Settling In

Lovely walk along the front early in the morning, towards Ipanema way. Stopped and turned back at the fishermens’ nook at the fort - 8,000 steps there and back. We then decided to stop for a fried egg roll, coffee and fresh orange juice at Benfica - very local place. Cost us 6 euros in total. They’ll have taken away the goodness of some of these steps though!

Both worked till late afternoon. I worked at the desk and Bb at the foldy up table. Cosy! Bit of a panic when I was locked out of my email account on both devices. I have an online assessment next week and need it! Managed to WhatsApp another trainer in the school, who told the tutor for Tuesday about my predicament, and made contact that way. A few hours later on, I saw that it was a general outage and I was back in by night time. Phew! I do have another email or could have used Bb’s, but an unwelcome faff.

We did our first currency exchange of this trip. We try to use cash as much as possible here now or a card with a limited amount on it.

Dinner at ‘the French style place’ on Santa Clara. Same staff, good that they keep people. A shared salad, soup and a shared desert.

I could hardly keep my eyes open when we walked home! Lights off by 9pm! What we hadn’t really thought about for this time of the year is that sunrise isn’t till 6.30 and sunset is around 5.30pm. So there’s at least an hour of less light at both ends.

Pics are of a fisherman untangling his nets; a daily exercise class taking place at 8am and using the space of a beach bar before it opens; Bb in the studio.