Fourteen months lost. Fourteen months of too much death, sickness and bad news. Fourteen months of lockdown. Fourteen months of socializing by computer, mostly. Fourteen months of meals in. And then there’s now…. hope and return.
As two fully vaccinated people we finally broke out of the bubble, socialized in person, ate dine-in at a restaurant and it felt so…normal. Sure, the menus were on our phones from reading a QR code, sure the tables were safely distanced, sure the waitstaff, bartenders, hosts were masked as were the non eating diners. This isn’t any kind of revelation for those of you who returned to the restaurant dine-in world months ago, but for us it was all new. And yet, it felt normal. Like it wasn’t strange and like it was 2019 with cloth on faces.
Now as we map our return to Portugal, with airline tickets purchased, we continue our ease back out into the world. And it feels so good.
The Traveling Ridleys: Sunday Journal 