Portugal is warm, beautiful and cheap and there are more locals than
tourists. Unlike Iceland that is cold, beautiful and expensive and you
have a hard time finding the locals in the crowd of tourists. It doesn’t
mean of course that Iceland shouldn’t be visited again. Hornstrandir
2017 will be coming up next. Life of a tourist does not always have to
be easy.
I dig into newspaper in the airplane to save the books.
There are pictures of my nephew trying karate. Sore throut and dripping
nose are something I have probably acquired from last week's Defence
League excercises. Nice weather in Amsterdam that the captain promises
turns out to be two thick layers of cloud with some rain. Matter of
taste. Loud alarm in the airport. No-one pays any attention to that. I
track down pastilles in the shopping network which immediately stick to
my teeth. People going to Reykjavik are searched for through the
loudspeaker. Tempted to volunteer.
I start using expressions in Portuguese in the airplane. I can order tea. In terms of language I'm not very well prepared this time. Somehow I managed to find time for Icelandic almost every day but for Portuguese only once or twice a week.
Lisbon. Warm. Sun. Throat starts to heal right away. Luggage takes time. But there are no 20 minutes of angry people buying metro tickets as warned and Oriente train station is easy to find. I thought that I'll be in a hurry but now it turns out that I would have reached the earlier train. So it wasn't a foretaste of the frenzied enterprise that I have arranged for myself for 17th of June for getting from Keflavik to Reykjavik airport.
I try to help young girls opening a wine bottle while waiting for the train. It turns out that multitool has a serious flaw - no bottle opener. They are from US, on holidays from university, are "doing" Spain and Portugal and have a whole week for this. They get the opener from a bar somewhere. We have similar backpacks with one of them which facilitates the contact.
Landscape through train window. Trees instead of houses. I fall asleep quite fast and when I wake up its already dark outside. The Americans miss their stop. The train is fancy. An information board shows temperature inside and outside, driving speed and there's WiFi.
Find the way to the hotel in Faro by guesswork. Painstaking English is spoken. As in the Indian restaurant across the street. Tomorrow it is possible to see what Faro looks like.
I start using expressions in Portuguese in the airplane. I can order tea. In terms of language I'm not very well prepared this time. Somehow I managed to find time for Icelandic almost every day but for Portuguese only once or twice a week.
Lisbon. Warm. Sun. Throat starts to heal right away. Luggage takes time. But there are no 20 minutes of angry people buying metro tickets as warned and Oriente train station is easy to find. I thought that I'll be in a hurry but now it turns out that I would have reached the earlier train. So it wasn't a foretaste of the frenzied enterprise that I have arranged for myself for 17th of June for getting from Keflavik to Reykjavik airport.
I try to help young girls opening a wine bottle while waiting for the train. It turns out that multitool has a serious flaw - no bottle opener. They are from US, on holidays from university, are "doing" Spain and Portugal and have a whole week for this. They get the opener from a bar somewhere. We have similar backpacks with one of them which facilitates the contact.
Landscape through train window. Trees instead of houses. I fall asleep quite fast and when I wake up its already dark outside. The Americans miss their stop. The train is fancy. An information board shows temperature inside and outside, driving speed and there's WiFi.
Find the way to the hotel in Faro by guesswork. Painstaking English is spoken. As in the Indian restaurant across the street. Tomorrow it is possible to see what Faro looks like.
Add a comment