Summer In Porto

Officially, there is one month left in summer but I can already feeling it winding down a little bit as September looms. August is a month when Portuguese typically take the whole month for their holidays: family-run restaurants are shuttered, tourists swarm the cities while the natives escape, and villages get busier as emigrants return for their festas that revolve around saint holidays. It’s a very different atmosphere in August.

I shot all these Porto-branded photos at the F1H2O weekend, and the weather was extremely favourable during each of the event days. In fact, the whole summer has been consistently hot and sunny with very few cloudy days (we had a run of four overcast days in a row recently, which stood out as unusual) and hardly any rain at all. Good for most except the bombeiros (firefighters), who have been battling a greater number of fires this year, especially in the north and centre of the country.

This being my second summer in Portugal, I’ve got a better handle on where to go and what to do and eat. It’s par for the course, but also good timing since I hosted plenty of friends visiting since May… there were seven in five weeks, a group of six in July, and this month brought a new challenge: a pair of tweens.

Achievement Unlocked!

We had to drag everyone to the airport at 4:30 in the morning to get them to their boarding gate on time, and two flights later they made it to Germany. Once I got the update, I breathed a sigh of relief that our week of hosting two 12-year olds in a foreign country without their parents was a success (read: without incidents). This has been in the calendar since March, which gave me ample time to recall what age 12 was like, but it was simply too long ago — more than 30 years!

Needless to say, hosting kids is very different from hosting adults: there are no port wine tours or tastings, not the same sort of sightseeing, and I brought them everywhere and back home versus sending them to places on their own. There was even a requested trip or two to a shopping mall (and you know how I feel about shopping malls), where Paulo and I saw a movie and called it a date rather than killing time.

I’ve known one of the tweens all her life and the other was her classmate, who I didn’t know. If there was such a thing as a Life CV, I would put “tweensitting” near the top! Because it must be said: the prepubescent, 12-year old brain is a mystery covered with a No Access sign for adults. But at least I can say we survived the week, which I call a reality check for parenthood.

What’s Next?

I’m hoping now that our hosting calendar is all crossed off for the year, we can get in at least a couple more road trips before the summer ends in a month. I’m working on a couple of big projects and have a family shoot coming up, too.

There’s a week and a half left in August, I hope you’re enjoying it!

July 31-August 2, 2015
Album: F1H2O Grand Prix of Portugal 2015

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