SteemFest excitement and the SteemRally

This is moving SO fast! Saturday already and we’ve just got back from the Steem Rally. What a day!

We’ve had so MUCH Creamy and deliciousness we can hardly stand it!

There’s so much intelligence here in one place that we can’t help but become smarter from absorbing it all.

Yesterday (Friday) started out GREAT but ended with personal tragedy for me.

The venue we were shuttled out to is usually a wedding venue and the setting is stunning. Mirrors and tasteful décor everywhere and there were two rooms to choose from for the talks and seminars.

The food arrived and kept on coming throughout the day, culminating in a three-course sit-down meal for around 300 people (again).

After the meal, we were then shuttled over to a castle and then a nightclub venue which was an arduous walk, up steep and narrow streets.

Halfway up the mountain, Trev (@s0u1) and I looked at each other with the same thought… Where’s my bag (purse for our American readers).

Trev had been carrying it but had left it on the bus. Utter disaster! It had my Mac in it!

I cannot describe the abject misery that descended upon my thoughts when he caught me up to tell me the bus had left already.

We went back to the hotel early, not really getting into the swing of things and not wanting to upset the mood of anyone else.

I took my iPad and locked down my Mac with the Find my MacBook app.

We got a bit of sleep and woke up at 05:45, took a taxi to the bus depot and phoned them to let them know we were on our way.

I, as usual, feared the worst, but hoped for the best.

The taxi driver seemed to be in a bit of a hurry. Swapping lanes, accelerating hard, braking sharply for speed cameras and generally getting us there as fast as humanly possible.

The lanes are clearly marked, but who needs to use one lane when it’s possible to straddle two at a time?

We passed a slip-road where traffic was joining the carriageway at the side of us and a large Mercedes didn’t seem to have noticed the other large Mercedes (us) at the side of it. It joined the carriageway as we passed it, narrowly missing each other. Trev’s door passed the Mercedes scarily close and it was still moving towards us! We couldn’t have been more than two inches apart as the car we were in finally passed it. Our driver didn’t seem to notice.

We arrived at the bus depot and rang the bell… no answer.

Walking around the back, we found a couple of guys who figured out between them what we were there for.

One of the guys went into the office and fetched my precious bag with laptop inside!

I could have cried with relief!

Trev offered them €20 but they wouldn’t accept it. “No, it’s my job, you’re welcome,” he said.

Hero of the evening: @roelandp

Source

He couldn’t do enough to help! He phoned the bus company and made sure they knew the bag was left on their bus, he gave us all the details we needed and he followed-up the very next day, first thing, to make sure we’d got everything back.

We went back to bed when we got back to the hotel – all that excitement and adventure took just half an hour!

We woke up at around 08:45 and went down for breakfast.

Then we went to pick up a hire-car for our SteemRally adventure (because we hadn’t had enough excitement!)

After a few false-starts, we set off around 11:30 – 4 cars:

Audi A3 TSi Convertible,

BMW 3 Series Convertible (Diesel)

Audi A4 Avante (Diesel)

BMW 1 Series Sport.

To the COAST!

We drove to Sines about 2 hours South, where the weather was going to be better, @roelandp assured us.

No one got lost, no upsets or incidents and we all arrived at the beach.

I did a short video for the new release (If I tell you, you have to promise to keep it secret, ok?) RedHeadRoadTrip is about to hit Steemit – 2 RedHeads, 1 RED Mustang and a helluva lot of adventures to look out for!

After the beach, we went for the most delicious lunch!

Great food, wonderful company (even if one of our number had to depart early to catch his flight home) and a good time was had by all.

Coffee after, then back to the cars. We had to make a small detour to buy a charging cable, but right after that, we took to the mountain roads to a small village for proper coffee and more creamy and deliciousness.

The mountain roads are an enjoyable experience and watching the lemon and the orange tree groves pass by held endless fascination. We saw lots of trees that seemed to be painted part-way up their trunks and we wondered what on earth it was all about. I looked a little closer and saw the trunks weren’t painted, they were stripped – curiouser and curiouser!

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Aloe plants, cactus and Sansevieria trifasciata, also called viper's bowstring hemp, snake plant, mother-in-law's tongue or Saint George's sword (in Brazil), is a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae, native to tropical West Africa from Nigeria east to the Congo. Source grow in abundance along the side of the road but nothing piqued my curiosity more than those bark-stripped trees.

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Dark had almost fallen when we arrived at the village and we spied a coffee shop to visit.

Chatting away, enjoying the company, a menu had us all drooling with the vast variety of chocolate drinks to choose from.

Right there, on the back of the menu, a picture that solved the mystery of the bark-stripped trees – cinnamon!

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Around an hour later, we made our way back in the dark. Lisbon is a wonderful city with such variety in architecture – styles as well as ages. I do think we’ll be returning for sight-seeing.