Boavista (Beautiful View) Golf Course

Sunday morning. Marylou was looking forward to another day of peace and quiet and relaxation — maybe she would even visit the church across the street from us and see how Portuguese tourists worship on Sundays. Dave and I were booked to golf at the Boavista Golf Course. After a (too) leisurely breakfast we had to rush to get to the course on time for our 10:20 tee time. We got there, parked, got our ‘buggy’ and fastened our clubs to the back. Then we took off for the first tee — well, we THOUGHT we were heading for the first tee, but we got to a dead end and turned around and THEN we got to our first tee. The two Swedes who we were paired up with were already teeing off. We hurriedly got our balls, tees, and clubs and took a quick practice swing before belting the ball off the side of the fairway. We should have warmed up a bit first, I guess. 

The course was okay, but Dave and I both thought the Espiche course we golfed during the week was more fun. Instead of brambles and bushes along narrow fairways, here we had resort homes to contend with. It’s not fun hitting the ball into the bushes, but it’s less fun hitting it through the window on the second floor of a luxury home on the course. But thankfully we kept our damages to a minimum, even if the cost to our pride was a few strokes.

We were teeing off from the yellows because that’s what ‘Life’ and ‘Toon’ were doing. They were a couple of retired Swedes who now lived down here in the Algarve. The were 66 years old (which is about 25 Canadian years according those ‘Participaction’ ads we used to see on TV), and they’d bought homes here about 2 years ago. They were members of the Boavista course. We enjoyed their company for the day.

Ham and cheese sandwich on the seat of our golf 'buggy'.
Ham and cheese sandwich on the seat of our golf ‘buggy’.

I guess I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the HIGHLIGHT of my day was the FANTASTIC sandwich I made this morning, which I enjoyed on hole number 10. There is NOTHING better than a delicious sandwich on a beautiful Sunday afternoon out on the golf course.

Certainly the highlight of my day COULD have been my score, but only if my score had been about 20 strokes better than it actually was. I wish I could blame it on the fact that everything here is in metres instead of yards, but today our GPS on the golf ‘buggy’ was giving us all the distances in yards. Oh well.

After we finished 18 holes, ‘Life’ (that’s probably Leif in Swedish, but that’s how he pronounced it) invited us to join him for a beer at the course restaurant. Sure. So we sat at an outside table and visited for an hour or so. We learned a lot about the pros and cons of living in Sweden and retiring in Portugal. Life and Toon even sort of invited us to join them here again NEXT Saturday. We’ll see.

We drove back home and looked for Marylou. Turns out she was hiding at a neighbourhood bar, busy doing one of her eight things — or maybe reading — or maybe reading IS one of her eight things. We all went back to our apartment and put on extra sweaters and jackets and looked for the warmest room. Marylou had been busy getting a big fancy supper ready for us. Now all that was left to be done was try to figure out how that fancy European oven is supposed to work. Or how to turn it on. Dave got out the manual and eventually got it bake. At least we hope it’s baking.

Dave once again stirred up some delicious gin and tonics for happy hour. We sat in the kitchen and waited for that oven to cook up the chicken breasts and bake the potatoes. Dave found some golf on TV. Finally, at around 8, or maybe even after 8, the oven finally cooperated and supper was served. Mmm.. Nice job, Marylou. Thanks for a great supper.

After supper we watched a movie on iTunes — Night Train to Lisbon. Marylou had read the book and wanted to see how the movie compared. After the movie we had our late-night dessert, ice cream and a glass of port. Marylou went to bed while Dave and I sat through an episode Black Mirror on Netflix. It was just after midnight when I finally updated my blog and then went to bed. Looks like we might get a bit of rain tomorrow. No plans for now. Good night.