I told my friend Sara to meet me at the Airport, arrivals terminal, 1 pm. First of all she lives nearby and, perhaps more importantly, I would be able to find it. I slowly drove past all the people waiting at the bus stop and getting on and off their taxis, mainly looking for a loop in which I could circulate until Sara's red Piaggio Porter mini van would finally show up. But already after my first round I spotted it and took a shortcut back into the circuit, where now the two of us were going around once more before I set the hazard lights somewhere in the still water and we got to say hello. Bacalhau for lunch and a bit of a meaningless conversation with this dude, whose life motto seemed to be printed on his sweater saying VODKA - Connecting People were my very first impressions in the neighbourhood. Oh and Sara's spaniel Maori, who absolutely unteachably tried to tup Djinga again and again and again. He's so obsessed, that later he'd give it to his pillow on the balcony three times in a row straight up.
In the beginning I thought we'd hit the city for it was Saturday night but instead, we took it really easy and just made popcorn, watched Searching for Sugarman and later, when Hugo came around we had a bit of a food fight in the kitchen before dinner was ready. It was such a nice evening. We drank ridiculously good red wine and talked about whether one should be afraid or not of what happens to guys like us when we grow older. We broke it down to the more general question whether one should be afraid (of the future) at all. This took us into the early Sunday morning when we went to bed at about 5 am. And honestly, there's nothing I'd have wanted to do instead and even if I was very tired for the next 300 or so kilometres and probably missed some sick surf along the way to the Algarve, I feel so much richer with this experience than with what vague expectations or assumptions had to offer beforehand.