Pale-Blue-Dot
There's only one thing powerful enough to disrupt Porto's famed São João street festival.
Starting tonight, June 23rd, at 9:45 pm and lasting until 1 am tomorrow, lighting paper hot air balloons will be allowed over Porto. And, trust me, they will fly in herds. The white dots in the image below from 2019 are not stars. Each one of them is a balloon that someone lit on the streets of the city.
This unique permission reflects the scale of the famed São João street festival, as even the airport airspace will be closed during this period. But balloons are only one attraction at this incredible party. As you can see in the image below from last year’s Porto downtown, the entire city takes to the streets until the wee hours of the morning.
If Porto is on your wishlist for future trips, I suggest keeping June 23rd in mind. Believe me, you won’t regret it.
The only thing powerful enough to disrupt the tradition for two years in a row was the COVID-19 lockdown. And this year, it will once again interrupt it, as COVID-19 has finally caught up with me. I began feeling sick on Tuesday, and although I’m much better now, there is no way I’ll risk making other people sick. So sadly, it means there will be no festivity for me this year.
I hope everyone has a great São João and I look forward to next year’s celebrations.
Modern travel is weird.
Half of my backpack has clothes. The other half has filming gear and dongles. A bunch of them. Thank you, Apple.
At least, everything I travel with is USB-C compatible, which means there is always a cable available to plug and charge anything. But not exactly everything. Guess what? All of those cables are useless for one device. I’ve been wirelessly charging my wife’s iPhone with my Pixel because she forgot to bring the Lightning cable. Thank you, Apple. Again.
No check-in, boarding or any other lines to wait in. Not even security check. Super quick boarding and deboarding. There is a lot of lag space, even in the economy class. And, to top it all off, there is the departure and arrival in the city center. It is impossible to not love trains.
PS. 👆 That’s a Supernote.
Have I landed on a highway?
Yesterday’s landing, deboarding, and departure from the Madeira airport were all pretty much the same as the many other airports I’ve been to in my life. But things were about to change in a surprising way.
Today, while driving a rental car, the expressway I was on went below what at first seemed to be a huge highway, supported by an uncountable number of columns. The sight was already impressive, but when I reached the other side and looked in the rearview mirror, I was astonished by what I had just noticed. I had driven below the airport runway.
But that’s not all.
The underpass had many public spaces, such as sports courts, a skate park, a spacious parking lot, restaurants and even a boatyard. Yes, boatyard. Of course, I had to come back at the end of the day to check it all out.
My photos are incapable of accurately depicting the size of the space. It is impressive. According to Wikipedia, there are 180 columns. And in one of Tom Scott’s videos, I learned that they are 50 meters tall, which is another crazy number when we remember that planes are landing and departing from the “roof” above.
His video also explains the reason for the airport’s location. In his words, Madeira is one huge mountain just sticking out of the Atlantic Ocean. And I can confirm that after spending the day going through dozens of the over 150 tunes on the island. It’s hard to imagine something like this, but you can’t drive for more than a few minutes before you come across a new tunnel.
In other words, this was the only place flat enough to build the first runway, which, by the way, was shorter. When the island began to attract more tourists and the planes became larger, it was extended with a platform over the columns, since a landfill was not feasible.
I had a lot of fun geeking out below the airport, and thinking about humankind’s ingenuity, which never fails to impress me. However, this is an amazing island with remarkable sights that humans will never be able to build. Some of them have already blown me away, but there’s still so much to discover.
Have a lovely week, Vlad.
My travel coffee kit
The AeroPress is part of a small kit 🫣 I always travel with to be able to brew my own coffee every day.
A thoughtful gift for my father.
Before smartphones, my father would always have a pen and notepad like this one in his shirt’s front pocket. Not only that, but he would use them to explain anything I asked him about, drawing and writing every single detail while talking to me.
He always said, “You should write it down if you don’t want to forget it." I guess it worked. It seems there’s no other explanation; I got into taking notes because of him.
Have you had the chance to listen to my conversation with Jon on the Triple T Productivity podcast? I am currently on the trip I mentioned, and today I came across this small notepad that I immediately bought for his birthday tomorrow. It’s not exactly like the ones he used to have, but I believe it will bring him good memories.
