A few months ago, my boss (who is a former UK Ambassador to Spain) half jokingly/half seriously suggested that we adopt the Spanish tradition of summer hours. This would mean closing the office for a few hours each afternoon to take a siesta and then working later into the evening. Needless to say, because I have a 45-minute commute each way on the tube and going home during siesta would not be an option for me, I vetoed this idea.
I did suggest that we adopt the great American idea of flextime. He seemed very excited about this idea, but we never really followed through with it. The more I thought about it, however, the more I thought that this would be a really great schedule for me. For those of you who don’t know about flex time, basically you work an hour more each day and then you get every other Friday off. This is great for me for two reasons. 1: my commute to work is MISERABLE. The London tube at rush hour is just about the most miserable thing I’ve ever experienced. By leaving home half an hour earlier and coming back half an hour later, I avoid the worst of rush hour. 2: Three day weekends mean huge traveling possibilities. In three days, we could go to Spain, or France, or really anywhere.
So, I have now initiated flextime at my office. It’s fabulous. I had this Friday off and, while we didn’t travel anywhere, I did get some shopping done that is normally miserable to do on weekends (because, once again, London is overcrowded), watched a movie, and, most importantly, got to sleep in!
In two weeks, when I have another Friday off, we’re planning a trip to Budapest.
Chris Sutton leading in the break.
Thats right, "Macaroni Cheese" in a can. It's not Macaroni AND Cheese, it's just Macaroni Cheese. Who would try such a disgusting looking product, you ask? Why, me of course. And it was just as disgusting as you would have guessed. Oh, how I long for the blue box.
Why not just make my own Mac n Cheese from scratch? A) What do I look like, a chef? B) Is Mac n Cheese really Mac n Cheese if the cheese begins in its original block form? Give me the powder/goo over the block any day. C) If I could make it from scratch, you would be less tempted to send me care packages filled with boxes of Velveeta Shells n Cheese. Right?
We flew into Faro in Southern Portugal and then took a 2 hour train ride west to the beautiful (albeit somewhat touristy) town of Lagos. We were met there by some of our friends from London who had rented a beach flat for the week and with whom we would spend the first few days of our trip. Days one and two consisted almost entirely of the following: wake up, eat, nap on the beach, eat, nap by the pool, eat, enjoy Lagos’ night life, go to bed.
Train we took from Faro to Lagos
Me in Lagos
On day three, our friends returned to London and Bobby and I moved into a quaint little hostel which we learned, upon arrival, was actually just some little old lady’s house. The cute little Portuguese woman spoke no English, and bobby and I had only learned about 4 phrases in Portuguese, but the stay went surprisingly smoothly with the aid of a lot of grunting and hand gestures.
Beach in Lagos
Bobby and I on the beachDay four included the part of the vacation Bobby was most looking forward to: scuba trip. Now, while we do have some super fun photos of us in full Scuba gear, this was, for me, the dive from hell. First of all, it turns out that the water in Portugal is not at all warm in August. Something about the currents pulling down cold water from the north makes the Atlantic in that region unbearably cold. Even when we were baking in the hot sun for hours on end on the beach, I would refuse to go into the water. The result: We ended up wearing the thickest wetsuits you can wear: 7mm. Now, I’m already what my scuba instructors call “a floater” meaning that I have to wear tons of weights to even get myself to the bottom, but when you add 7mm of neoprene on top of my already buoyant body, it becomes quite the task to get me to sink to the bottom (aka, the point of scuba diving). Because of this, I ended up wearing nearly 30 pounds of weights around my midsection on this dive. Since this was a shore dive (diving off land instead of a boat), this meant that I had to trek down the side of a cliff wearing all of my gear (probably 20 pounds) plus 30 pounds of weight. Not fun.
We did, eventually, get into the water. Upon reaching the bottom, things only went from bad to worse as all of my weights had miraculously shifted to my left side on the hike down and I now had to swim underwater, for an hour, with the left side of my body basically scraping along the bottom. Anyways, it was a disaster, I think I saw maybe one fish the whole time because I was so focused on trying to correct my body positioning, which ended up being impossible. According to bobby, everyone has bad dive experiences every once in awhile, but I threatened to never go diving again after that one. But, let’s get back to the rest of the vacation (which was fabulous).
After scuba disaster, I consoled myself by sitting on the beautiful beaches again for a few hours before we went out for what is always mine and bobby’s favourite part of vacations: delicious, authentic, local food. Needless to say, this area of Portugal is famous for its seafood. Everything we ate was amazing, and so fresh!!
On day five we had to head back to Faro to fly back to London, but overall it was a great trip! I’m not sure if I would go back to Portugal ( I like to swim when I go to the beach) but it was beautiful and everyone was so friendly!!
