffles usually under the soil?”

Have you ever seen mushrooms like these?

Later that evening I looked to see what Google Lens could tell me about them. It pointed me to an article about Horse Dung Fungus which says they are not-yet-ripe puff balls. I found out that it is called Bohemian Truffle in Europe, but it is inedible. Evidently they are amazing on the inside according to a Scientific American article I found about them.

Post by Wynette:

When we order fried eggs, we also order toast (“tostadas”) with butter and jam. Invariably, they’ll first bring out the eggs with a side of cold bread. Then a few minutes later, they’ll bring out the toast. We are amused and mystified by this.

If you would like to see more photos (not really expected!), Charlie and Wynette have each created a Google album of favorite photos. If you should dive in, you may note that some of them have already been posted on the blog. We each chose our favorites separately, but we found there is quite a bit of overlap.

We’ll continue to add to the album so if you should return to it at a later date, you’ll see the new additions.

Here are Wynette’s favorites: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qkqeeHWVWRvdM4Ks6

Here are Charlie’s favorites: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Saiq9ECDerYGoNSE7

I keep posting about the bars in Spain because I like them so much. Each one is unique because there are no chains. My fear is that some private equity firm will start buying them up and cutting costs to increase profits.

But how does a small business like a bar buy all the things they need to operate? The traditional way to do this is middlemen, salesmen who sell, say, soft drinks. They go around to a lot of bars and take soft drink orders. And another one for coffee, and another one beer, etc. They know the people at each bar, and ask about their kids and carry new jokes from place to place.

The guy on the right in this photo is, we think, a middleman.

Here he is having a coffee and chatting. Later we saw him and the bar owner looking over some papers that looked like an order.

Such people used to be common in the US but I think they are disappearing, replaced by more efficient methods of keeping stock.

One of the things we like about Spain is that in some ways it is like the US was 50 years ago. Not in all ways for sure, in most ways Spain is a very modern country.

It is a matter of opinion whether the changes are good or bad and we can’t change them back in any case but we like to experience the old ways for a few weeks every year.

Post by Wynette:

I saw a deer bound past us yesterday on our backwoods adventure. (Charlie was too busy trying to figure out where our path was at that point.)

We really enjoy the farm animals.

Post by Wynette: You probably can’t see too well in this photo. Way down just past the sand are three separate bridges, side by side, crossing a ria: a car bridge, a train bridge, and a foot bridge. In 2019 we walked across the foot bridge to get to where we are now, O Barqueiro. Then again in 2019 we crossed the other way on the train bridge on the little Feve train on our return trip home. And two days ago we crossed in a bus (see posts about that earlier). So, now we’ve crossed all three. We saw them from way above this morning on our walk back from Bares where we spent last night.

Post by Wynette:

O Barqueiro is the tiny town where we are now. It’s the cutest little town and has not been touched by the awful urbinazación that we see so often. I.e., none of the tall, ugly, practically empty or not even completed apartment buildings.

O Barqueiro means the boatman.

Post by Wynette This little house and garden is just around the corner from our hotel in O Barqueiro. Someone has put a lot of love into this garden. This was only about half of it.