Vacation from vacation

Apulia, beginning of March 22

Chrissi and I spent a very relaxed 4 days in Apulia. It's a small coastal town between Porto and Braga, in northern Portugal.

The interesting thing about this place at this time of year is, once again, golf. The Estela Golf Club, unparalleled, but let's leave it at that. You can live and eat quite cheaply in this area. It's far away from the tourist crowds. Especially in March. You need luck with the weather. Storms and rain push in from the Atlantic. We've been there a few times to shoot golf balls onto the beach, unsuccessfully but it's great fun.

It took me 5 hours to get there again, going up, crossing the highway 20 times, and I still fall for the Portuguese traffic light trick.

In Portugal, there are very few speed cameras (or at least I hope there are). But every village, and I know every village, has a traffic light in the town center. It's always green. But as soon as you drive towards it and go faster than 50 km/h, the damn thing turns red. As soon as you're in front of the traffic light, it turns green again. But whenever I see green lights, I step on the gas. So I end up waiting a lot.

I have to tell the story about Chriss and the cat. She ran into him about 3 months ago in Luz, and then she was there. She is a very expensive breed (some kind of shorthair), but without a tattoo, etc. He then put her picture on a lost and found website for cats, and sure enough, the owner's family contacted him, 400 km north of Luz.

And since he's already on his way back to Germany, and we had arranged to play a few rounds of golf in Apulia, she's back where she belongs now. It's a nice story, and it's even true.