Thursday 12 July 2012

From Uncle Geoff's house to Lisbon

My time with Uncle Geoff was mostly spent being a lazy bum by the pool. We ate well, drank well and made one trip into Valverde Del Camino, his nearest town, to pick up supplies. It's a pretty little town, with a newly renovated square (so Geoff says) where you can sit and drink iced coke, watching the world go by at a rather leisurely pace. Life was very good for a few days anyway. 





On the 11th, yesterday in fact, we drove across the Portuguese border to pick up the Kerrs and Uncle Chris. I'd decided by this point that life would be much simpler for both me and Uncle Geoff if he dropped me off in Faro. Rather than me trying to squeeze in the rest of Spain and go up through France, I booked a flight out of Porto (Northern Spain) and intend to make my way up over the next couple of days. It was lovely to see all the family, although a little surreal to be meeting up for only a couple of hours in Portugal, a country I hadn't intended to visit and they weren't even staying in. We went for lunch by the beach, while we waited for Uncle Chris's flight, where Ellie sampled the Portuguese version of chips and we struggled to decide the position of an umbrella. Back at the airport, I think Uncle Chris was particularly surprised to see me as the facebook whispers hadnt reached him. It was a very brief encounter but pleasant none the less!




From the airport I intended to catch a bus into Faro, but upon finding the wait to be an hour, shared a taxi with some French people and ended up in more or less the right place anyway. Immediately uppon arrival, after dumping my stuff in a hostel, I went off in search of my friends from Chefchauen, Yannek and Alex. They've bought a van and are intending to drive it around Europe for a year, but are ridiculously poor, so fund their meals by busking. I sort of took pity on them and treated us all to all the ingredients for some monster burgers and a few beers. I would have been absolutely ecstatic if somebody had bought Bryony and I dinner in Greece last year, when we really were living on a shoestring, so I felt really good to be helping out. 





We got a little too drunk , and this morning I had to catch my 9am train in a rather hazy stupor. It sort of worked out until I arrived in Lisbon and spent two hours traipsing around in the midday heat looking for my hostel. Turns out it had moved addresses, so I ended up following various leads until I eventually arrived. Exhausting and rather dehydrating on a hangover, but I appear to still be alive.


 

Since then, I have been wandering about the city, admiring the street art and colourful tiles and peering into the rather grim looking sea. There also seems to be some kind of protest going on here, hopefully you will be able to see the video below, I hope I dont get stuck in another Athens situation...












Thanks for reading. Hope everyone's well and everything. Katie xxx