GONE HIKING....

~~ MEANWHILE, STAY WELL~~

BYE BYE WINTER / HELLO SPRING

Today, we can really say that Spring has begun with the arrival of the vernal equinox, which has ocurred at 04:30am (GMT). Astronomically speaking, it marks Spring’s beginning in the Northern Hemisphere, whereas it announces Fall’s arrival in the Southern Hemisphere. The equinox happens at the same moment worldwide, even if our clock times reflect a different time zone.

May your days be full of Joy, Love and Light, throughout the whole season...

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GOING BACK IN TIME WITH A CHOCOLATE SURPRISE BOX

Wow! I had totally forgotten about this...

After many, many years without seeing one of the above boxes, which delighted me when I was a kid, I happened to find, on sale at a supermarket, a smaller version of the then apparently perplexing yellow and red boxes with punch holes: an awesome game-of-chance involving chocolate candy, called a “Caixa de Furos,” literally a “box of holes”, in Portuguese. The boxes are branded by a Portuguese maker of chocolates, so the surprises you receive will be chocolates. So what happens is: you use a little pick to punch a hole in the white circle board and then a colour-coded ball falls to the bottom of the box.

Depending on the colour of the ball, you get a different kind of chocolate candy (obviously, the box brings inside a list with the ball colour and the corresponding surprise)

Only one remained for sale at that supermarket. I didn't hesitate to buy it and, since then, whenever my grandson comes for dinner, he punches one hole and gets the surprise. At the first time, before punching he told me he eagerly would like to get a chocolate umbrella, one of the most iconic Portuguese treats. 

He was lucky, indeed!!!

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THE VENDOR OF PLEASURES

I still have a very vivid and sweet memory of vendors who walked on the beach selling simple very thin wafers that were called 'barquilhos'. They announced their arrival by rattling a metal handle on a wooden board: clac-clac! 
They carried and protected their cookies in a large cylindrical container. On the lid of the drum was a roulette wheel. Children, but also elder customers, paid a few coins to spin the wheel that would tell them how many cookies they won.
Just as a curiosity, such vendors had been active in France since the late Middle Age. They were  called vendors of oublies, the original name for the cookies of which the origin is closely linked to the bread used in catholic liturgy. 

On the other day, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw one of those vendors. A drum was there but just as a decorative element. The rolled wafers were bigger than they used to be in the Past and were sold at a fixed price...

Time passes, things change but memories remain....

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~~ Have a nice rest of the week ~~