It’s the last day of my own summer vacation as I write this, and that’s a little daunting—there are more than 300 pictures to get through, and a lot of other stuff I need to deal with today to get ready for a transition back to real life tomorrow.
I’m therefore going to try to keep the text to a minimum. My own definition of “terse” doesn’t always align with the universally accepted one, so we’ll see how that goes.
(I’ll also note that although there’s not a lot of video, I do intend to mash it all together and publish it here at some point in the next month or so, if only to get my video editing skillz back in gear. There’s simply no time for that today, and this post gets published today!)
We pick things up in late June: specifically, on Skt. Hans Aften.
We had long agreed as a family that we would burn our own witch this year, and that her defining characteristic would be a face mask. We talked about how cathartic that would be—even those of us who didn’t know the word cathartic.
So I cut a form out of cardboard:
And Maddie gave it a face, dressed it in one my old (1996) tee shirts, and affixed the mask.
Let the healing begin!
It’s not exactly the longest night of the year (it’s two days after), but I’m always happy when sunset is just beginning a little before 22:00:
There was a reason for taking this next picture. I no longer recall what that reason was.
Trine used one of her Tuesdays off to take Maddie off to Tisvilde (it’s a selfie, hence Trine’s strained expression):
Meanwhile (at some point around all this: these shots are undated), Molli was getting her very first driving lesson. These are the very first pictures of Molli Malou behind the wheel of a car (photo credit: Freja).
Our chef at PensionDanmark grows a lot of herbs and veggies in the garden boxes around our building: this is the first time I’d ever seen an artichoke plant:
The last few days of work involved a lot of ice cream.
And as usual, we were all given “summer vacation gifts.” This year’s were clearly based on the assumption that things would be a little more restrictive than they actually were by the time July rolled around.
Speaking of less restrictive: what’s notable about this picture is that it’s the first time the Oslo boat had sailed in about eight months:
And speaking of milestones, on the first of July I logged kilometer 4000 (about 2500 miles) on the new bike:
(If not for the lockdown, I would have been well over 10,000 km by now.)
At her request, we celebrated Molli’s 17th birthday with a brunch downtown.
Seventeen!
Molli Malou, you are an amazement and we are so proud of the young woman you’ve become! It’s staggering to realize that your next birthday pictures will be of a legal adult.
Everyone loves a buffet, but most of us lack Maddie’s uncanny ability of making every plate truly unique.
Molli’s super power, on the other hand, is drawing lovely patterns into the cream in her coffee or the strawberry jam in her yogurt:
After brunch we crossed the street for a visit to Tivoli.
It was the day of the Danish quarterfinal versus Czechia in the European Cup playoffs: the big screen on Tivoli’s main stage had been set up to show the game, and there were thousands and thousands of fans already assembled for a game that wouldn’t be starting for another five or six hours.
Maddie wanted to the Golden Tower, but couldn’t quite work up the nerve: her now 17-year-old big sister showed her there was nothing to be afraid of:
(Don’t worry, Maddie, we’ll do it together one of these days!)
We were part of a very small minority in the park that wasn’t all decked out in red and white.
(I thought I looked pretty sharp in blue and white:)
The excitement for the game wasn’t limited to Tivoli, obviously: here we are passing through Kultorvet, where another big screen would be showing the game:
Those were surely some happy fans: Denmark beat the Czech Republic 2-1 and advanced to the semi-finals for the first time since 1992.
On a visit to El Giganten (a big box electronics store), Maddie experimented with different gaming set ups.
And she and her mother recorded a tune that will surely be trending on Spotify by the time I publish this blog.
(Narrator: “He was lying. That mic wasn’t even plugged into anything.”)
My new monitor arrived at our door on Monday morning. For a guy who spends way too much time on his computer, it’s a life-changer.
My last romp with Didi before we leave for Portugal:
And now I’ll bore you with a bunch of historical record pictures of the property after I’d tidied it up enough that we wouldn’t be coming home to knee-high weeds:
During which tour I noticed that our capricious apple tree seems to be on its way to giving us some actual apples this year:
We flew to Faro on July 7. When she discussed her phobia with a flight attendant, he suggested she occupy the empty row in front of our three seats. She made very good use of the space.
