The week was spent mostly in a swimsuit and little else. The temperatures soared in Portugal, the pool the perfect coolness against hot, sweat-slicked skin. I could stay here forever, I’m almost sure of it. When I’m old and grey, I want to live in a warm country with thick white walls and a terracotta roof. I want to wake to the crow of a rooster. To pluck fresh lemons from the tree and go to a Saturday market to buy blooming calla lilies.
My routine this week has changed and it’s been so freeing. Wake up, throw open the back door, tear through fresh-cut melon, and brew some coffee; consumed outside beneath the lemon tree by the pool while we decide how our day will look. I google beaches and cafes, B grabs his book and settles into his favourite lounger where he’ll remain for several hours. We’re in no rush.
Summer is a lot of things but mostly it’s the promise of being outside a lot more than usual, of staying up later and enjoying each other’s company, of turning your phone over and ignoring notifications and choosing not to track the time. It’s new freckles, melting ice lollies and cold glasses of rosé in the afternoon. It’s wiggling your toes into the sand at the seashore while the white froth laps at your ankles. It’s a day of no plans. It’s letting the body guide you towards a siesta, it’s the smell of floral perfumes and coconut tanning oil. Summer makes me feel like my best self, my least worried self. I spend my day devouring a book with no concern for anything else other than what I will be having for lunch: probably thickly sliced tomatoes and creamy burrata with flaky sea salt.
And after a day out, rosy-cheeked and a shade browner, there’s nothing greater than the feeling of being alive and present and that everything I always worry about doesn’t exist. On a sunset walk, I watch the pearlescent moon ascend into a sky made of pale pinks and blues. I take twenty photos of the same view, each a few minutes apart, the sky a different shade each time. My legs rub together as I walk and I feel the familiar sting of a sunburn, I’m probably dehydrated, but content, and I think that this is what I have waited for all year.
At night, the air is punctuated by the sound of chirping crickets or the familiar buzz of cicadas. One night we drive out for some fresh sushi in a nearby town, and the familiar leather-skin crowd and granddads in speedos make their way from the beach; on another, we spend too much money on cocktails with a view of the shoreline and a single sailboat setting out to sea. On the nights we stay home, we eat our pesto pasta on the patio, a deck of UNO between us.
This could be a love letter to summer or to reminisce on the season I can’t get enough of, I don’t know. I do know that I enjoy everything more when I’m on holiday and when there is sun. On any given day, we have a plan, we have structure and chore lists, but on this holiday, we play it all by ear, we let the day dictate what we should do. I flick through our Spotify playlist while B asks me to google the cost of staying at a fancy golf resort for a week. We laugh at how outrageous the prices are, I hum the lyrics incorrectly and out of tune. We’ll be back next summer, I know it.
this was so vivid, makes me so excited for summer here in the southern hemisphere 🧡
so so so beautiful