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Penha Mountain Rolling Cart Race
Mount Penha is visible from our house and is a treasure that deserves its own post where we can talk about the area’s majesty. To frame today’s story just remember that we can normally hike to the sanctuary at the peak in under an hour (leaving from our front door) and the direct route takes…
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Bunny Babysitters
Back in my 20’s in St. Cloud I had 2 bunnies as my primary pets. The first was a gray Netherland Dwarf named George. He was adorable, mild mannered, gentle and oh so sweet. Dumb me thought he needed a friend, so Betsy the brown Mini Lop came next. She was a lot less sweet…
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Game Night At The Finazzos
Near the end of May we discovered a board gaming club (Board Guimas) in Guimarães. They have weekly Wednesday meetups at a local restaurant called O Rei dos Cachorros, monthly gatherings in the mall at Fnac, and various other more informal gatherings. We have been making friends, playing tons of board games (you may have…
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All Aboard The Train To Mexico
I’ve never really played a lot of tile placement games. Before moving to Portugal I played online Mahjong Solitaire, the occasional game of Carcassonne, and Upwords (which feels more like a word game). Andrew generally favors games like Blokus more than me. We didn’t own dominoes and none of our fellow board gamers in the…
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Don’t Run Away From Complex Board Games!
Last week Michelle talked about how when we look for new board games we try to find a gap in our collection. A good example is that I love space themes and gravitate towards them so they are over represented. We track our games on a Google sheet so we can quickly pick out a…
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Happy Birthday To Us!
My birthday is July 1st and Andrew’s is August 12th and for 2025 we decided to try something new. Although we dined out in fancy restaurants on our respective days, which is our time honored tradition, instead of getting separate gifts we agreed to shop together. We debated about whether our splurge would be something…
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Perudo: Cups Full Of Fun
Back in the late 90’s I used to have house parties that involved lots of party games. My friendship with Michelle solidified during these nights in spite of the fact that they were chaos filled drunken nights that got progressively zanier as my move away from Minnesota approached. We lived in a college community and…
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The Tour And Tiny Bricks
I hadn’t given much thought to the Tour de France prior to moving to Europe, but after catching snippets in several Olhão bars and cafes back in 2022, my curiosity was piqued. I started with the Netflix show Tour de France: Unchained (I highly recommend it), and was shocked at how nuanced and complicated this…
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We Tried Our Hand At Speed Puzzling
Andrew and I have a soft spot for odd competitions (if you do too, check out We Are The Champions on Netflix). For instance, we are not immune to the charms of spelling bees, which I participated in both as a kid in 5th grade, and as an adult in a San Francisco performance of…
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Finding The Tinned Fish
A very common question and discussion I’ve had multiple times since moving is “What things are hard to find at a Portuguese grocery store?” Oddly enough at least half of these conversations have been with other people who have also moved to the country. I’ve heard multiple strange stories about the lack of peanut butter…