portugal, north south and everything in between
I’ve been trying to work through not being stressed on vacation. For many, vacation is a time to relax, to unwind, to turn off their brain. For me, on brand, it’s the opposite. My brain is in maximization and optimization mode—how can I make the most efficient itinerary? Where are the best places to eat? What is the best thing to order? And as it may seem, while it allows me to see a lot leaving me super satisfied, it does interfere with the relaxation part of vacation. All of the mindfulness stuff I worked on before vacation has gone out of the window, with everyday and everything being so new. And I guess the point of mindfulness is to ground you when everything is changing to keep you rooted, so I am very aware that there is much room for me to grow. I’m working on it :)
Anyways, my family spent 3 days in lisbon, 1 day in Lagos, and 4 days in porto. I’m OBSESSED WITH LAGOS. The water is so brilliantly blue, and the rocky landscape is so unique. I hadn’t planned it in, but we ran out of things to do in lisbon so we took a 4 hour bus down one night, booked a hotel the night before, and spent the next day there before taking the bus down that night at 7 pm. Very quick trip, but the highlight of Portugal for me. Second favorite would be Sintra—love the castles, architecture, and landscape.
Meeting
On our Duoro Valley wine tour through Airbnb Experiences, I met some awesome people and also LOVED our tour guide Jose. Two girls were solo traveling and were so inspiring to me. One fell in love with a chef in Copenhagen and is just living there now doing her remote work as the CEO of this marketing startup, while the other is working in video editing and trying to get into documentary stuff. SUPER COOL and inspiring to me when I go solo travel in SEA because I’m SCARED. But they met each other on this tour and then spent the next day hanging out.
Jose was also awesome. He does this tour like every day of his life, and so I can imagine how like tiring it is and how he does the sammeeee exact spiel every single time. During lunch, he talked about how he used to work on cruises and how he was traumatized that on international waters, you can just throw stuff into the ocean. I’m assuming the cruise literally just dumped all of its trash into the ocean. That is soooo sad.
Eating
Oh my. Don’t ask about the vacation pounds.
Octo, Octo, Octo — Portugal is known for its seafood, and one thing they do well that the US does not really have is Octopus. I’ve eaten enough octopus that I don’t want to eat it again for months.
Francesinha — “is a Portuguese sandwich originally from Porto, made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat, and covered with melted cheese and a hot and thick spiced tomato and beer sauce. It is typically served with french fries” (Wikipedia). It sounds and looks ATROCIOUS, but as a foodie, I had to eat it. The Portuguese talk up this sandwich so much, but I was honestly so unimpressed and my stomach was NOT HAPPY after
Port — obviously when I’m in Porto, I have to drink port. It was my first time trying and I love! Its just honestly so sweet so hard to drink a lot of.
Pastel de Nata — oh my god. The first Pastel de Nata I took a bite of here literally blew my mind. The inside is SOO CUSTARDY while the outside is crispy, and you top with cinnamon and powdered sugar for that additional dimension of flavor. Insane. I’ve visited many different shops (Manteigaria, Fabrica de Nata, Pasteis de Belem) and they are all super similar but slighttttly different (might be in my head). My fave was Manteigaria — the custard was the smoothest IMO.
Fresh Seafood from Matosinhos — this is a fishing town near Porto and I had the best seafood of my life here. We got the biggest sardines of my life and turbot fish, all accompanied by a 12 euro bottle of delicious Duoro Valley white wine. The alcohol here is cheap AND delicious (makes me super sad about the alc value and taste in the US). The catch is grilled outside with just salt and oil and its *chef’s kiss*
Learning
On the train ride from Lisbon to Porto, I starting reading Surveillance Capitalism (thanks Lisa for continually telling me to read it haha). It was hard for me to start because the first pages are just so JARGONY and intellectual. My brain was NOT READY to process ANYTHING. However, as soon as I started reading, my mind was blown literally every page.
Literally just from the first chapter of the book:
“Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. ”
“Competitive pressures produced this shift, in which automated machine processes not only know our behavior but also shape our behavior at scale. With this reorientation from knowledge to power, it is no longer enough to automate information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us.”
“Digital connection is now a means to others’ commercial ends. At its core, surveillance capitalism is parasitic and self-referential. It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of labor, surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of every human’s experience.”
“Our dependency is at the heart of the commercial surveillance project, in which our felt needs for effective life vie against the inclination to resist its bold incursions. This conflict produces a psychic numbing that inures us to the realities of being tracked, parsed, mined, and modified. It disposes us to rationalize the situation in resigned cynicism, create excuses that operate like defense mechanisms (“I have nothing to hide”), or find other ways to stick our heads in the sand, choosing ignorance out of frustration and helplessness.”