november was a month of resuming routines, of walking, of meeting new babies and old friends, of preparing for the months ahead…
Author: ana
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– we took a couple of much needed days off these two weeks, to take care of some life admin stuff and christmas shopping (books for all the kids!). rest day included lunch in a new (to us) tasty thai place in town, and also brunch in a nice café. slowing down feels counter-intuitive and forced, but we need to relearn it slowly.
– visited faro for the annual christmas postcrossing meetup. it was great to see friends again, after 2 years away and catch up with them a bit… but i was exhausted by the end of it. it gave me the chance to do a bit of “#xtremedeltiology” too, which was fun.
– i finished the beautiful ballad for sophie, and also neil gaiman’s anansi boys, which was fun. at some point in the story, the narrator describes a group of flamingos as “a minefield of legs and necks”, and it’s just so perfect! i realized a bit late that this was the second book in a series… might have to go back and read the first one now.
– i’ve been rotating my swims with bike rides around the salt pans, in which i stop now and then to see some birds… at least, that is the idea. on one of the rides, the wind was unbelievably strong and i had to pedal so hard i hurt some tendon in my leg. and on another one, it had rained the previous day, and i really underestimated how much mud there would be… at some point, my bike was so crusted with mud that it just refused to continue. 😅
– it’s officially fireplace season, and i’ve sewn us a heavy curtain, to try and better trap the heat in the living room. it kind of works… but my toes and fingertips are still permanently frozen. :( sigh. the older i get, the more i dislike winter. please, someone teleport me to a warmer climate, or a country with efficiently heated houses.
– potatoes! paulo sent me down a rabbit hole of articles about a “potato diet“… and i promptly got obsessed with the idea of potatoes having some kind of metabolic superpower. i know it sounds weird… but i just cannot resist this kind of experiments, where you take one thing and run with it in the opposite direction of everyone else to test an hypothesis and see what happens. currently planning to eat about a third of our meals as potatoes until christmas, take notes and report back. i’m unreasonably excited about the prospect of more potatoes.
– and speaking of food, we stumbled on odeleite’s “brunch serrano” on the internet and had to check it out. the food offer was immense and to die for, from rabanadas to “migas” with pork meat, not to mention the warm bread and excellent jam. to repeat again soon, and bring friends! :D
october was the month we spent away, half in berlin and half in south tyrol, and it was glorious! i missed traveling, i missed our friends, and i missed walking and autumn and all the tasty food you can’t find here.
words fail me… it was bliss.
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weeknotes, 45-46/22
time feels really slow, now that we’re back home. 😅 the days blend with one another, nothing special about most of them, just the normalness of being here. still, there are things to do and they are getting done!
– i chopped a good bit of my hair off, because of swimming pool frustrations. the showers there spray a fine mist of water all over the place… except on your head, which, when you have long hair, is a nightmare. so, off the hair goes!
– through instagram, i heard about revista farta, a new portuguese magazine focused on food. it reminded me of my beloved (but long dead) lucky peach, and i ordered the first volume, which is all about francesinhas! <3
– we watched minari, a bitter sweet korean-american movie. and still on the korean theme, i’ve been reading pachinko, a story set in ww2 times in korea and japan. it’s long, but quite good so far. i’ve also visited the library and came back with a arm full of graphic novels. the first i’ve read, comer beber, was short and focused on one of my favorite subjects: food!
– the weather was nice last week, so we took a couple of days and walked the stretch between lagos and portimão, with a stop in alvor to enjoy the ria. the mosquitos were crazy, but the views around the river were brilliant.
ah, september! the summer starts to wind down slowly as kids return to school, and the algarve is left to its own.
the mediterranean diet fair took place, and we saw bits of it, including a few concerts. and then we packed and took the train north, to help with family stuff. there was chefs on fire — a neat outdoor event in which we filled our bellies with nice food, hung out with friends and saw concerts. also, the house painting started, and i came south to oversee its beginning but then quickly went back north again. all in all, a good month, with lots of music, friends & family… and lots of getting sick on trains, my new speciality *sigh*.