…but Maddie didn’t seem to mind being restricted to a single seat.
And heeeeeeere’s Faro!
There was a copy of The Portugal News on Gert’s kitchen table, and its headline was ominous:
But that’s not what caught my eye. It was the circulation numbers that shocked me:
Newspapers have been printing their circulation numbers my entire adult life. I have never seen a printed paper boasting about its Facebook followers and website views, however.
But never mind that: we were finally in paradise!
To avoid having to explain the comings and goings of various characters, I’m going to give you a very quick summary of the plot right now.
Trine, Maddie, and I flew to Faro on July 7, as you’ve seen. Morfar met us at the airport. It was just the four of us until July 10, when we drove Morfar to the airport and hung around long enough to pick up Molli and Kalle, who flew in on the same plane that would then take Morfar up to Denmark. It would then be the five of us in paradise and Morfar up on Hybenvej until the 17th, when Molli and Kalle would fly back to Denmark: then on the 21st, Trine and Maddie and I would fly back to Denmark on the same plane that would be bringing Morfar back to paradise.
Just so that’s out of the way.
We now return to a lot of vacation pictures that probably don’t need a whole lot of explanation to regular readers of this blog (who are the only readers of this blog).
(We should have beat England in the semi-final, and were in fact the first to score. But it was not Denmark’s day.)
Just for the record, these pictures are from a dinner at the restaurant Piri Piri in Almancil:
One of the most wonderful things about vacation is just sleeping, and we did a damn lot of that.
We knew the rules in Portugal were much more restrictive than they’d ever been in Denmark. In fact, we were informed that just to enter the country we’d have to have our “EU Corona Passport” updated to show that we were all either (1) fully vaccinated, (2) had already had the virus, or (3) had tested negative within the past 72 hours. We had scrambled to ensure we all met these requirements, and were then surprised to make it onto our plane, through our flight, and out through Portuguese customs without having been asked by anyone to provide proof of our conditions. So we weren’t sure how strictly the people of Portugal would be following the draconian measures about masking (masks to be worn everywhere). Sure, everyone in the airport and on the airplane was totally masked, but what would it be like out on the streets?
Our first visit to Vilamoura answered that question: everyone was masked, everywhere, whenever they weren’t sitting down.
Period.
And Vilamoura had a new concession:
But it was still as lovely as ever.
This is the pool at night. We did a lot of night swimming. Few things are as gloriously refreshing as a midnight skinny dip on a hot night!
We continued our trend of watching a Star Trek episode each evening, and Maddie did a lot of reading and drawing.
Molli, meanwhile, was keeping us posted on the wonderful meals she was making for herself back on Hybenvej:
Maddie, Trine, and I wanted to run some quick errands the morning on which we’d have to be taking Morfar to the airport and picking up Molli and Kalle.
Just a few hundred meters from the house, however, one of the tires went flat.
It was about 35 degrees outside, there was no shade, and we just had a couple of hours before we’d have to be on our way to the airport.
That was probably my least favorite moment of the trip. (In the event, however, it was really just a miserable twenty minutes of switching tires, and it wouldn’t have been trying at all if the temperature had been cooler and the Beemer’s tire-change equipment had been better labeled.)
And we made it to the airport on time.
Meanwhile, we knew that Molli and Kalle had boarded their flight without incident (Mormor even sent us proof):
Molli herself sent us a selfie to show us they were boarding:
Molli was therefore able to give her Morfar a hug right after deboarding—just prior to his boarding.
Unfortunately something went wrong with the Algarve sky that day. A weird gray haze—not clouds, just haze—settle over us. It was scorchingly hot—it got up to 38C (100F) that day—but it just felt weird in that haze.
(Yeah, you can see the weirdness wasn’t that off-putting, but we had promised Molli the same cloudless blue skies and bright sunshine we’d been experiencing before her arrival, and the Algarve sky had made liars of us.)
