Worth a thousand words

I took a ton of photos today, so I'm going to let them do the talking and keep it short, since it's 12:49 and I should be in bed.

So Beth and I got a late start on breakfast, and as a result, we got to McD's just in time to see them flip the menus over to lunch.  Curses!!!  I don't really like anything there besides my usual Number 9 set, so we decided to try the place next door - Cafe Coral.  Or Cafe Corral, as we like to call it.  Outside, they have chickens in the window, as many places do.  Poor things, not only put on display, but in the most uncomfortable of positions.  It's like dead chicken yoga.

We weren't the only ones choosing the Corral over Micky D's.  "Our friend", as we call this gentleman, is usually in the corner seat at the Golden Arches, looking for abandoned foods and beverages to scavenge.  We looked for him there intially and were sad we'd missed him, and then shocked to notice him at the Corral. 

 You order in the front at the Corral, which seemed easy enough because they have a big picture billboard you can point to.  But things went wrong in this pickup line and so I ended up with a bunch of food I didn't order.  Or at least I don't think I did - difficult to know for sure.  I ate what I could and then wanted to give the rest to our friend, because I'm pretty sure he's homeless, but I didn't want to insult him.  So I just left it on a tray nearby.

I told Rach I'd post pictures when I got these hung, so here they are.  Makes the place much less stark - thanks again!

After doing some work in the afternoon, Beth and I decided to try one of the walking trails we'd read about in Coloane.  When we got off the bus there was nothing even remotely resembling a trailhead in sight.  Coloane is kind of like a crazy wilderness filled with little weird pockets of civilization.  So we wandered, looking for clues to our destination.  

This is a shot of the port.  It was the only thing we could clearly recognize on the map when we first looked around.  

After asking some people for directions and getting laughed at, Beth led us to this temple, another landmark on the map.  I never would have found this without her because despite the huge sign on the road, you had to walk down what was essentially someone's driveway, past their house full of open windows, into their overgrown and junk-filled back yard to get to it.  It was cool though.

We saw some of these plants in other spots on the island too.  No idea what the fruits are.

Here's a better shot of the entrance.

And the neighbor's house.  I love how decrepit yet beautiful everything is here.

And their lovely view of this plant.

Finally we found another entrance to the trail.  Good thing Beth has natural direction sense.  I'm only good with maps, bad with intuition.  Together we can usually figure it out.

This one speaks for itself, but I discovered later that this was not actually the trail we'd been trying to get onto, but another one that was only 1.5km, so we did make it all the way around before dark.

These flowers reminded me of Dr. Seuss.

This is a nice little park near the end of the trail with bbq pits.  I'll probably never use them, but it's nice to know they're there.  Eventually we wandered back to catch the bus into Taipa for dinner.  We had a slight moment of anxiety when we thought we'd missed the last bus, and spent about 25 minutes sitting on a busted up bench in the dark, coming up with backup plans, but then it finally came.  First item on the agenda for my next lesson with Carol - figure out how to call a cab.  Luckily, even out in the middle of nowhere in the dark, it's still Macau and is still pretty small and safe, so there's little cause for real worry.  Not like being stranded in West Oakland or something.

It's lovely to walk in Old Taipa Village at night.  It was a warm, lovely evening and we strolled around looking at the decorations for the Lusofonia festival, which celebrates Portuguese language, I believe.  No shortage of festivals in this country.  :)
 

After some incredibly good fish and chips at Old Taipa Tavern we headed home.  A fun day overall, and now we have a better idea of what to plan for next time.