Travels: Party of one

I spent some time during this Spain and Portugal trip travelling alone. The evening I ventured out on my own, I had my friend walk me to the entrance of the metro station. It was not for fear of my safety walking a block to the metro but I wanted a little companionship up until the very end. I was rather nervous, to tell you the truth.


When I came back to Århus, my friends asked me about this trip. One remarked that I seemed ... different after this one than the others. Perhaps it's true that I am somewhat different than I was before but I think this is a change that more likely happened over the last five months rather than a two week trip. I think I gave such an impression because I gushed about the trip to them. But my sudden effusiveness wasn't a manifestation of some newfound daring but precisely because I didn't have anyone to share these comments with while I was in Portugal. 


Travelling alone has its conveniences, certainly. There's no negotiating of what to do and what to skip. Importantly, I can take as many photos as I want! 


But after a couple days I wanted someone with whom I could share my delights and frustrations. While I have taken my journal on every trip I've taken, I am a noticeably more prolific writer on the days when I'm alone. On the one hand this is simply because during the evening I don't generally go out by myself so journaling is a way to pass the time. But it's also because I needed some outlet to thoughts that had come to me that day.


Luckily I met another traveler like myself, an American college students studying abroad in Europe for a semester. Before this I didn't really believe it when people said that it was easy to meet other travelers because it always seemed to me that the people staying at my hostel were already travelling in groups or for whatever reason we just never wanted to do the same thing. But this time we hit it off very well. It turns out that we would be in the same city for a couple days later on so we met up again. 


During one of our trips together, she remarked that it was nice to have a travel companion. I wholeheartedly agree. I didn't write in my journal when we were together because I actually had another human being to talk to. It also felt a lot better that we could check up on each other.

She told me a scary anecdote that made me realize the importance of keeping someone informed about your whereabouts, even if they're not travelling with you. On one of the many flights of her month-long travels, her plane was hit by lightning. No tragedies occurred but for a few terrifying moments she thought the worst. Her parents didn't know that she was on this flight. After that close call, she decided that in the future she would keep them informed of her flights though not of the hostels she was staying in.

For the most part traveling alone wasn't that bad... except when my return flight from Portugal got cancelled. My lowest point on the whole trip was the day I found out my flight was cancelled. I was left stranded in Faro, a small town in the Algarve but I was ready to get on that plane back to Denmark. I had to stand in line at the airport to rebook my ticket because, of course, the Ryanair website wasn't working and it seemed that everyone else stranded was at least stranded with their friends, spouses, or relatives. But I was all alone.  I wanted some companionship because I was bewildered by what to do. Should I try to find an alternate flight home from Lisbon, Porto or Seville? If I waited until my rebooked flight four days later, maybe the ash will still be in Faro or maybe even in Denmark! Even though having travel companions wouldn't have been able to make the ash disappear, I could have used some reassurance.

Now that I've been traveling a lot, alone and with friends, I realized that I like best a mix between travel alone and traveling with a few other people but not too many.

Travels: What's the daily recommended number of egg yolks?

Number of egg yolks consumed in 1 day: at least 4 or 5 ...

I don't eat well when I travel except that day in Seville that I already blogged about. Basically I eat breakfast at the hostel, a lunch of a sandwich and fruit, and come back to the hostel for dinner of another sandwich or pasta or something equally of no nutritional value.

Sometimes I sample local sweets. In Lisbon I had pasteis de Belém, egg tart pastries made from a lot of egg yolks, from the bakery that supposedly has the best ones. They were delicious with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

Unfortunately during my two days in Lisbon, I decided that I would buy half a dozen eggs because my hostel had a very nice kitchen (for a hostel) and an omelette or hard-boiled egg would be a welcomed change. The day that I ate two pastéis de Belém, I had also eaten two eggs earlier in the day...

Travels: Literacy

It must be the season for book fairs in Spain and Portugal. I saw booths set up in parks in Madrid, Seville, and Lisbon. I wandered through them but didn't buy anything as I don't know any Portuguese and minimal Spanish and I couldn't bring back any more luggage due to flying Ryanair. 

Lisbon

Lisbon

Oriente train station, Lisbon

While in Spain, I realized just how much Spanish I had learned in high school. Of course I had forgotten a lot of it since but I managed to buy bus tickets in Spanish with some gesturing and ask for directions too. I mean, I know more Spanish than I do Danish and I'm living in Denmark. I was hopeless in Portugal...

Travel: Papa Bento

The day before I went to Lisbon, a girl at my hostel in Faro told me that the Pope was going to be there at the same time. Indeed Lisbon was very excited for the visit. Portugal is the second most Catholic country in Europe, after Poland.

I guess in Portugal they don't have bento boxes because the Pope is called Bento.

Nearest distance to Pope Benedict: 50 feet. He went by in the Popemobile but I didn't get a picture of him at that moment. But there he is, very small in the chair.

People attending mass with the Pope: LOADS including me. I read somewhere that there were 80,000 in the square and 200,000 along the streets. 

Average mass attendant: old lady in her 60s. 

Banners, posters, flags with the Pope's face: LOADS 

Bank of the Holy Spirit, appropriately, has a banner of the Pope. 

At the end of mass, a lot of priests came amongst the crowd to give communion. I got a funny look from the old lady standing next to me when I didn't go up for it. 

No thanks. 

Travel: Faro or airport of the Algarve

I wasn't planning to go to Lisbon but my flight out of Faro, in the south of Portugal was cancelled. The next flight I could get on back to Billund was Friday, four days later than my original flight.

I found Faro quite boring. The average citizens, it seems, is a 70+ year old. But the residents seemed outnumbered by British vacationers who all came on EasyJet and Ryanair. That's really the reason Faro is a popular destination at all. It's, I think, the only airport in the Algarve that international flights come to.  Postcards of Faro show its whitewashed old buildings, palm trees, and sea but I think they should have a big photo of a Ryanair plane.

The beach at Faro isn't even very good but I guess it's good enough for northern Europeans desperate for any sun. It's actually several km from the old city center where the train station and bus station are. The beach itself is accessible by a bus which comes only once an hour...

I was desperate to get out of Faro after just one afternoon. I decided to take a 4 hour train ride up to Lisbon, which I found charming and pretty.