Coming out of Trindad Metro station we headed downhill. Almost the first thing we came across was this delightful pavement:-

Imagine that in a city in the UK!

It ran down by the side of an extremely impressive building which I believe is the City Hall:-

The huge plaza below it led to a road junction beside which was an equestrian statue of Don Pedro IV (Dom Pedro IV – and I of Brazil) aka “The Liberator”:-

Further into the city I found this statue of Henry the Navigator, of whom I had learned when I visited Lisbon in my extreme youth:-

This road train just trundled along as we were in a leafy square in Porto:-

I’ve been in Holland.

Well, strictly speaking, since it was on the borders of the Friesland and Groningen provinces, make that The Netherlands.

The good lady’s eldest brother lives there. We had been supposed to visit for years but life got in the way.

We needed to renew our passports first. I sent the applications away late in July. Despite all the talk on the news about delays we got the new ones inside a week. (As I remember it was four days.) Maybe the Glasgow Passport office is more efficient than down south.

So another country visited. Apart from the constituent parts of the UK (though I only just made it into Wales) I’ve been to Sweden (Stockholm,) the Soviet Union (Leningrad as was) and Denmark (Copenhagen) on a school cruise when I was at Primary School, Portugal (the Azores, Madeira, Lisbon) and Spain (Vigo) on a Secondary School cruise, and as an adult to Germany (near Stuttgart) and France twice (Normandy for the D-Day beaches and Picardy for World War I battlefields.)

Since the good lady didn’t fancy being on a RoRo ferry overnight we drove down to Harwich (with an overnight stop) and the same on the way back. I’m knackered.

Europa League (sic) Semi-final, first leg. Estádio José Alvalade, Lisbon, 19/4/12.

Not paint drying.

(Again, though, I only watched the second half.)

This was an object lesson on how a near miss can spur a team on and how an equalising goal changes a game. At 0-1 down Sporting looked out of it. At 1-1 they dominated, and scored another.

Should be interesting in Bilbao next week.

I see the other Europa League(sic) semi-final finished 2-4. That can’t have been boring either.