Two top moments from our first 24 hours on the island.
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[00:00:00] Kelly: I got two memories that I wanna talk about.
[00:00:24] First is us landing in Sam, Miguel, and what we did that night, because it's become somewhat of a tradition. And so we, we ended up in Portugal.
[00:00:37] We don't speak Portuguese. We land in San Miguel and we can trace back one of our traditions. I think I, I mean, I think I know now is sardines and it comes from this first night. I have specific memories, but I want to hear your memories of that, that place we stayed that night, finding food. And the other one I think we should talk about is espresso 4:35 AM.
[00:01:04] So finding food
[00:01:06] Joseph: is for us a secondary or tertiary, uh, goal. It'll show up. Don't worry about. And even on the second trip, we had figured that out, like whatever, you just figure the food out. And so I think we, I think we needed to check in, or we, we didn't need to talk to anybody to get into that Airbnb, which means that we went super late and knew kind of roughly where it was, but not necessarily the roads ...
[00:01:38] I
[00:01:39] remember being on the phone, looking for a, um, grocery store and being like, wow, I guess I, it says this is a grocery, whatever. It's like a box floating in the air, out in the middle of where it doesn't seem like they are constrained for space on like a roundabout with no cars. Do you remember having to like take this random escalator up mm-hmm into the grocery store and just being.
[00:02:08] I was confused by that. And it was a little bit department store, like a Super Target of sorts, like t-shirts, and that is happening there, which is why I think we didn't understand it was a grocery store, but it was the closest place to get some kind of food. It's like roughly dark out. We had seen sunset or it was cloudy.
[00:02:27] It like all of that was happening and. and we didn't, we don't typically shop together. We just fan out and then sort of meet by the cash register with stuff. And I think we both had sardines or
[00:02:47] what you think sardines is a thing. No giant racks go of options. Yeah. In more than one place. Yeah. I love grocery stores.
[00:02:57] And I
[00:02:58] Kelly: have deep, I, I know you do. I have deep sardine connection with my grandfather, so I was all about the sardines and you. I, if you're from the, the US, you're not used to walking down big aisles of massive, massive things of smoked fish and all and all of that and that's happening.
[00:03:15] So we grab the sardines. I think we got some wine, some cheese, some crackers, and we stumble out and we go to find this, this, this house. And at this point I remember it being dark. It's dark. We, we find this house and you're so excited you, I found this place it's right on the ocean. It's gonna be amazing. It has a pool.
[00:03:36] We're gonna love it. And we pull up and okay, there's a code. How do we find the code? And you like, we, we stumble through that and we grab our bags and we're like, would definitely smoke and tired at this point. And we're trying to get through it. And I'm being like probably a little edgy and like, ah, here we go.
[00:03:53] We get in and it's like a duplex. wait, we're sharing with somebody. Like, I don't understand now. We're not actually sharing the room, but it's cut in half. The pool is shared and we get in and we drop our stuff and we break out the sardines and candidly, I wish I could do it right now. Well, you can hear the ocean out in the distance.
[00:04:13] We had like a bottle
[00:04:14] Joseph: red wine. We had been, that was the night. Like you get up whatever you fly. To Europe, like you sleep on the plane. We we'd fly from Amsterdam to Lisbon and go like, let's take another two and a half hour flight back the other direction. Then we bounce around the entire island. Right. We were smoked and we popped these cans open.
[00:04:43] And I don't know, I don't, we played some music on our bad speakers on our phones. I mean, phone. Speakers weren't very good. Five years ago and just sat around going like, dude, this
[00:04:59] Kelly: and so, so good. It was so good. Right. And I think it's cuz we were starving at that point. And, and then we said, well, what are we gonna do tomorrow?
[00:05:09] And this is where some of like this trip, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong. This trip. Really solidified the adventure rules or most of them, no, we gotta get up or we gotta go find a sunrise and right. Well, we gotta, we gotta start patrol at whatever time it was. And we end up this beautiful house that you rented.
[00:05:29] We end up never seeing the ocean, never using the pool we were in and out in five hours, five hours. So,
[00:05:34] Joseph: well that night
[00:05:35] Kelly: and we leave in the dark in the morning. No,
[00:05:38] Joseph: yeah, we leave in the dark dark, so, and. It was, was that
[00:05:45] Kelly: because was that looking mad?
[00:05:48] Joseph: You've looking at the Azores for, you know, a few days before we leave, because we didn't know we're gonna go there and where should we go?
[00:05:54] And there's what is a weird looking island, like a clump of islands with what is a very, very circular kind of bay inside of it that we were near and sunrise is when sunrises. So adventure rules are easier in the winter - because the nights are longer mm-hmm
[00:06:23] Kelly: and for those unfamiliar top of the
[00:06:26] Joseph: list is also, yeah, it's better if you find a spot. So sometimes maybe you're in Spain and you're like, is that the spot? And you duck off and you have the most incredible. And other times, you're just hoping you can run into things or the night before, when you're smoked, we're going like what's nearby and how can we get this done?
[00:06:48] And so we decide to take the drones and like get close to this island and think we'll fly it. But on the way you end up, oh man, it was those yellow lights of Europe. Are kind of in the distance, in the little town, right? So like we're driving into the town. I remember driving in going, like, there's no way in hell.
