Day 61

I'M BACK!

Did you miss me?

Well, obviously you all miss me. But did you miss the blog? I bet y'all did.

SO where do I begin? I'm going to try my best to relay the details of my AMAZING fall break without spending too much time typing away on my laptop. I hope y'all enjoy!

Day 61 was the first real day of fall break for Katie and me, as we set off to our first destination, Albufeira, Portugal, on that day. We had a pretty chill morning. We went and had pastries for breakfast and also hit up the grocery store for some road trip snacks (BabyBell cheese and raw vegetables. Yes, I ate a whole, raw cucumber in the car. It was great).

We were meeting our BlaBla Car driver, Willy, at 3:00 pm at this Walmart-type place called Carrefour which is all the way on the other side of both the canal AND the river. The best/only way we could get there was by a combo of bus and taxi. Luckily, we made good time and had no issues.

While walking around Carrefour (and looking at puppies, actually), I got a call from Willy, who was a 58-year-old from France. He barely spoke any English, and didn't seem to speak Spanish either, but for some reason I felt the best way to communicate with him over the phone was by shouting random words and phrases in English, Spanish, and even some French. It was kind of hilarious. He ended up finding us, though, so whatever--it all worked out.

Willy's nephew rode with us as well, and also didn't seem to know English. But we just chilled and listened to music and ate our snacks. The ride only took a little over two hours, so that was nice, and were able to get dropped off right outside our hostel in Albufeira.

We love healthy snacks!

Albufeira is a tiny little beach town, and our hostel was located right smack in the middle of it. It was great! It was pretty rainy that evening, but it wasn't terrible. We checked into our hostel with no problems, were the only ones in our room, and then had a nice, long walk up and down the beach. There were so many huge, beautiful shells! I wish I could've collected them all. I would've needed a really big bucket though, and probably more arm strength, too!

Unidentifiable tentacle(?)

So cute!

It wasn't raining too badly at this point.

I thought this was cute too haha. Notice the British names--everyone in Albufeira was a British tourist.

Because we love St. John's that much

After walking quite a bit and getting a little wet, we found a nice ocean-side restaurant to have dinner at. I had some super yummy grilled sole and potato wedges. It was a lovely introduction to Portuguese food.

We were pretty exhausted, and the weather sucked, so we retired early that evening. Well, really, since we gained an hour going to Portugal, it didn't feel all that early to us. Besides, we were hoping to be able to get up and go to the beach the next day!