Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

☰

Portugal — 6, Fuseta Beach

2019-03-04

It's been two weeks since we started traveling, and even with photos, I can't perfectly reconstruct the timeline. So this post will be a bit messy, and I'll be diluting the photos with all sorts of useful facts about the country.

We went for a walk along Fuseta beach to see what's what right here, nearby. A young woman with pink hair and glasses leaning cheerfully over a huge rusty sphere completely covered in mussels, against a coastal landscape background.

Anita with my workout band Anita with my workout band (no pun intended). The band was later swallowed by St. Michael's Cave in Gibraltar, but before that, it served me well. It's much easier to stretch with it than just by waving your arms around, which is oh so relevant for my bad back.

A large old rusty crane stands on a paved promenade, and on the right, two adults with a child and a stroller look at the many boats moored in the harbor. Photo by Vika

The population of Portugal is 10 million people, which is five times that of Latvia, while the area is only one and a half times larger. Yet, you don't feel any particular crowding, except in the big cities. Faro, where we were supposed to fly into, is quite a small town, 60 thousand people including the suburbs, and it's located on the Atlantic coast, just not exactly on the western tip of Europe, but further south. That's exactly why Ryanair flies here on the cheap from the UK and Germany, but alas, not from Latvia.

Sandy shore with patches of marsh vegetation and shallow water. On the horizon, there's a strip of white city buildings under a gray cloudy sky. The beach in Fuseta is somewhat swampy, and all sorts of hardy stuff grows there: the water can be a bit salty here, and the soil is poor, but hey, a plant's gotta live!

A sandy beach by a calm body of water under an overcast sky. A windsurfer with a bright sail is visible on the water, and a person and a small dark animal are walking along the shore. The wind is strong, which is taken advantage of by all sorts of windsurfers and landsailers (the same thing, but on land).

A sandy beach by a calm bay under a cloudy sky, a windsurfing sail stands on the shore, and a small stone pier with a red-and-white lighthouse is visible in the distance. Photo by Vika

A baby stroller stands on a sandy beach with many footprints in the foreground. In the distance, silhouettes of people and a building on stilts by the water are visible under an overcast sky, with sun rays breaking through. Photo by Vika

A yellow-and-red building on high stilts with round windows towers over a vast shoal under an overcast sky. The sun breaks through the clouds, creating a bright silhouette of the structure and reflections on the wet surface. Photo by Vika

Clear paw prints of a dog on a wet sandy beach, scattered with small shell fragments and dry seaweed. Photo by Vika

Anita contemplating eating a prickly pear The prickly pear is an edible succulent, and we even tasted one little flower. Everything on the prickly pear is edible, which is why it's often made into jam, and in Malta, they even make a liqueur out of it, which is the national drink.

Not my hat, I was just standing nearby Not my hat, I was just standing nearby.

A seagull with spread wings stands on a dome-shaped street lamp against a gray cloudy sky. Below, the top of a rusty metal truss is visible, and another bird flies in the distance. Photo by Vika

A row of small fishing and pleasure boats moored by a paved promenade in the calm waters of a canal or bay. In the background, the opposite bank with vegetation is visible under a cloudy sky.

After strolling along the beach, we headed to Faro for groceries.

Everyone's got their thing, mine is tea Everyone's got their thing, mine is tea. While Andrey is wandering around eco-bio shops, I'm brewing gongfu style right on the steps.

Orange tree Photo by Vika As in any southern country, there are plenty of oranges and tangerines that bear fruit 2-3 times a year. Fresh off the tree, they smell divine; as for the taste — it's the luck of the draw.

Vika snapped away at the Portuguese love for ornate structures.

Close-up of a building roof with curved terracotta tiles and decorative spires under an overcast sky. Below, a beige wall with a window adorned with a wrought-iron grille is visible, along with a fragment of a light pink tower on the right.

Pale pink building facade with white stucco, orange decorative tiles, and blue-and-yellow azulejos around closed roller shutters. A black street lamp is visible on the left, with wires stretching along the wall.

A gray gecko with bumpy skin and a striped curved tail sits upside down on a white textured wall. Small red dots are visible on the lizard's paws and head.

Facade of a two-story white building with a red tiled roof, decorated with floral pattern tiles around the windows, one of which has a small wrought-iron balcony, and the doorway. In front of it, a light-colored car and several electric scooters are parked on the cobblestone pavement.

A white stork stands in a nest on a domed turret of an old building's roof. A decorative stone element is visible nearby, and below is a fragment of a tiled roof under an overcast sky.

The railway runs right along the sea, super cool! The railway runs right along the sea, super cool!

View from the water of the city waterfront with multi-story buildings under dense gray clouds.

We arrived at the promenade, where we were caught in the nets of a very tanned girl. Her name was Paola again, and she offered a boat tour to the nearby islands. After checking TripAdvisor, I found out that tourists are usually happy with the tour, and the company is actually the most popular one. We couldn't sign up for the tour that day because Andrey was chilling at the flat working, but we booked it for Thursday. We went for two islands, 25 euros a pop. I paid for everyone with my card, which once again gave me a reason to think about how inconvenient it still is to settle up with each other when you're not the only one spending money.

If we all had cards from an emergent bank like N26 or Revolut, we could have sorted it all out amongst ourselves. However, only if it was the exact same one, which is totally not an option. The EU is thinking about us, and payments in the Eurozone will soon become instant, but typing in all these IBANs still reeks of the Middle Ages. Good thing they at least canceled the rest of the mandatory fields — but Swedbank, for instance, still demands you enter the first and last name, I really don't know how legal that is.

It would be ideal to use money transfer requests in the form of payment URLs. Not to be confused with chavs in Latvian slang, I mean hyperlinks like "sendmoney:". Such a link could be sent to anyone through any messenger, rather than how it is now — only to clients of your own bank.

Ah, dreams, dreams. Only the benevolent European Commission is capable of forcing capitalists to cooperate. Fortunately, several laws have recently been passed to open up the financial sector, and there is hope that working with financial info will soon become more convenient. Who knows, maybe the URLs will arrive in time too.

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