This move feels weird and I can’t explain why.
Yay! I’m returning to
Madeira! Getting out of the Turkish cold
and back to the place I consider home.
Why, then, was it so hard to leave the apartment in Balat? Why, as I was traveling to the
airport and getting on a plane, did everything feel so ... off? I wanted
to think it was just because I didn’t want to deal with another airport for a
while, but there was more to it than that.
Once again, I had gotten comfortable. I didn’t want to be displaced again, not even
to return to Portugal.
Part of that sense of comfort extended to my wallet. The housing, food, and restaurants cost mere
pennies in Türkiye. While still cheaper
than the U.S., Portugal is very expensive in comparison to Türkiye.
But I didn’t want to risk having any visa issues (no
problems with immigration in Istanbul) and my Schengen days had reset. So, it was back to the place I didn’t want to
leave back in November.
Five hours from Istanbul to Lisbon airport. I had to buy a separate ticket to the island since
trying to get there on one ticket required insanely long layovers in airports I’d
never even heard of. It’s still way too
expensive to get to the island when you have luggage, but what are you gonna do? It's not like I can swim there so …
Grabbed a taxi to a new place on the west side of the
city. At least this cabbie knew where
the place was so we weren’t driving around looking for it like I’ve already
experienced too many times on the island. I had to wait outside for maybe 10
minutes for someone to let me in. Two
ladies approached and showed me to the entrance of the high-rise apartment.
After fumbling the keys to the front door, we got inside and
climbed into the tiny, cramped elevator with all my crap. The ladies were only about 5 feet tall while
I’m 5’9”. They barely spoke English; I barely spoke Portuguese. I’m dog tired and they’re staring up at me
and grinning. The whole thing was
bizarre.
We got off on the floor and they again fumbled with the keys
while talking to each other and speaking through their phones to translate info
to me. Turns out, it was the wrong apartment.
We’d gotten out on the 6th floor instead of the 8th. As we climbed back into the elevator, the
ladies gasped at each other. We all laughed as even I figured out what they
were thinking. We were essentially trying to break into someone’s
apartment. Good thing they weren’t
home.
Got to the right floor and after even more fumbling (the
locks are tricky and I had issues with them all week) we arrived at the
place. The ladies, using the bad
translation device on their phones, showed me around. I figured out pretty quickly that the place
had been sitting for a while. One of the
ladies had to turn on the faucet in the bathroom just to make sure there was hot
water.
The place is … okay. I don’t like the cold white tile, the kitchen is basically a shelf with little counterspace, and the place is just one long hallway. The bedroom is a decent size for Europe and the bathroom has that rarest of things – a tub with a shower curtain.
The bathroom also has a feature that I have never seen before. You need to twist the big doorknob above the toilet to flush. Pretty but odd.
The real star of the show is the view from the spacious balcony. Not only do you have the ocean on the right, but the mountains to the left and the tennis court and swimming pool just below. Very nice.
My first morning back on the island got off to a weird start. With no food in the house, I figured I’d go out to breakfast and then shop for the basics – pretty standard for the first day in a new place. It looked to be a lovely sunny day on Madeira until I left the apartment. The building has motion-detecting lights just like the apartment in Istanbul. Except these weren’t working. I’d just arrived and wasn’t familiar with the floor layout yet so I just kept moving around in front of the apartment door to try and activate the sensors. Nothing worked.
I flicked on the flashlight on my phone (an infinitely handy
feature) and found my way to the elevator – which also didn’t work. Now wait a minute. I knew the power wasn’t out in the apartment as
I’d had lights and the internet with no issues.
It was the just the general building that was out. Okay.
I guess I’m taking the stairs.
Immediately upon opening the door, I nearly ran into an
older man just standing in the landing.
I muttered a “bom dia” and quickly skirted around him. I still have no idea what he was doing. It’s not like the door locked behind me so he
wasn’t waiting for someone to open it for him.
I was disoriented enough. I
couldn’t also deal with his issues.
I carefully made my way downstairs and managed to find the way
out. I made it into the bright sunshine,
my opinion of the apartment getting lower by the minute, until I remembered the
killer location of the building. Just
across the street is the open-air mall of Forum Madeira, there are taxis all
around in case I needed them, and it’s a short walk to Jardin Panoramico, the scenic
walkway by the water that I fell in love with on my first visit to the
island. What’s a little power outage in
the presence of all that?
The week went by incredibly fast. Madeira is as gorgeous as ever, reminding me every second why I want to live in Funchal. There were a couple of issues that did mar the first few days though.
First off, Istanbul has tendrils. That’s part of why I keep going back. I arrived on Madeira, still on Turkish time (3
hours ahead of Portugal), and instantly lamented the lack of stray cats. Why is it so quiet here? Oh right. No mosques. Not enough narrow two-way streets with cars
constantly honking to get past each other either.
It’s nuts. As soon as
I arrived in Istanbul back in November, I missed Madeira. Now that I’m back in Madeira, I miss
Istanbul. I guess it will just take me a
while to get reacclimated. Only to
repeat the cycle in three months.
And this is my life now.
The second issue resulted from my first night on the
island. I was in a new bed in a new
place and it was a bit too warm for sleeping, even with the window open. The next night I set up the fan to remedy the
situation and woke up in the morning with a sore throat. That quickly progressed into a full-blown
cold as the winds picked up in the city.
Still sunny and mostly warm, but the temp changes from morning to afternoon
had me battling phlegm for the first few days.
The temperature in Türkiye would get up into the high 50’s
on some days. Any day above 40 with no
rain was a good day. Madeira temps hover
in the high 60’s. So, of course, I come
to the warmer clime and immediately get a cold because … yeah.
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