Since the haze diminished the joys of lying around the pool, we took our trip into Faro.
But wait, you say, what’s wrong? Was the haze that bad? Why is Maddie suddenly so upset?
Our beloved eyeglass man, the mannequin with whom we’ve been taking pictures of the girls on every visit to Faro since 2012, was gone.
Maddie and I had run over to check him out while waiting for our food to be served at Faaron, the steakhouse where we always have at least one meal. We also found that the Zara across the aller from Optimax, where we’d done a little shopping now and then, was no longer a Zara:
Can’t tell what those dark shapes in there might be? Have a look:
Horrible haze, no eyeglasses man, monsters where there once was lovely women’s fashion: not how the world was supposed to be! Plus, we’d been walking around in those stupid masks in this stupid heat. Plus Maddie’s hamburger was not very good.
We did our best to enjoy the meal (which, in all honesty, was very good but nowhere as good as we all remembered).
We decided that maybe we’d been looking in the wrong place for eyeglasses man, so after lunch we made a group pilgrimage.
Alas, we had been to the right store. He just wasn’t there.
Then we had a thought: the store was clearly closed. We’d never been there when it was closed. Was it possible eyeglasses man hid inside the store outside of opening hours?
Why, yes! Yes, it was not only possible but true! He was there!
Yes, dear permanent historical record, that’s Maddie crying literal tears of joy because the Optimax mannequin was still around.
We resolved to try Faro again another day—during opening hours—and we pointed the car toward Vilamoura for some ice cream.
Facemasks. Outdoors. In unspeakable heat, with ample social distancing. Insane.
It’s odd, that haze, isn’t it?
But plenty of glare for all that, apparently:
One of my favorite Maddie pics of the whole trip:
Molli spotted a little crab or two crawling around the rocks alongside the water’s edge. She cooed at how adorable they were.
As we all started looking, we could see the whole waterfront was literally crawling with them:
Adorable!
So let’s walk through the Molli logic: if you’ve got ten legs, including two equipped with pincers, and you’re armored, and you crawl around the muck of the seaside, you’re cute and precious. If you’ve got eight legs and just hang out in a corner, no armor, no pincers, then Daddy must be summoned to kill you—with extreme prejudice—and dispose of your corpse.
There was an Optimax (also closed: it was still Sunday) in Vilamoura: Maddie ran up to check whether they had an eyeglasses man.
(Narrator: “They did not.”)
But look at that weird plant in the lower left, above. Yeah, it caught my eye too. Let’s zoom in a little more.
Holy crap… what is that blossom?
It looks like a plant designed by H.R. Giger and planted in hell.
Back at the house in the haze:
Finally it was time for the final: England and Italy running to a draw, settled with a shootout.
Meh.
We woke up Monday morning to a hazeless sky. We would scarcely see another cloud the entire rest of our stay.
We took a little shopping trip at the Mall of the Sea. There was a guy doing minigolf with his kid: outdoor minigolf, with no one else on the “course,” temperatures around 34C, and he’s wearing a mask.
Insantiy… But we played by the rules.
Is it not however miraculous that although you are at great risk of infection or transmission if you are outdoors and several meters away from people, and must therefore wear a mask, the mere act of sitting down indoors prevents all transmission and thereby renders masks unnecessary?
And speaking of miracles… well, a sunset isn’t technically a miracle, but it can certainly be something.
Okay, wait, maybe this is my favorite Maddie pic of the trip: diving at the exact moment that the H-Bomb goes off in Loulé!
Are Molli and Kalle not simply the height of continental sophistication?
I was surprised how green the peppers on the pepper trees were: I forgot that we ordinarily visit Portugal much later in the season.
I love the next shot simply as a photograph. (That’s Mars, by the way, not the moon.)
One big downside to our visit was that although the water park we like to visit had been open about a week before we came (I checked), it was shut down by emergency government decree a few days before we arrived:
…Their “preventive measures” page (which I accessed from my phone instead of my computer) was very bitterly worded: they were clearly angry about the shutdown.
They appreciate everyone’s “collaboration,” and they talk about guidlines “dictated” by the government. Yow, kitty’s got claws!
