The Traveller's Prayer

Captain's bLog: 24 weeks.

When I was 19 or so, two of my friends went travelling around Europe together. They came back with many stories, but what I remember most vividly is that they joked about experiencing terrible constipation in France "from all the cheese." Despite being a bit of a cheese fiend myself (okay, mostly just cheddar - at least at that point) I had never heard of cheese-induced constipation before, and it seemed pretty bananas to me. Like, just how much cheese does one need to eat to suffer weeks of constipation? What are you even doing with all that cheese?

I've long since lost touch with those gals, but I was thinking of them a lot as we planned our trip. Mostly to the tune of, 'I can't believe I am getting to do this thing that was practically unimaginable to me back then,' but when we got to France the ease with which one might overindulge on cheese truly hit me. I remembered my friends' story, and suddenly everything clicked: cheese is everywhere, and practising moderation while travelling is, like, really hard and sucky. Traveller's cheestipation is basically a foregone conclusion.

Constantly exercising restraint has been one of the hardest things about this trip. We want to immerse ourselves in our temporary homes, and a huge part of that is food! New foods, iconic foods, culturally significant foods, foods you think you already know but then you take one bite of a homemade lasagna in a little Tuscan hilltop town and realise your entire life has been a lie (I swear I heard someone welcome me to the matrix when I bit into that lasagna). All the foods! But several months of travelling is not the same beast as a ten-day jaunt, so we've really had to pace our culinary immersion... and then check our waistbands and pace anew. To be honest we started out doing a pretty shit job of restraining and were swiftly punished by having to buy Small Fry an entirely new wardrobe. (If I could offer one piece of travel advice, it would be to avoid at all costs the need to acquire "husky" kids' clothing in France. I shudder at the memory.)

Our current pacing seems to be working well, though. DH has even had to tighten his belt a notch, which is frankly one of his more irritating habits but I'm trying to let it slide. The only thing is, with all the pandemic madness going on, I'd just like to know all my admirable restraint isn't going to waste, y'know? I feel this particularly keenly in the mornings as I gaze out over the Tagus estuary with my daily pastel de nata and coffee, aka the world's second-most perfect breakfast; the MOST-most perfect breakfast being eating those fuckers 'til I pop. Estuary optional.

So I offer this small prayer each day to the gods of coffee-and-pastry-for-breakfast (if anything deserves its own department it's that, right?):

Dear divine spirits, if I am going to die of the Covid please let me know well in advance so I can eat truly unreasonable quantities of these tarts without having to worry about buying husky ladies' clothing in France.

Amen.