The final train we took into Tavira was not a beauty, but covered in graffiti inside and out.  It lurched  and swayed from side to side . You can just see Alex’s eyebrows raised in question?  It was a far cry from the spiffy trains in Switzerland, that travelled at great speed around curves, with  hardly a sense of movement inside.  He was so impressed.! The landscape in Portugal was dry, dry, dry. I am sure there must have been areas that were producing food, but not that part. It was good to see Linda on the platform after our “out of the way trip up to  northern Spain”.

We walked to the beach, we enjoyed her little apartment , and talked lots, on all sorts of subjects.  We had spent time with Linda and her family in Victoria BC. a few years earlier.  Now, her three children were living in Finland as students and she wanted to be on the same side of the Atlantic as they.

We enjoyed meeting Alex and Karen, her friends.  Alex was originally from Portugal and met Karen in Virginia, and now they were relocating in Portugal.  On Sunday, Alex (not Sandy) took us out into the surrounding countryside and we ate at an outdoor eatery  under a lush grapevine. Large clusters of grapes hung over our table.  We feasted on a pheasant stew. Linda, Karen and I put our taste buds to the test to try to determine what the wonderful flavor was comprised of.  We were quite sure there was wine, garlic, bay leaf.  The bread was so chewy, olives and cheese were there also and red wine. Tourist  Alex  did not resist those luscious  grapes.

We felt refreshed after a few days with Linda,  and while there, Linda went on line and found a inexpensive flight from Madrid to Berlin, so we booked that. She set us on a much better way to get back to Spain, by putting us on a bus to Seville,  Here we boarded  a train that was catering to commuters .I have never seen such a concentration of impeccably   dressed business men,  and I must say as we slipped into our first class seats, it was obvious  they wondered where we came from.  We were now speeding through landscape that might have been California with lots of orange groves. ( Now I know where Seville oranges come from)   Dinner was served, a delicious meal of beef in wine sauce, with spinach and potato souffle, rolls, butter, cream cheese, chocolate cake and coffee and of course wine. Very good. Much better than air plane meals.   We missed our flight to Berlin  and made a reservation at the Best Western. We walked a bit that night,but the streets were  so crowded.  We did go into one department store, that made our high end stores in Canada look  a little shabby. In the underground train, Alex was standing holding onto to  a pole, gripping his luggage with this other hand. A pick pocketer took the moment to grab his wallet out of his shorts.   All through  Switzerland and Germany had worn his money belt around his waist, but had obviously relaxed. Gratefully,  we managed to get in touch with the credit card company he was carrying and sure enough someone had tried to get $3,500. worth of jewellery on it. Thankfully,It had not been honoured and of course it was canceled immediately.  Fortunately, I was carrying both passports and another credit card, so we proceeded on our way.

We did arrive in Berlin by air.  There was   a taxi ride to the next train station . Apparently, we were on the Autobahn, where there was no speed limit in Germany, however, as   we were clipping along, all at once our driver exclaimed  “Nay Nay Nay” looking into her rear view mirror.   We had crossed into Netherlands which did have a speed limit.  After taking a short boat ride on  an Amsterdam canal we   made our way back to the Scheifele airport where our flight to Canada was scheduled.