Jason Rubi sent me a text with the picture from Google Street Maps as seen below of the house I lived in shown above, and it’s like, holy shit, that’s where I lived, first with Angelo, then with Jason, while stationed and living in the Azores, specifically the island of Terceira. I’ve periodically reminisced here about the wonder of living there – it feels like a dream, honestly. This house, a former church, was where I lived – it was perched on a cliffside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The views were amazing, and it was almost distractingly remote from a lot. There was one other house across the street, and then a little cafe at the base of the Sao Sebastiao Bay Baia da Salga (how did I not write that at all in this post originally??). At night, it could be really quiet and eerie. When it rained, I sometimes braced for the house to collapse down the cliffside. We once climbed down the cliff to the shore and the way the cliffside was hollowed out was almost frightening. But guess what? The place is still there, and looks almost exactly the same. I’m surprised – the owner/landlord had said he was going to sell the pastures in front and develop them with more apartments….but I guess gentrification decided not to come to the Azores. I’m glad, to be honest. I love that it’s still the same.
Terceira, Google Map – with where my house was on the south side of the island pointed out, as well as Lajes AB, where I worked:
The next thing to see is a zoom in of where we lived in ol’ Sao Sebastiao (pronounced San Sebastian, but it’s Portuguese, so everything ends in an “o”) / Baia da Salga.
It’s awesome to see that Google points out one of the restaurants I absolutely loved going to, A Ilha. SO GOOD. I had my going away there when I left. But they served some very good Beef or Chicken Alcatra, which is like the best pot roast you’ve ever had. There were better places to get Alcatra on the island, but having one so damn close was the best.
And then here’s the Street View of the ol Home on the Cliff:
Man, the MEMORIES while living there! The drinking, the dancing, the eating, the laughs, the music….the croquet playing, the drinking, the passing out, the rain, the running out of hot water due to the gas tanks emptying, geez, it was a whirlwind. But those days when the weather was perfect, and the sun was shining, and the ocean was beautifully blue….
Yeah, just amazing. Loads of pictures can be found on my old site here (but my entire collection is larger, that’s for sure) and one day I’ll eventually get to converting those too into my WordPress site. I met the greatest set of people there during those 15 months, and that was lucky, as it could have been a very lonely place to end up. But yeah, I got lucky, and have nothing but fond memories there.