azrabel

I love travelling.

But boy do I want to go home at the end of it. I have hit my limit of 'awayness' and now am very much looking forward to the point where I roll my luggage in the door, greet my cats, and fall on my bed like a great falling thing.

(And then get covered with cats like a rug.)

( home stuff )

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Anyway, Toronto was great (both the walking tour I ended up undertaking and meeting with jenab) and Ottawa is also great. Thanksgiving dinner yesterday night with alphaflyer and her husband after a bit of driving around to see the autumn colour in the afternoon. We'll be doing more driving around today, further out, perhaps.

Not sure if there's anything planned for tomorrow, but the flight home is pretty much a full day, plus the time to wait at the airport. And I'm not really going to sleep either side of the trip.

OOF.

Next time I do this, I'm taking Canada more slowly. At least two weeks to mosey my way from the east to the west, and then the flight home...

I have never been to Portugal before, and I probably wouldn't have had it on my list except that someone I know lived there, and for a while I thought they might be amenable to me visiting.

I booked the flight before I realised they weren't, and so had a section of my trip that was basically a blank with nothing much planned.

( five days, four nights in Porto, Portugal - no plans but what we make for ourselves )

The thing that never keeps being amazing to me is just how steeped in history Europe is, particularly in their architecture and their town design. Like, buildings that are hundreds of years old, still being used in the function for which they were built. Upgraded and developed and retrofitted on the inside, and sometimes the outside, but still...the function for which they were built.

Amazing.

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Wednesday evening, I went out to the Jardim do Morro, a garden on the south-side of the city, with beautiful views westwards over the river. I ended up at the restaurant just below it that overlooks the river and had dinner, although I was originally planning to have dinner back at the apartment. Gotta say, the food was excellent: squid ink linguine with garlic and tomato prawns, and a dessert of tiramisu.

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Thursday...I was kind of hoping to do a tour up to Geres National Park, but I didn't book the space I saw in time, and so that opportunity is gone.

I ended up chilling in various restaurants and coffee shops for the day, heading back to the room to sleep and write for a couple of hours. I had a good lunch and a good dinner and a decent sleep, and was ready (so I thought) for the next day's travel...