8th August 2012 - Was my sisterM's funeral. So very sad, however, so very calm at the same time. She had organised it all herself. As we are Jewish our funerals need to happen as soon as possible so we were relieved that it could happen just 60 hours after she died. The retired Rabbi that she'd already asked was available and her plot was booked in the very newly consecrated woodland area. SisterM had even written her own eulogy outlining how grateful and honoured she had felt for the life she had lived and she had included thank-yous and humour! Love you sis, really miss you!
BilA had said there would only be the one night shiver (mourning and prayers) and he insisted that hubby and I together with sisterS and bilK were to go on holiday as booked and not cancel or even postpone flights. With heavy hearts we said our goodbyes and got home just before 11pm :o(
9th - 16th August 2012 - Portugal holiday
2am the alarm went off and although hubby and I got up, ready and out I'm sure it was all done in my sleep! We met sisterS and bilK at the Gatwick check-in desk at 4am and our holiday started.
At the end of the holiday we all agreed it had been brilliant and we must holiday together again......Sorry I jumped right to the end without saying that transport wise it was easy getting there, a bit of a delay on the flight home, we used the local tourist train
and hired a car for three days (phew so grateful for the air-con). Temperatures were around 30-36C and reached 38C a few times so all air-con gratefully received!
Our spacious self catering apartments were in the Vila Petra hotel in Albufeira and we took full advantage of the facilities and restaurants and bars there as well as finding great places to eat on The Strip including the very traditional Cataplana, twice in fact, I shared a chicken one with sisterS and a seafood one with bilK, on different days of course as they are very filling and very yummy! BilK with his assistant sisterS on toast and tea, cooked us breakfast twice too in their apartment and afternoon tea and cake was usually in ours. Actually this started because I had a birthday and was totally surprised by a fabulous celebration cake being presented to me courtesy of the hotel, how lovely eh? So started our tea and cake break :o)
We got out and about every day bar lazy Sunday. We did a lot of walking and the route to the nearest beach was known locally as "cardiac hill" which thankfully we all managed (slowly). We visited Portimao and ate grilled sardines on the harbour overlooking the marina. We had a very long walk round the fort at Segras which was really interesting but would have been better for me if there had been a few shady places. Within the fort there seemed to be a special art exhibition and dotted around were a collection of very large sculptures of very curvy and very colourfully shiny nude women reclining on plinths, no we didn't believe what we were seeing either!
Other places included Lagos (pronounced Lahgosh apparently) and Vilamoura and we all really liked the Old Town Albufeira.
We found a lot to laugh about. Not totally sure how it started but the main joke was ice-cream being called "licky-licky" and our requests for licky-licky were frequent then it progressed to a difficulty becoming "tricky-tricky", fingers "sticky-sticky", cameras "clicky-clicky" ......you get the gist?
So we all had a great time but most importantly of all was having plenty of time to talk about sisterM and how we're feeling without having to put on a brave face for anyone. It was a good place to heal a little and return stronger to help each other heal too.
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