My first sunburn is fading into a tan, I’m averaging 20km a day of walking, I’ve eaten the same meal three nights in a row, I’ve read four books and I’ve lost two consecutive nights of sleep to other people snoring. It’s official, I’m traveling again!

The last few years I wasn’t able to travel as much as I would have liked, due to my job, so I quit! More seriously, after 10 years, it was time to leave, and I thought I would take the opportunity to take a significant amount of time off to travel. The plan is a year away, but we’ll see.

My first stop is Europe (Portugal, Spain and France for a few days for a friend’s wedding), followed by a couple of weeks in Sri Lanka for a travel reunion with friends (we booked tickets before the recent bombings, but oh well), then Southern and Eastern Africa until I come home. I’ve never been anywhere in Africa and I’ve never been to Europe in the summer, so I’m pretty excited.

As per usual, I finished my last day of work on Thursday, and was on a flight on Monday. Luckily, I was very prepared as I had been planning since August, and even with spending the weekend in Whistler, I had the least stressful departure experience ever. Combined with my free lounge passes from my credit card, even the 5 hour layover in London Gatwick wasn’t too bad. I had a lot of cappuccinos to try and stay awake all the way to Faro, Portugal, where I was spending my first night. It didn’t quite work, as I slept an hour or two on the 5 hour flight to Portugal, but I was still hoping the lack of sleep would make me super tired and get over jetlag right away. I managed to catch a public bus from the airport and walked a couple of blocks to my hostel. I was a bit surprised when most of the people in my dorm were middle aged and older, as it wasn’t a particularly nice hostel, but I guess the proximity of the bus and train station was a selling factor for more than just me.

I slept a good portion of the night, and likely would have slept all of it, had it not been for the man snoring rather loudly in the other bed (you know it’s loud when your other roommates comment on it the next morning). I would also soon find this to be a problem with having older travelers in your room, as they seem more likely to snore. Loudly. Luckily, he was getting up for an early train.

I woke up expecting to haul my shorts out and sit up on the roof for breakfast, but quickly put on my pants, hiking boots and my puffy jacket and sat in the kitchen with hot coffee. It was cold! Seriously, a high of 16 with a definite wind chill! It was a cold wait for the train to Lagos.

I had to switch to a bus in Lagos to get to Rogil, where I was meeting my mom and stepdad, who arrived in Portugal about a week earlier. I had a couple of hours to kill before my bus left, so thought I would look around Lagos a bit, but the combination of getting used to a new backpack that was feeling heavy and the overly commercial, and the I-could-be-anywhere-in-the-world feeling (seriously, there was Hawaiian poke lunch places), made me retreat to the surprisingly decent bus station with free wifi.

After a short bus ride through farm country, I hopped off the bus and found my parents waiting for me. We grabbed an egg tart from the bakery (they had been eating them daily, but personally I find them a little sweet), and hit the road for a rather non-scenic route (to get there faster, which I appreciated as my legs felt like concrete) to get us to our first night’s stop Odeceixe, a cute little mountain town where I had fresh grilled Octopus followed by a very good and long sleep!

Books read update: 1 (on the plane).