INTERREGNUM...
I will not post pictures for a while, mainly due to the lack of time. I'll be checking my "gang" of photobloggers very often though, and the wonderful crowd of bloggers in my links list... C ya later...

I saw snow in Lisbon this afternoon, for the first time in my living memory :) The cold wave that affected most of Europe also reached us, and a lot of people must have seen snow for the first time in their lives. I went outside to take these pictures and felt like a child. The snow didn't last long and melted as soon as it reached the ground.

Ever heard of Fátima? I took these pictures there on my way back home some weeks ago. Quite a soothing place, even if you're not religious.

I was in Oporto a few days ago, and noticed our friend Metallyptica's town is more beautiful than ever (no wonder she is always so proud!) Dark, misterious, magical... and always very welcoming. These pictures were taken in its old historical centre, near the Douro river, early in the morning (most of the town and the suburbs are very modern). It was a clowdy and rainy day, and also very cold. I had not seen my old Venezuelan friend Javier in quite a while, and he was passing by for short New Year hollidays, recently arrived from Madrid, where he now works. He keeps complaining about Hugo Chavez and his disastrous policies after all these years, but I managed to convice him to pose for a shot while he was moaning :)) Quite a dramatic Venezuelan "telenovela" like expression, I would say, Javi :)))

I took my small Panasanic DMC-LS1 digicam to work this morning, and also took these pictures on the way. It's a very basic camera, but does provide an HDTV format - basically a cropped 4:3 picture - and the results seemed interesting.

It's a cold and rainy day here. In the office, my feet are frozen and I want to go home! I imagine if these old apartments in front of my window are warm enough in winter... Something tells me that they're not...

Southern Spain's countryside looks like a desert in the Summer, but as green as Ireland in the winter. While driving away from Merida I ended up in Trujillo, a beautiful medieval city 60-70 kms away. A wonderful place, very well preserved, and also hometown to one of Spain's most famous "conquistadores", Francisco Pizarro (a hero to Spaniards, and a murderer in Amerindian eyes) . The main plaza has a statue in his memory. I was there for a few hours before heading home to Lisbon, 350kms away, and took these pictures. Definitely a place to retun in the future.

I was back to Merida, Spain, some days ago, and ended up travelling a bit around the area, to see the old Roman ruins. These ones belong to one of many aqueducts and is around 2000 years old.

A 1950's building near Av. dos EUA, in Lisbon. This whole area was made to look like America (with it's modern, tall buildings).
In my mind it still does.

This should be my last set of pictures from Brazil for a while, and it ends where it began - São Paulo. There's plenty of interesting architecture all over the giant city, like the Martinelli (first picture) and Banespa buildings (the last one, that resembles New York's Empire State Building). This time, there was also the Cow Parade, that brought hundreds of statues of cows, painted by local artists, to the whole city. You could find them in the streets, shopping malls, gardens, in the middle of the road...

Pictures from downtown Rio de Janeiro... The memory of slavery is very present in today´s Brazil. It was the first time I saw Africans depicted in neoclassical statues, in a clear hommage to their role in the formation of Brazilian culture. Near Ipanema, I saw that group of Chinese para-athletes quite busy with their bikes.