Next on the checklist: a visit to Loulé.
I don’t want to know:
And so back to safety:
Next adventure: off to the beach.
Yep: masks on a boardwalk.
But none on the beach, thank god. Not once we laid out our towels, anyway.
Maddie and I enjoyed a lot of night swims, and the lighting around sunset was often spectacular.
The pictures below were taken by Trine while I was taking the pictures above.
Below, another one of those shots that needs to be captioned “What if I never find out who’s a good girl?”
And finally: a trip to Faro for no other purpose than to get our pictures with eyeglasses man (and maybe grab some dinner if anywhere caught our eye):
As if we don’t already have enough pictures in here, I’m going to have to drag in the old eyeglass man pictures to get the full series for each girl.
Because I absolutely love having this series.
Eldest first:
The Maddie sequnce:
Now a few shots from the weirdest shop in Faro (that we ventured into):
I don’t know what the market is for stereotype figurines, but this shop definitely has it covered.
Back to our meanderings around Faro.
First visit since 1992 (which was in May) where the market and carnival weren’t set up outside old town:
But Faro is otherwise as crumbly as ever:
We sometimes used the Google Translate app to get direct translations of Portuguese. Very helpful in grocery stores, less useful as a tourism aide.
Now the postcard pics:
Dinner that night was Kalle’s treat—his parents’ treat, anyway—and Kalle decided, with considerable coaching from his girlfriend, if I’m not mistaken—that dinner should be in Vilamoura rather than Faro.
On the ride from Faro to Vilamoura: a picture of someone driving alone in their car in a mask.
(I had asked Maddie to take the picture because these days it’s all “picture or it didn’t happen,” and I myself find it so hard to believe that anyone would be insane or frightened enough to wear a mask when alone in their own car on a highway that I wanted the proof as much for myself as for anyone else who might challenge the assertion that such people existed.)
Ah, Vilamoura…
It was a very lovely lunch, and very sweet of Kalle and his parents to treat us!
Night fell after we ate and strolled with our ice creams.
I’ll bore you now with some quick shots from “the orchard:”
The peaches were beautiful, by the way: only after we returned to Denmark did Morfar ask why we hadn’t eaten any.
“We wanted to, but they weren’t ripe,” Trine said.
“Of course not,” Morfar answered, “they’re peaches. You take them off the tree, and two days later they’re perfect.”
Opportunity lost.
Lesson learned.
And suddenly, alas, it was time to return Molli and Kalle to the airport for their trip back to Copenhagen.
We were sad to see them go, but somehow we persisted.
The three of us took a trip to Albufeira.
We were able to have a Facetime chat with Molli while seated there at lunch, so it felt a little like the four of us were together. A little.
It really is a gorgeous little town.
We’d learned our lesson back in 2019: Albufeira is lovely, but its beach is even lovelier. So this time we brought towels, swimsuits, and lotion, and we enjoyed a spectacular beach day.
I took that picture: Maddie hated it (wrongly, I think) because she thought the shadows on her face made her look monstrous.
So I let her take some selfies with my phone to be sure we got a picture she could live with.
I’m supremely happy but obviously haven’t mastered the art of smiling for a selfie.
Fun fact: the pro-democracy protests in Cuba were going full-tilt that day.
I will never understand the thinking behind a communist-themed night club celebrating the racist, misogynistic, homophobic mass murderer Che Guevara. Unless the drinks are free, minorities and homosexuals are denied entrance (and are tortured and killed should they insist on entering), and they’ve got rape rooms in that back: then it would make perfect sense as a “Club Havana.”
Back in paradise: a happy tanning selfie, and something almost like a smile:
Ah, the relaxation… it never got old!
Nor did the Algarve sunsets:
Ironically, the water park opened up for business on the very day Molli and Kalle left us. I only discovered it by accident, when seeking a hail mary alternative for something to do on our penultimate day of vacation.
