We left Melides after another slow morning and headed inland to the Alentejo.
Our next stop was São Lourenço do Barrocal, a hotel and working farm set in the countryside near Monsaraz.
We were upgraded to a Farmhouse room.
It was lovely.
We changed clothes, walked to the pool and spent a couple of hours relaxing in the shade.
That was becoming a familiar pattern.
And we were getting very good at it.
One of the Best Meals
That evening we went to dinner at the hotel.
We ordered a root vegetable salad to share. Shirley ordered the catch of the day, I ordered lamb chops, and we chose a local red wine.
Before any of that arrived, our server brought us an octopus salad on a sweet potato chip.
It looked beautiful.
It tasted even better.
We quickly abandoned any attempt at decorum. Shirley poured the olive oil and dressing left on the serving plate over her portion and eventually wiped the plate with her finger.
It was that good.
The root vegetable salad wasn't something either of us would normally have been excited about. It contained beets, which neither of us particularly likes.
There was beet purée, pickled beet, diced beet, what looked like eggplant and sweet potato, goat cheese and nuts.
It was incredible.
Then the entrées arrived.
Shirley's fish was topped with a cilantro and olive oil mixture. My lamb chops came in a pan with vegetables and potatoes.
The aroma alone was wonderful.
We'd eaten extremely well throughout Portugal, but this was one of the best meals of the trip.
And once again, I caught myself smiling.
We were moving from beautiful place to beautiful place, eating incredible meals, with almost nothing required of us.
I wrote that night:
"I hope I don't tire of it or not recognize it."
Is This Really Retirement?
The next morning we made French press coffee in the room.
We lingered in bed, talking and writing.
Eventually I showered around 9 because we needed to get to breakfast in time for Shirley's 11:30 mani-pedi appointment.
While she was getting her nails done, I thought about how strange our life had become.
I had never really imagined retirement looking like this.
If I'd pictured it at all, I probably imagined continuing to live much as we always had, except with enough money that we didn't have to worry about maintaining our lifestyle.
We'd travel more.
That was probably about it.
Instead, we had sold the house.
We had no home.
And we were traveling from place to place, eating wonderful food and completely enjoying ourselves.
Someone in my mastermind had recently mentioned a book about traveling the world on $75 a day.
I'd laughed.
We were just trying to keep it under $1,200.
Who would have thought this was possible?
A Day at the Hotel
We considered going to Monsaraz that afternoon but ultimately scheduled it for the following day.
So we stayed at Barrocal.
We went to the pool.
We relaxed in the shade.
We napped.
That last part was noteworthy.
I'd asked Shirley whether she could have relaxed enough to fall asleep beside a pool a few years earlier.
She said:
"No way."
There would have been too much going on upstairs.
I wrote that perhaps our nervous systems were recalibrating.
Whatever was happening, Shirley was relaxing in a way I hadn't seen before.
Sunset
That evening, we sat together and watched the sun go down.
I had a beer.
Shirley had a glass of wine.
A warm breeze was blowing.
The birds were chirping as they settled in for the night.
And the grin showed up again.
So did the laugh.
Once again, I couldn't quite believe this was our life.
Then Shirley said something I wanted to make sure I remembered:
"I've never been this comfortable."
That may be the strongest memory of Barrocal.
Not the beautiful room.
Not the food.
Not even the sunset.
Shirley was simply comfortable.
Monsaraz
The following morning was relaxed again.
Coffee.
Breakfast.
Some time hanging around the hotel.
The pool.
Then we met our guide and went to Monsaraz.
After exploring the village, we had dinner at Taverna Os Templários.
The setting was extraordinary.
We ate beside a 13th-century wall, looking out over the river, lake and plains stretching toward Spain.
But one of the things I remember noticing wasn't something we saw.
It was the air.
It reminded me of camping.
Fresh air.
Almost no city noise.
A breeze.
Maybe an earthy smell.
Or perhaps simply the absence of pollution.
It felt good to be outside.
What We'll Remember
We'll remember being upgraded to the Farmhouse room and immediately heading to the pool.
We'll remember the octopus salad on the sweet potato chip—and Shirley wiping the plate with her finger.
We'll remember being skeptical about a salad filled with beets and discovering that it was wonderful.
We'll remember the fish and lamb chops and one of the best dinners of the trip.
We'll remember French press coffee in the room and mornings that didn't really get started until we decided they should.
We'll remember Shirley getting her nails done in the middle of our stay while I sat around contemplating the absurdity of this new life.
We'll remember afternoons in the shade beside the pool.
We'll remember Shirley saying that a few years earlier there was no chance she could have relaxed enough to nap because there was always too much going on in her head.
We'll remember Monsaraz and dinner beside a 13th-century wall overlooking the landscape toward Spain.
We'll remember the fresh air and the quiet.
But mostly, we'll remember sunset at Barrocal.
A beer.
A glass of wine.
A warm breeze.
Birds settling in for the evening.
The grin.
And Shirley saying:
"I've never been this comfortable."
Would We Return?
Yes.
São Lourenço do Barrocal was another place where the hotel wasn't simply somewhere we slept while exploring the surrounding area.
Being there was part of the experience.
We could have spent another day at the pool.
We could have lingered over another breakfast.
We could have gone back to Monsaraz.
Or we could have done almost nothing.
By now we were beginning to understand that days with very little planned weren't empty days.
Sometimes they were the days we needed most.
On July 25, we woke late, had breakfast, packed and left around 10:30 for the three-hour drive south.
Before leaving, I wrote one final note to myself:
"What I want to remember. Shirley saying that she's never been this comfortable."
Then we headed for Lagos.
We didn't know it yet, but Lagos would become something different from every other stop in Portugal.
It wasn't simply somewhere we'd enjoy.
It was somewhere we'd begin imagining coming back to live for a while.