Most people will continue to call their parents house 'home' long after they have escaped and live in their own house. For me Portugal is my third home. My grandparents built a villa on an old goat house back in the 80's and so now having been a regular tourist from when I was just 6 months old I like to think of myself more as a local now, especially as I lived here for almost a year when I was 18.
Because of my desire to see the world in the last few years I have been coming less, resulting in my not having been here in 3 years. I arranged a trip this year with Leigh, my Brother and his girlfriend with the idea that we got a few days here before my parents also descended on the villa. It's going to be my first family holiday (minus my youngest brother who is in Australia) in 6 years!
I've decided to try and blog every day, we are here for 10 days so God knows if I will be able to keep this up but I thought it might be quite nice, and will save me having to try and remember everything for a big post when we get back.
So here we go...
We woke up at 2.30am and left my parents house by 3am to make the relatively short journey to Gatwick Airport. All of us pulling our suitcases behind us as we hit the longest of queues to check our bags in, although somehow managed to get lucky and queue jumped without even meaning to as they moved the barriers to our advantage. We were under 20kg by some miracle as I think I might have overpacked.....
Heading through security I thought I had got off the pat down only to discover that my bag then needed to be searched and I had several tampons in the bottom of my bag, fantastic. This never stops being embarrassing. Anyway they pulled my phone out of the tampon infested bag and scanned it and found nothing of interest so I was allowed to proceed.
We stopped off at Armadillo for some extortionately priced breakfast that probably wasn't worth it but it kept me from crashing and helped me maintain my morning perkiness.
We browsed duty free and I sniffed perfumes until I got a headache, wanting to buy
Roses de Chloe but refusing to pay £50-60 for a bottle of perfume no matter how pretty is smells. We ambled our way over to the gate much to my dismay as I like to rush as quickly as I can to get ahead of queues.
We boarded the plane and set off promptly. I tried to get a little bit of sleep but I'm always too paranoid of my mouth falling open and my snores echoing through the plane.
Landing in Faro at around 8.30am we grabbed our suitcases off the carousel and tried to find where our car hire provider was. Having decided to go for the cheaper, but more dodgy provider we soon discovered that in fact the car was to be found in a car park and the papers were to be picked up from a small shed, mobile like building. I realised that Leigh had left his paper bit of the driving license at home.... so as I frantically chain smoked to avoid biting my nails down to the quick (neither habit is great) Leigh and Ross went to try and sort the car out. In the end it turned out that it was fine and we picked up the Ford Fiesta without any trouble at all.
We piled into the VERY hot car and set off down the motorway heading towards the mountains and home.
We pulled in to a supermarket on the way and picked up lots of cheeses, hams and fruit to lunch on, and we threw in some 'Pastel De Nata' which are my favourite.
The higher up the mountain we got, the more air I tried to breathe in. I don't know if I can describe the air to you. It is one of my favourite smells in the whole world and I just wish I could bottle it. It smells like heat and eucalyptus, trees and sunshine mixed in with the smoke of cooking meat from the restaurants and suncream from me. There is nothing better, apart from maybe the smell of baking bread.
We finally made it to the villa around lunchtime and after a beer and a chat, we went to unpack as I hate living out of a suitcase if there is a wardrobe available. It was so nice to be back in 'my room' (it's actually the guest room but the one that I am always given so it's become my room over the years). I love the villa, it is quite large, with 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a huge living room with a stone fire place as the focal point and a well equipped kitchen. The floor is tiled red and white, with this theme continued through the house. The swimming pool is a good size and the view is quite spectacular, I love it best at night when all the lights from the coast twinkle at you - but impossible to get a picture of unless you have a very good camera and a tripod.
After that was done we grabbed a roll, cheese and ham and made our way outside, after slathering ourselves with suncream of course. We spent the rest of the afternoon lying in the sun and I had a little nap for half an hour or so. I don't normally sleep in the heat but I was obviously exhausted.
After showering the suncream and sweat off we got ready for dinner out at this tiny little restaurant on the mountain named after the owner
Idalyna. It does the best Peri Peri Chicken on the hill and her tomato and onion salad is sweet and slathered in oil and vinegar. I tucked into my first peri peri for 3 years with the same amount of relish as a child opening presents on Christmas Day (although I also do that).
We had quite an early night as by this point we had been awake for 20 hours and we were very tired indeed. We fell asleep to the sound of crickets and in complete darkness.
C xxx
