We left Sintra at 11 and headed south toward Melides.
The drive took about two hours. Along the way, our driver pointed out towns and areas we might want to visit on a future trip—Setúbal, the Arrábida coast, Palmela and others.
We were already beginning to imagine returning to Portugal and traveling differently: moving slowly down the coast, stopping somewhere for a few days and staying longer when we found a place we liked.
Our destination this time was Vermelho Melides.
A Very Small Town
We arrived, settled in, and walked through Melides.
It didn't take long.
The town was very small.
We returned to the hotel around 2:00 for a late lunch.
Shirley and I both ordered the catch of the day: sea bass with rice and clams. We shared a fresh salad and a bottle of local white wine.
It was wonderful.
After lunch, we spent some time at the pool and eventually returned to our room for a quiet evening.
Once again, I found myself noticing the Portuguese summer light.
At 8:00 in the evening, when I would normally have been thinking about winding down for bed, the light outside was still beautiful.
Our sense of time was changing.
What Should We Do Today?
The next morning we woke around 7:30.
Shirley got up around 8.
We had coffee on our patio.
Eventually we got ready and went to breakfast at 10:30.
By 11:30, we were back in the room.
I wrote:
"Need to decide what to do today, if anything."
We chose anything.
Shirley needed a day off.
So we stayed at the hotel.
We hung out on the patio.
We had lunch.
We relaxed.
Later we had dinner.
That was the day.
And it was a good one.
Vermelho
The hotel itself was part of the pleasure.
Vermelho was quietly beautiful.
I tried in my notes to identify exactly what made it feel that way and couldn't quite do it.
The gardens were beautifully maintained—simple, colorful and expansive.
The buildings were lovely, with unusual finishes and details.
Nothing about it seemed to be trying particularly hard to impress us.
It was simply a beautiful place to be.
I also noticed something that amused me.
Before this trip, I didn't believe I'd ever been to a Michelin-starred restaurant or hotel.
Now, within a matter of days, we'd eaten at Maré and were staying at Vermelho.
Our world had gotten strange rather quickly.
The New Shirley
Dinner provided another small surprise.
Shirley ordered the catch of the day.
It came with polenta.
She thought it was amazing.
Shirley doesn't like polenta.
Then she ordered a dessert wine.
That was amazing too.
We don't drink dessert wine.
Apparently Portugal had different rules.
It was becoming a recurring joke.
The rosé in the Douro Valley was wonderful.
The turbot and white wine in Cascais were "some good shit."
Now polenta she didn't like was amazing, as was a dessert wine she wouldn't normally order.
There seemed to be an increasingly simple explanation:
Shirley was happy.
Did We Ever Imagine This?
On our final morning, we again took our time.
Coffee in the room.
Another lovely breakfast.
Then we packed and prepared for our 11:00 departure.
Over breakfast, I asked Shirley whether she'd ever imagined that we'd live the way we were living.
Neither of us thought we had.
This wasn't the retirement we'd spent years picturing.
In fact, I wasn't sure we'd ever really pictured retirement at all.
Yet here we were, moving through Portugal with no home waiting for us, spending a Tuesday doing essentially nothing because Shirley needed a day off.
And somehow that felt completely normal.
What We'll Remember
We'll remember how tiny Melides was.
We'll remember walking through town and then returning for a late lunch of sea bass, clams, salad and local wine.
We'll remember the gardens at Vermelho.
We'll remember the beautiful evening light.
We'll remember coffee on the patio and breakfast at 10:30.
We'll remember reaching 11:30 on a Tuesday and asking ourselves whether we wanted to do anything at all.
And deciding we didn't.
We'll remember Shirley needing a day off and giving ourselves permission to take one.
We'll remember her eating polenta she supposedly didn't like and declaring it amazing.
We'll remember the dessert wine she wouldn't normally have ordered being amazing too.
And we'll remember sitting over breakfast on our last morning, asking each other:
Did we ever imagine we'd be living like this?
Neither of us had.
Would We Return?
Possibly—but Melides itself wasn't what pulled us.
Vermelho was the experience.
It was beautiful, quiet and comfortable, and it gave us something we increasingly needed: a pause.
There was no pressure to make our two nights productive.
No need to collect another set of sights.
One of our two days was essentially spent eating, sitting on the patio and relaxing.
And nothing was lost because of it.
If anything, that may be what allowed the previous days to settle.
On July 22, after another slow morning, we left at 11 for São Lourenço do Barrocal in the Alentejo.