We had Orange Spain eSIMs for our trip in 2021 but have used data-only eSIMs from Airalo since then as they are half the price of other Orange offerings (which I recall being only for 2 weeks at a time). We use our home numbers to contact friends and family (and each other) via WhatsApp—and messages show up on our Garmins. This is the first time we’ve encountered a European who didn’t use data! I note that Koodo, our home provider, now has a one-month roaming plans for Europe that’s reasonably competitive (around $60 vs $24 for Airalo) but Vodafone Portugal was a sweet spot, data plus calling (even to Canada) plus text for about $30–the catch being you needed a Portugal tax number, whatever that is.

Hi Jacquie,

Re your issues with Portuguese e-sim’s, on our last two trips to Europe (our 2023 France - Spain trip journaled here and a short trip we took to Scotland this spring) we’ve bought the Orange Holiday Europe e-sims, https://travel.orange.com/en/buy-a-sim/offers/europe.
You get a French phone number with unlimited calls within Europe (read as Schengen as I think this includes Switzerland and Norway, and it even applied to Scotland!), unlimited texts, loads of data (30 GB per month) and even several hours of ‘international’ calls … i.e the rest of the ‘developed’ world. It all seemed to work seamlessly in Spain and in the UK so I have no reason to think it wouldn’t work in other EU countries.

Even better, we could install everything at home, sipping a coffee in front of the desktop, and then simply activate it once we landed in Europe. Even though it’s s French phone number, you don’t need to be in France to activate it (case in point our Scotland experience). For a month it worked out to be about C$2 per day, less than a cup of coffee (at least here) and you had all forms of communication available. It;s also very easy to top up for additional weeks or months and is good for a six month period.

As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of the service.

I admire a man with a purpose in life! :)

Hard to tell from a photo, but looks a lot like mostly petrified wood.

Maybe some kind of privet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligustrum_lucidum

Good decision.

Castor beans just like we grew outside our back door when I was a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus

You could get a “super discount” on your room if you volunteered to attach the missing “o” on the wall..;)

Lego ville?

The garlic is to mask the “fishy smell”..;)

Hmm. I’ll have to look it up when I get home.

OMG I am catching up tonight. That video said it all.

We have the same picture with me posing 😂. Great minds think alike!

Everybody on the internet calls this an aqueduct, but they are guessing, just as you were. It's a famous sight, though, used for instance by the City in their "Visit Serpa" material.

What beautiful eyes!