Day 4: Lovely And Hot With A Touch Of Village People
Todays was a 12.5 mile trek up the coast. It was lovely and hot (also the name of my upcoming fragrance line) with some surprising little stretches of forest and even beach walking.
Flowers
A super cool stretch of forest that was really unexpected right off the coastal trail
Door thing
All in all today was my favorite walk so far. I met some nice folks and we all enjoyed the various landscapes. The sun was hot but I was ready with my super cool sun protection hoodie. Did you know that it has loops in the sleeves for your thumb to go in and pull it over your hand so your hand doesn’t get sunburned? Yeah, it does that. Here’s a picture of my “fit” for the day. I’m told that if I’m going to be an influencer and build my brand I have to show my “fit”.
Lovely and hot
When I got to my hotel I quickly showered, stretched and headed out to do a quick load of laundry. Upon my return I found that there was a parade happening right in front of the hotel. I decided to grab a pizza and check it out.
Pizza is my go to if I don’t know what I want but know I have to have something. Pretty sure this is what the Roman legions ate and they conquered all of Europe.
It’s a festival for a saint and that’s about all I could figure out. It was really interesting in that there were tons of folks just marching in traditional outfits (and the Portuguese have an impressive hat game) and floats that seemed to depict life in the countryside. There were people making wine on a float, some ladies making bread, one float seemed to just be four men sweeping. I didn’t have the best view and I’m sure I missed a lot of details but one thing I know is that I came pretty close to getting hit by an ear of corn launched from one of those damned floats. Tossing items to folks in the crowd seemed to be part of it and people were loving it. As a matter of fact, the streets and town squares were packed with people and they were INTO IT. I ate my pizza and just enjoyed the positive communal vibe. The parade ended with the local marching band stopping (right in front of my hotel front doors) and playing YMCA. And let me tell you, if you thought the crowd was into synchronized sweeping and corn projectiles they lost their collective shit when that song started playing. It was really fun to see and I’m glad I happened to be there to witness it. One final thing I learned our the Portuguese today, they know how to GTFO. When that song ended they grabbed their chairs and the street was back to normal in a matter of minutes. Truly impressive.
Tomorrow I’m off to Spain. Oh, one final thing I learned. The green button in this elevator isn’t for the lobby floor, it’s an alarm that stops the elevator and starts an insanely loud bell ringing. I think Portugal might be happy to see me heading to Spain to become their problem.
I didn’t realize it was a latching button so I just stood there with the bell ringing and the elevator not moving until a desk person yelled at me to press it again. Have I mentioned I used to work with alarms for a living?
