It’s been a while since we were at the home village for Easter — three years, in fact. In 2015 we went to Montesinho, last year Paulo was sick and we stayed home. This year, the twist was that my in-laws stayed in Porto and we had the village house to ourselves.
We made Penela da Beira our base for Easter weekend and toured around the region, sightseeing on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we turned into locals and stayed around the village, doing ordinary things like washing the car and cleaning the house. Ice LOVES being in Penela da Beira because he’s off-leash. It was a religious holiday, which always guarantees a big bump in the village population from 350 people to (I’m guessing) two or three times more, with extended families coming and going.
Both Paulo’s parents are from Penela da Beira, which is rather unusual in this day and age and becoming rarer with each passing generation. As it stands, there are properties from both sides of the family in the home village, although none are occupied full-time. Both of his parents’ families are large (as our mine), but this generation has far fewer siblings, and our generation isn’t producing many grandchildren. Once those grandchildren stop visiting the home village, there will be no living connections, only property deeds and cemeteries. A sobering thought, but such is the state of villages everywhere.
No doubt the villages will change as the occupants do, as they have always done. But for now this is what Penela da Beira looks like, in the spring of 2017. View it in other seasons via the tag.
https://gailatlarge.com/blog/tag/penela-da-beira
{ More photos in the Easter weekend album. }
April 16, 2017
Album: North Central Portugal [Easter 2017]
