Wednesday night with little sleep—not a good start; Thursday morning 4.5 hour bus ride to NYC with no sleep—doing fine; 2 hour bus ride to JFK with no sleep—doing okay; 8 hours on a plane to Dublin with maybe 15-30 minutes of sleep—I have felt better; 4 hours in airport with heavy breakfast and a pint—maybe not so helpful; 1.5 hours on a plane with no sleep—feeling rundown ; 2 hours in London’s Gatwick airport with no sleep—out right tired; 4.5 hours on a plane with a rowdy cricket team and 60 geriatric English tourist—wishing I was dead; Arrival at dusk in Faro—beautiful; taxi to hostel—10 euros; being dropped off in the dark at the wrong address—priceless.
I expected some difficulties and exhaustion so it wasn’t such a big deal, mostly because my driver only missed his mark by 50 feet. I walked in the right direction and saw the very small hostel sign on the next doorway. Whew! I checked in for 4 nights at $7/night including breakfast. I think my budget will be much easier to follow here. I was given breakfast coupons and a key to room four with the instructions to leave it at the desk whenever I went out. No problem…yet….
I settled into the room, taking a noisy top bunk, and after locking the door I went out to put my things in the hall locker when a 15ish Portuguese said in rough English that he needed my key to change his clothes in the room. He seemed nice and I was in no shape to argue. I gave him the key and he went to the common room to watch TV and laugh with his friends (???). After about 15 minutes of trying to stay awake I went out and asked for the key back. I was asleep when the knock came on the door. It was an English speaking hostel employee informing me that I had the only key to the room and I had locked everyone out. It was a shared key for all four people. Oops. I apologized for the mistake and slept for 10 hours.
Breakfast was 2 very large fresh crusty rolls, jam, butter, ham, cheese, cornflakes, yogurt, orange juice, and 50/50 coffee and hot milk. It was even served to us in a very clean cafeteria style line. Needless to say I was impressed after the pathetic and not free Danish at the DC hostel. With that good start I headed out.
The old town is only a couple blocks from the hostel, although it was too early when I went through; everything was closed. I wandered the streets a bit and went into a grocery store to get lunch supplies: grapes, a little round of some truly fantastic cheese, hot crusty bread, dried sausage, EV olive oil, a juice size box of wine (31 cents), and a six pack of Limao bottles (lemon drink). The olive oil drove up the price to 12 euros, otherwise it would have been 5 euros.
On my way back to the hostel I stopped in the public aviary park next door to the hostel and saw that they have free internet service. The internet at the hostel is 5 euros/30 min or 50 euros/week! No thanks.
Life is good. I am off to explore,
Tchau!
