Marinha Cliffs

 

The cliffs at Marinha beach are amazing, so even though I went there 3 years ago and painted them then, I wanted to head out for a cliff walk today.   The estimates for the age of the limestone that makes up the cliffs is somewhere between 24 million and 16 million years old.  They are shaped by the ocean, winds, rains and time. 

The weather was cloudy but warm, and there weren't many people about, either on boat tours or on the beach or walking the cliff walk.  Three years ago, I somehow found a bench to paint on, but today I just leaned against the fence and balanced my paints/palette/water in my left hand with the sketch book pressed against the fence so I could paint with my right.  I wondered more than once if I was going to lose everything over the cliff to the ocean.   I tried to add some more water colors to my palette mid-painting and that was dicey-- I had to open the caps with my teeth and contorted myself to screw the caps back on. Phew!  

A fun and weird thing --  I got a notification on my phone that the Too Good To Go app has offers here in the Algarve.  I was alerted to the app by a Seattle friend, who occasionally gets a nice discounted bag of end-of-the-day pastry or bread from local shops that don't want the food to go to waste. There isn't a huge list in Seattle, but I've used it a few times back home. My Brooklyn daughter looked up her neighborhood and she is in the epicenter of amazing offers from some of the best Brooklyn bakeries and restaurants.  As it happens, the hotel where I had lunch yesterday, Tivoli, had an offer of breakfast foods for 5 euros, pick up at 11:30 today.  I was curious and took the offer.  They are using it to pass along food from their breakfast buffet for hotel guests, and I definitely had 5 euros worth of good cheese and bread and fruit.  They also included breakfast meat and eggs, which I wasn't sure would be safe to eat (how long had they been sitting out?) and a few small croissants.  It was fun, it was cheap and I'm looking forward at the end of next week to finding places in Copenhagen with sweet deals.