WAHHHHH… after 5 months of traveling, I’m back home for a bit! i can’t believe how quickly time has flown.. but i’m also amazed at how much I’ve managed to see and do and in the past few months… i can’t be too sad though because:
- Home is NYC (how lucky am I?!)
- I get to see my family & friends
- I’m heading back to South America at the end of September
To be honest, I haven’t had the time to think about home since I’ve been a bit preoccupied/distracted exploring Lisbon with some good (looking) company these past few days…
Philip, the handsome German pictured above was someone I met in Hamburg after swiping riiight one random night (lols)… we had one great date, kept in touch and decided to meet up in Portugal for a long weekend.. i was actually pretty fond of him since he’s not only really nice to look at, but incredibly intelligent and funny and shares many of my mutual interests (and if you now me IRL, you know i'm not usually fond of most men.. they're pretty replaceable IMO).. he’s getting his PHD in law and is very much into politics, rap & basketball so we had some great conversations over the past few days.. as well as some other ummm… other great interactions... which sometimes occurred a couple of times a day (haha) but seriously, i'm very much just as attracted to his mind as i was to his physical appearance... which includes being 6'6" and since I'm just a taddddd bit shorter, we made an interesting (funny) looking pair.
because he’s been working too hard as a paralegal and i know that things will get pretty hectic when i get back home, we wanted to relax and enjoy each other’s company :) which involved a lot of drinking, eating, snoozing, tanning, and a bit of sightseeing.
we took a day trip to Sintra, which was beautiful and magical and super fucking hilly… i led us the wrong way (of course) so we ended up all the way at the top of the fortress which had nice views so everyone wins because our butts also will look great too! anddd we visited Pena Palace which was bright and colorful... and also apparently the inspiration for Disneyland and a lot of Gaudi's buildings, which i loved and it made me sososo happy :)
we also spent a lot of time wandering around Barrio Alto on many occasions for food & drinks, including Saturday night, when it was packed with people drinking on the streets and danced in a club till the weeeee hours of the night and then passed out on the beach the next day.
my onlyyy complaint about the weekend was the amount of churches we visited.. i guess he reallly wanted me to atone for my sinsssss. jk.. he just really likes them because he finds them peaceful, and i’m indifferent so i decided to indulge him :)
overall it was a nice few days & a good, albeit, a bit of a random ending to this part of my trip.. but then again, almost all of my experiences on this trip have been random and unplanned but have worked out great.. i guess traveling opens you up and allows you to live more freely and take actions you normally would never take back home since most of the encounters are short lived and have an expiration. & u know u have to seize the day because you may never get another opportunity.. not that i've ever really had difficulty expressing my thoughts or acting on my emotions ;)
coincidentally, i started reading Modern Romance by Aziz Azari (thus the name of this post) which is about how love, sex and romance have become "thrillingly liberated, yet also complicated and distorted by modern times and changing technology…” When I consider that some app has only been in existence since 2012 and that I didn't log onto it until last year, this whole encounter seems extremely fortuitous... and even if we are never in the same physical space again (which is a likely possibility) i'll always share this very special and intimate moment with a person who lives on a completely different continent... WHEW. the internet is a wonderful place....
