Porto: the last, lost days

the past, in Porto, the last, lost days.
travel log update. i have not lost the other notebook, i am just too overcome by the heat to go out to my bicycle to look for it.
so this is this second notebook i started –

the boys in whose 2 bedroom flat the 4 of us have most certainly overstayed our welcome – we had finally left, after 3 weeks, when Om broke his foot and we had no-where else to go but back – they are leaving the flat on Saturday, for good, they tell us 5 days in advance – so on Saturday night theres the 3 of us, Om in the wheelchair, and the 3 bicycles and all our stuff in Praca dos Poveiros (Peoples Square) – where Barbara and Wilson turn out to be the lifesavers and give us a space on their living room floor for the night (I look at rooms for the night, but its a bit pointless, they re way too expensive and ask for ID which Om does not have)
There Leilas the cat sleeps with his paws up in the air – 
Eventually Svenja s friend – an artist named Ana – has two spare rooms – the price is good – and its only around the corner – i spend my time in the flat looking through Ana s library, perfect for me as it is both multilingual and mostly full of books about art, paintings, sculpture, in one night i devour Turner, Van Gogh, Kandisky, Basquait, Blake. and we smoke, a little obsessively, trying to get our heads around things

Day 0. Wednesday 11th July
lazy. trying to repack, reorganise. took 2 trips yesterday afternoon. shoulda taken 3. couldnt sleep, slept in, didnt go to the hospital. read Cannery Row from a bumper book of Steinbeck. the gopher. do i leave tmoro? I must. cant find penknife or pump. planted the sunflower seeds today along the river, maybe 40, i want it to rain now, in July, to settle the seeds, its not quite the midsummer ritual that i planned, 3 weeks late, still. no fire show at Senhor da Pedra.Yet. I have not used the phone in days.

Day 1. Thursday 12th July
Took the train to Aveiro. Aveiro extremely windy. Had just found the right road – n109 – when i followed a roadsign for the beach. motorway nightmare. But happy enough, cycling along with the guitar on my back. Stopped before Vagos for a spliff and a seat on some cosy grass, at sundown. got to the other side of Vagos and halfway to Mira before i stopped for the night and camped in a bramble patch. not the best choice, obviously. the eucalyptus overhead were comforting. the insects and the mosquitos were not. the strange flickering light of a beetle in the leaf litter nearby.

Day 2. Friday 13th July
my feet look like turtles. 
the waves, the pattern by the Atlantic ocean – nothing like the Mediterranean, such a strange little sea, brooding and waveless. 
what Portuguese explorers have sat here and watched the waves?
Ten days in Mira – that will be an essay and a half…