Wild-Gladioli-0048, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Last year I saw this particular meadow full of wild gladiolus down in Cortebrique but failed to take a snap of it as I was in too much of a hurry; a mistake i was sure not to repeat this year!
Frank-&-Daniela-7.4.11-9761, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Driving through Cortebrique this morning and someone shouted out to me, “Congratulations!”
“What for?” I asked.
“Why, for being #1 on Google of course; didn’t you know?”
“#1 on Google? I had no idea”, I replied truthfully. Though both Daniela and I work hard to promote the Quinta and countryside tourism in general in this area, I had no idea we’d apparently been so successful. “What search terms were you using?” I asked, intrigued.
“Quinta Portugal,” my friend replied, “and what’s so clever of you is that “Quinta” isn’t even in the name of your site. You beat all the big boys, all the other tourist sites and even all the “Quinta for sale” sites. Very smart. Congratulations! How did you do it?”
I had to come clean of course and say I didn’t know; as I say we work hard at our internet presence here, and maybe our Birding Site helps in this respect, but whether I know how it came about or not, it’s still a huge feather in our cap and we’re justly proud of ourselves and all of us hope our many friends and volunteers will be too, as it’s just as much thanks to all of you as to anything we’ve done.
Right, enough scribbling, I’m off down to the village to get the bubbly!
Tripadvisor-0318, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
We got this in the post today and we’re absolutely blown away by it!
We realise of course that we’d never have received it but for all of our guests this year who contributed their time by writing a review on us, so may Daniela and I take this opportunity to thank all of you – and of course all our staff this year who worked so hard to making the Quinta a success, Fatima and Dulce of course, but also those who volunteered their time here, Marcus, Susanna, Des, Shirley, Brian, Steve, Araby, Maria João, Ann, Bronwyn, Elias, Flora and Carolina; this is as much a certificate of excellence for all of you as it is for the Quinta as a whole, so a million thanks to all of you.
We look forward to doing more of the same in 2011!
Core-Party-9715, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Well, we had to have a party to celebrate Daniela’s and my marriage so we had a few friends over … the party was actually a run of parties, four days in fact, but these were the core members. This was taken before we sat down for the first night’s dinner; i might post some “during the party” shots but I think I’ll spare you the “after the party” ones ….
Many people have urged me to tell the Quinta’s story on this blog, and seeing as I haven’t written anything for, (heavens above!), two months, it seems only fair that I should do something a little special, so here’s a small video Daniela and I put together over the last week; we hope you enjoy it!
Four of my favourite ladies.
The Quinta’s choice of wines June ’09, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
…. the Quinta’s wine choice as organised by Heather! Our ethos here is that all our wines are Portuguese, all of them have real corks, and …. all of them have a bird either on the label or in the name! This third point is very important!
Seriously though, Portuguese wines are gorgeous and we are very insistent that all of ours must have real corks so that we do our bit to keep the Montados alive, which is an absolutely vital industry in our area.
Heather 20090601, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
Let’s also introduce Heather, our volunteer for these next few months, here measuring the water temperature yesterday morning – it turned out to be a very balmy 24ºC, (75ºF), warm enough for me to go swimming!
I came up afterwards to find she’d cleaned and organised the bar, even down to getting the heights of the bottles aligned ….
Carolina & Honey 20090601, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.
