The adventure has begun!
I am back in Portugal! Here to ride my bike for 2 weeks in a town along the southern coast, Lagos. This website, under cycling, says that I was first here in 2017. Looks like I lost 2020 and 2021 to Covid so that makes this the 6th year. I often tell people I have been coming for 8 or 10 years, Sounds more impressive.
After the first year or so, I follow the same routine. I fly into Lisboa. The flights leave from Boston at like 9pm and dumps you here in the early morning. I spend that first night in an airbnb and then take the train to Lagos. This is my second year at Central Hostel though I have stayed in 3 other airbnbs, or guest houses over the yearly visits. Given the choice, I have settled on early April. The overall idea is that in order to drink as much as I like to, I have to get the exercise of riding a peddle bike. That really does no work well in NH, we have snow and I hate sitting on a trainer in front of the TV so much that I just do not do it. Thus the pattern, 2 weeks riding in Cancun in January, February is Claremont CA, then Lagos and by late April I can again ride in NH.
In the last couple of days, I did see a reference in my notes to Lagos 2016. Once I am in NH, maybe I can go back and get some corroboration. My idea at the moment is that Kim and I have done a yearly budget so maybe I can look at Capital One credit charges for 2016 and see if Lagos appears.
I have been circling the topic of How does one survive and indeed thrive as a Ex-pat , a traveler and even as just a retiree? Certainly one very important key for me when traveling, especially when alone, is a small, however fleeting, community. I invariable use bars. Here in Lagos, in 2024 it is Shaker Bar. And usually key to any bar community is the bar keep. In this case it is Carley. I will bet there is a picture of her already posted in 2023 but I will be sure and take another. Carley creates community. I am able to, however inappropriately, slip into that community.
A great bar keep not only forms a relation with each regular but also provides a framework where the customers can easily talk to each other, I first became aware of this when I was almost 40 at a bar/restaurant in Davis Squire outside Boston, Gargoyles. The extraordinary bar keep was Paul. It was for me a rare man! I was so struck by how he seamlessly in the course of his work, provided an opening for the customers to talk to each other. It was a high end restaurant, We were rising young children, I was far far from a regular but I showed up enough that he know me. I even remember a couple of the others. They hopefully came a lot more frequently than I did.! There was even a facebook page for the group once the bar keep moved on!
I could bring 10? year old Emily in. We would be seated at the end of the bar, against the wall, so no one could sit next to Emily and she was fairly out of sight. Completely illegal in Boston.
I started out this riff to talk about surviving in life. I have mentioned Carley. The other regular at Shaker is Jim, who likes to call himself Jimbo. Now of course there are many many other regulars. Carley even has a 50+ year old woman expat who brings her lunch so that she can have a chat, and a drink of course. The customers are a lot of expats, as is a lot of Lagos but Carley also has attracted some died in the wool Portuguese. She is very cognizant of keeping Shaker open year round, while the other bars close for the winter when the tourists are gone, just to provide a place for these people, and of course not coincidentally, a job for Carley!
A few thoughts on travel as this Lagos trip comes to an end for me. Travel means living with flexibility. Kim might claim that is something I can’t do but I would disagree. Of course you can travel and be inflexible. You just live in a bubble and throw money at any breaks. I don’t pretend to really be out there on a limb. I can always through money at the problem. So I do have a “mental buffer” but I certainly think I rarely use it. The attempt on my part to adjust drinking levels has thrown my whole travel world in a spin cycle. I have actually been pleasantly surprised at how well Cancun and CA went in that regard, I have not really written about it for Lagos. There is a LOT of non-alcoholic beer here, all be it very bland as compared to US standards.
I am not going to take the time to really talk about flexibility here. Just noting that every year every trip changes and I have to decide how I am going to deal with that change. I would not be at all honest if I did not tell you I would LOVE to be back in my seat with Valentino each night at Baffi Bar!
This page is meant to be an introduction, an overview. I will slowly flesh out the trip with the pages listed below. Given the small writing staff, me, it takes a while to get any real amount of content!