Tomar

Seeing as our previous holiday outside of the UK was just before the 2020 lockdown hit, we decided to take a week in central Portugal with our boys this January. We weren’t disappointed.

Staying in the centre of a city can give you a good idea of a place and our apartment was above cafés on a busy street. Wherever we went, we came across lots of cafés. The vibes were positive. My morning routine soon became going to the nearest cafe with the boys and choosing a few patisseries for them to take back up to the apartment while I sat outside the cafe soaking up the atmosphere with a double espresso.

I can see the attraction of this cafe culture in places like Tomar. This is how many of the locals would start their day, congregating around a table on the pavement and having a chat. I enjoyed people watching. My eavesdropping, however, wasn’t so good in Portuguese. You get good thinking time in the few minutes that it takes to drink an espresso too. In just a week, most of my best business plans came in that moment each morning. Whatever our plans. Whatever we aspire to achieve, whatever we want to do with our lives, we need thinking time in order to do it.

And Tomar was indeed partly a business trip. But with two kids with us, everything is generally a little unconventional. We had to merge a holiday with the stuff that we went there to do. The kids loved it. In fact, they enjoyed the bits where Lou and I had appointments and had to travel.

We enjoy a holiday in the sun by the beach with a water park outside of our hotel, but they seem to also appreciate talking to people in another language, taking notice of the architecture, trying different food and finding out about the history of towns and cities that they visit. Many locals didn’t speak English and Tomar is steeped in history, so we all enjoyed learning along the way.

Of course, I had to try the different food and drinks on offer during my stay. It’s a good job it is ‘bulking season’! However, the pastal de natas that I ate each morning aren’t a great dietary need for any time of the season, they just tasted good! So did the wine!

Getting back to a steady diet and a training routine will take a few days. Whenever we have a period of time off it can have that sort of impact on our energy and motivation. I know that I’ll have a couple of ‘sluggish’ gym sessions which can deter people from carrying on. It’s easy to think that all of the hard work and good progress is lost after a period of time eating lots of food and having time away from training, but it really isn’t. The body needs down time too. And there’s no better place than in a cafe in Tomar.