After the conference ended, we had a couple of days on the island to explore, since Mary had never been here before. We hit some of the usual sites that I've mentioned previously. The big hit of course was Furnas, with its amazing garden and hot mineral pools. In fact, our timing for the latter was impeccable. We got there just before noon, and by the time we'd finished walking through the garden most of the tourists had left for lunch, so we had the small pools entirely to ourselves. And it never rained on us. As you can see, Mary was very happy about it.
On Monday we had a very nice farewell dinner at Nuno's house, with his Argentinian friend Luciano, my friend Emanuel, fellow artist Robin, and Mary and I. It was a lovely evening, and also a little sad. We had formed a little family of sorts, and I will truly miss Nuno and Emanuel. Staying at Nuno's house and getting to know him was perhaps the biggest unexpected bonus of the whole residency. We have good friends here, and it's hard to leave them.
 |
| Nuno's kitchen. |
 |
| One of Nuno's large drawings in his studio. |
On Monday and Tuesday night we stayed in Ponta Delgada, at an apartment owned by new friends Gabriela Sales and Rui Teixeira. They live in São Vicente on the north coast, near Diana, and I had met them before at a party at Diana's house. They came to the performance and loved it, and very kindly offered to let us stay in their guest apartment in town in exchange for a CD of my piece. On our final night they invited us over to their house for dinner. Gabriela made a very good fish soup (which she insisted was horrible) and other yummy things, and we loved talking with them about all manner of things. Very interesting, smart, and funny people who we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know better and look forward to seeing again someday.
Now, on to Flores!