[00:07:11] We're gonna find an open coffee shop. Like that. Number one, they get up later. Number two. No, this isn't, this isn't gonna happen. I could use some coffee right now. We end up like in that the, in the like town square and it's just silent except for a truck, right?
[00:07:35] Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, we're in Vila Franco Do Campo.
[00:07:44] Our objective is to see this old volcanic island right off the coast, but we wanted coffee first, which makes complete sense. And well, it's hard to describe, but they have these trees that they prune and it's an open square and the square is beautiful. The ground is beautiful as in many things in Portugal and Azores in specific, which is an autonomous region in Portugal for, for clarity.
[00:08:07] And we find this, this little espresso bar, which is 100% local, that is nothing got to do with any level of tourism. And this is where the happy cow milkers go. So the happy cows are the, are the free range cows. And everybody goes around in a truck and they got these oversized milk jugs in the back. And, uh, we'd end up finding on future trips, how they do it and they go out and they milk 'em, but it's free range, happy cows.
[00:08:30] And it's got what, two or three? Yeah, Azorean dudes. When you and I roll up being who we are just roll in and. We stumble to our Portuguese to get
[00:08:43] Joseph: an espresso. The crazy cigarette machine is in the back. The guy's kind of like also very tired yeah. Standing over the espresso machine
[00:08:56] Kelly: and it's. You walk, you walk in and it is a, there's a restaurant.
[00:09:02] There's a bar to your right. It's a bar too, by the way. So there's, there is alcohol and he's pull. Yeah, he's pulling espressos over the left. You've got very nondescript, plain tables, plain floor, small TV as per usual. Uh, a cigarette machine, which for us just blows our mind. It's been too many years, seeing that and they're just sitting there and then, excuse me, standing there having their espresso before they go to go to hang out with their, with their happy cows.
[00:09:31] And we did that and I think we had one or two and. I wish I had been a little more aggressive in trying to converse and obviously no Portuguese in my, my repertoire. That was hard. Yeah. But a really, really fond memory of experiencing that off the beaten path, non
[00:09:49] Joseph: touristy. I remember part of this becoming the moment where we're like, ah, always pick where the cow trucks go.
[00:09:59] And we did this multiple other times. Remember being out in the west and there, there was a cafe. And like all the driver cars [yes]. From the, the boats, like you get off the boat and there's a bunch of drivers and they'll drive you around the island and then they go shut you back on the boat. And so like, you could see these cars with all the tourists in the back that just came off the boat and they would drive up to a certain cafe and they'd get off.
[00:10:23] And I remember like, kind of looking at the church down the way and what is a dump. Where the cow trucks were. And then all of this glitz for the restaurant that it was like, we're going to the cow trucks. Do you remember you walk in there? It was like, really clearly it was almost like walking into a cowboy town out west [in the US].
[00:10:46] Like, what are you guys doing here? You don't fit. Yeah.
[00:10:51] Kelly: The, the record player, screeching
[00:10:53] Joseph: people turn and go... Are we gonna serve them? Like, that was what was going on in a very visceral deep way. But the espresso was fantastic. Yeah.
[00:11:08] Kelly: It, it was, it was, you'll see in the photos, the perfect crema, all those things, you know, I think we'll, you know, future episode will, will impact what we did that morning on the sunrise. I, I, lessons learned is what you just described, go where the locals are going. We gave ourselves plenty of time in the morning to be able to slow down and take that in and not be trying to hustle to a sunrise.
[00:11:33] And did it hurt a little bit, missed a half an hour, 45 minutes of extra sleep? Yes. But worth it to just be able to meander yeah. Discover the way to describe it. Yeah. We got
[00:11:44] Joseph: bump into that like random beach area where we dumped the car and walk or like walked down the way with plenty of time before the sun was up.
[00:11:59] Kelly: Yeah. Well, if, if you're gonna go to, to Sao Miguel and you're gonna get a place, don't be afraid to. Get a random place. Stop into a random grocery store, grab some sardines, crackers, and cheese, and a bottle of wine that is gonna cost you less than 10 Euros for all of that stuff. If that, and enjoy it, get less sleep.
[00:12:22] And if you find some good coffee, go with the locals, go, that's my take, Joe. You
[00:12:27] Joseph: Be real comfortable trying new things and being on the move. Right? A lot of this is about. Having one of those adventure rules being continual movement- is that, that you're constantly experiencing a new thing. And over time you get a lot better at that at experiencing the new thing and looking back, what is it?
[00:12:50] Five years? Um, our skills are different as a result of like practicing this. And then the experiences are too, but all time, top fantastic moments. Yeah. Um, sardines and early morning. I agree. Hyperlocal coffee. Yeah.
[00:13:17] Kelly: Yeah. And if our memories are this clear five years later, then I think that says something about the experience. And if, if, if we R
EW the two of us being where we are in our journey to be more present and in the moment for these kind of joyous things, I think we'd be even deeper in. In it. So wanted to share that with everyone, hope you have an opportunity.
[00:13:39] We're gonna do our best to pin that espresso bar. We may get it. We'll definitely give you the grocery store and look forward to what happened the balance of that morning because the sun isn't even up yet.
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