A Whimsical Night

Hi, it's Olivia (to be completely honest, I might ditch this phrase, because who else would it be?) and I haven't blogged in an awful while due to circumstances - frankly, you can blame Portuguese wifi. But moving on, I thought I would blog a laid-back version of a few days back, what I saw and what I felt. My relatives had come to stay and my uncle all the way from NZ, so we were making the most of it with big family outings. I mean, since then I had been absorbed by my house, lying in my room with plenty of English entertainment; books, for example, in a language I could understand, and water that hadn't already been visited by a fly. The cooler, damper temperature was a thing I didn't find vital to appreciate, and it was for the best when my relatives came to stir me from the Netflix-and-buckets-of-tea recovery stage after the shock of discovering there was no pool in the back garden when I arrived home. Portugal still felt imprinted on me, by my tanned skin (I call it tanned, others call it normal), salty dry hair (nope, not a good thing) and suitcase full of flip flops and dresses. I mean, after 4 weeks under the sun and at the mercy of my grandparents, I was glad that the modern approach from England hadn't left me in the dirt. Premium time had to be wasted on the last few episodes of Humans and GBBO. If you didn't already know, my tastes vary from mysterious, potentially dangerous synthetics and sugared Victoria sponges.

Once I was hauled out of my house, I came to enjoy the outside, and even the spitting rain as it left dark spots over my unfortunately bright clothes. We enjoyed a walk along our local canal, and the weather started to improve. My favourite feeling is the sense of being soaked and then sun-drying off,  the water evaporating off your skin, like I was a grape being positively sun-ripened.

The river is full of barges - slim, rustic boats with wooden decking and peeling paint. They bob along side the path, amongst serene swans and ducks with tails poised high in the air. Occasionally one goes by as they sail the river, but most are moored as cheaper accommodation, and stay rooted for months. Once the canal breaks off into the outskirts of town, my relatives, my brother and I descend further to the sunny-spelled squares and enjoy ice cream. I go for a Chocoholic Heaven (despite my wanting, the most adventurous ice cream flavour I have bought is mint choc chip) and choose a bench which is flaking away and not too far away from busking musicians. Photographs are taken, and my granddad attempts a selfie with us all, until our interests are led astray in another direction; the bridge. We gaze out transfixed, swarmed by other tourists with chunky cameras trying to snap the view. It's not long before we break away from the crowd and board a bus home, which involves an interesting conversation with my brother about bus fare prices. (If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic).


It's a day later or so when we enjoy dinner, and a beautiful sunset ends the evening. The river, which runs all the way from town to the restaurant, casts a stunning reflection. My camera caught it, and if you can't tell, the picture at the left of this text is upside down. Or is it...? (Yes. It is. Cross my heart. Sorry.)
Sunsets worth capturing don't occur often where I live, so I took many pictures to remember it from.

Do you ever get the feeling that you're so very small, as small as an ant, smaller in fact, in the scale of the world? Do you ever get so overwhelmed by the beauty of the planet, that all of your worries (or most of, because let's face it, what's going on in my head all of the time is 90% worrying) disappear? You can just feel the rhythmic beat of your heart in your chest, buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum, and hear the breeze in your ears and see the hairs rise on your arms. That's what the sunset felt like. It didn't last for long, but that was okay; the amount of photos I'd taken, you could've put them in a time lapse and they would've lasted longer than the sunset did.

Hues of salmon pink, stark against the black silhouettes of spiked trees, baby blues gradually spilling into the landscape like water washing away a stain, washing away the clouds' sunlit mouths. Dusk falls, a veil of sequins prominently sparkle as the sky hugs them in shadowy light; the wind stirs the escaping clouds over the horizon and the birds chirping disperses into whispering breeze.