I was desperately seeking an alternative because I’d suggested a day trip to Spain, which had got Maddie very excited, but a little research suggested it wouldn’t actually be that interesting: most of southern Spain within easy driving distance—47 minutes to the nearest Spanish town on the coast, according to Google Maps—didn’t offer anything very different from what was available to us in Portugal. So I thought, what if the water park was open? And lo!
‘Twas:
I love this sequence:
We had a blast—we were there from 1130 to 1730 and could easily have stayed longer if the park didn’t close at 1800… and if, alas, we weren’t leaving the very next day.
We decided we’d wrap up our day with a final ice cream in Vilamora.
And then our final Algarve sunset:
Forgot to mention it (trying to be terse, after all), but those night swims were interesting with respect to fauna: as the sun began to set each evening, the sky was suddenly alive with sparrows, zipping around and sometimes buzzing the pool. Gradually their numbers would diminish, and as it darkened their absence would be filled with bats: fewer in number, but just as reckless in flight.
I did get some pictures, but all you can see are black blobs against an indigo background. So to hell with them.
Finally it was the morning of our last day. One last chance to splash around beneath the blazing sun and azure skies of paradise.
And then it was time for our goodbyes.
Goodbye, sweet Flash.
Goodbye, barky Blue.
Goodbye, house.
I neglected to mention that with the blown tire and lack of air conditioning in Morfar’s car, we’d opted to get a cheap little rental. It wasn’t a great car—it was a little cramped with 5 passengers—but it was air conditioned and it got us around just fine.
Except one day when I forgot to set the parking brake (which I really almost never, ever forget thanks to our own sloped driveway at home), and the car drove itself up onto the lawn and into a stone restraining wall. Banged up the front right quarterpanel. Not a giant smash, but a few scratches and a slightly dislodged (but still working) headlight. So I spent most of the last five or six days of the trip with a knot in my stomach: how much was that going to cost us?
When we dropped the car at the rental place, the inspector noted it right away. And was pretty relaxed about it.
Not as big a deal as I’d feared: nothing like it, in fact. Not cheap, but nowhere near the budget-buster I’d been dreading.
In the picture below, Maddie is just chilling on the pavement while we wait for the shuttle to the airport, but the relief she’s exuding is similar to the relief I was feeling.
We went into the airport, ate some terrible food, and proceeded to the gate.
Where we met Morfar, fresh off his own flight from Copenhagen, on the very plane we were about to take back to it.
Then it was time to board…
And send Molli a pic to let her know we were on our way:
A quick and not too uncomfortable flight, that Trine handled supremely well.
And by 23:00 local time, we were home.
In time to find that Molli and her friend had apparently been enjoying beer bongs in our absence….
Well, hell: she’s seventeen. It’s legal. I probably would have done the same.
(Except that beer bongs weren’t mass-produced in the 80s. We had to find our own stupid ways of drinking too much beer!)
Meanwhile, during our absence, there’d been one day where Molli and Kalle were in Portugal, Morfar was away from our house, and Moster Mette was tied up with other obligations. Chris and Maria were kind enough to tend Didi for the day, and sent us some pictures of Mathilde with Didi.
And it’s a good thing, because there were indications that Didi had been up to some mischief in our absence:
That’s about it. Sic transit gloria sommerferie 2021.
Rather than waste time going back to edit and check for typos, inaccuracies, and other stupidities I may have committed in my rush to get this done, I’m just going to save and publish and move on with the rest of my day so I’m ready to face reality tomorrow.
(Narrator: “He wasn’t going to be ready for reality tomorrow.”)
Trine and I are back to work tomorrow: the girls have two more weeks of vacation. Molli will be working at the bakery, continuing with driver’s ed, and socializing. Maddie will have one final week of R&R, then a week of handball camp.
And by the time I post the next (and surely shorter) entry, we’ll be right back in the regular grind.
Hopefully we’ll be able to keep these killer tans, though.
Lastly, if we learned one thing on our summer vacation, it was this: when in Portugal, wear mascara!
Great blog. Looks like everyone really had a good time. We were told the ‘haze’ was African Sand.
Florida does not allow mascara.
AML
Dad, Doug, Pop-pop