I think of all the 'rest days' Jess and I've had in Portugal, this one was the most deserved! My bones were aching from the hours spent on the bus the day before so moving in the morning was a struggle. Still, Jess had been asked the day before by the AirBnB owner if we could water his plants in the backyard given how hot it was so I was up around 10:30am-ish to get outside and water the plants. I was also exceptionally hungry and we had very little food in the house so I figured the sooner we get up the sooner we can go shopping for food. We did have 2 Naplolanas left so Jess and I ate those to hold us over before we took to the streets to get some actual food. We got a lot of the stuff we'd gotten before (like bread cause we sure do eat a lot of toast) but we got some new stuff to try too! Now that we knew we had money to spend (that we kind of have to spend cause we already exchanged it and we're def not exchanging it back) we felt more free to splurge a little! That being said we got 1 chocolate croissant for 80 cents and 2 donuts for 35 cents each. Big spenders, eh. We also checked out the 1 Euro store right next door to the MiniPreco we typically shopped at to see what they had and ended up buying a couple of fun little goodies there to try!
Back at our home-away-from-home we set up the back balcony real nice and had a lovely little brunch of donuts, croissant, orange juice, and chocolate straw-stick things called canudinhos recheados. I have not mentioned these chocolate straw-sticks before but Jess and I have eaten at least 3 bags of them since we got here and we bought 2 more at the store that we're gonna fly through. We can't get enough of them. They have them in America but Jess and I can never afford them so we don't buy them but we literally love them the bits and cannot stop eating them. I eat at least 5 every time I write my blog entries. I'm eating them now. I'm not gonna survive without them in America where I go back to being even more of a cheap Scrooge than I am here. The donuts and croissant we new though and they were amazing! The donuts in Portugal are so soft and sweet and the ones we got were coated in sugar and we just knew we had to get more! And the croissant was just loaded inside with the very best chocolate while the outside was a very doughy and sweet croissant, quite different to how flakey we make them in America or how they made them in Paris and it was wonderful!
An excellent selection of food resulted in a lovely brunch where we excitedly yammered about how proud of ourselves we were for the day before's achievements. We think we're rather brave. True adventurers and all that. And we got a lot of information we needed! I remembered at brunch that we had wifi again and sent Jess all the notes I had taken at the castle for her to organize and work through. Having done that, Jess disappeared to her living room to deal with her research and putz off a little leaving me to chill in the bedroom where I did just that. I did such things as: laid down, played on my phone, posted on Instagram and Facebook, and wrote my excessively long blog post, all of which felt like a perfectly valid use of my time after the day I'd had before.
Jess emerged from her hovel just as we were both getting hungry so I turned on the oven (like an expert) and made up the kinda-sorta pre-made hamburgers we'd bought at a 2 for 1 deal in MiniPreco. There were two hamburgers topped with cheese, each in between two very nice hamburger buns. The burger was cooked already so all I had to do was warm it up! While Jess and I usually eat in the living room and watch TV, it was actually still daylight out when we decided to have dinner so I set us up on the back balcony again. We each had our hamburgers which we're excellent! They come pre-stuffed with onions and seasoning, something we never do in America! We also tried two soft drinks we'd gotten at the Euro store: A mango compal and a leite com chocolate ucal. The first was a very sweet drink that is mango-flavoured but has a host of other fruits and vegieveget mixed in with it and it was excellent. The second was basically just very good chocolate milk! We were satisfied with both, even more so as we'd only paid 1.20 for both drinks combined! Dinner was filled with chatter as we discussed our plans for the next day. We'd both liked the zoo when we saw the outside of it and formally decided that's what we were going to do. It would cast 21.50 each, but we decided we had the money and it would be fun! We haven't been to a zoo in forever!
Dinner was followed by a period of moving conversation as we cleared the table, did dishes, and meandered about the house discussion our plans. Eventually Jess took a shower, then I took mine so we'd be fresh and ready for the zoo the next day (and just to get the gross bus-ness off us). We returned to our respective areas, which both of us brought snacks to because we'd gotten a lot of chocolates and sweets at the store and we naturally have to eat all of them before we leave! We ate and rested right up until about midnight when we both tottered off to bed, plan in mind for an exciting and semi-adventurous trip to the zoo!
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