Yep, indeed – sadly, my holidays are over! 🙁 Hard to believe that exactly one week ago I was still melting under the Portuguese late Summer, especially after spending this whole morning at the University’s boathouse under an overcast sky and with a cold wind continuously blowing…

The holidays, though, couldn’t have ended better: the 2013 edition of the Douro descent (actually this year we had an ascent/descent!) was awesome! Lots of rowing (~64k overall), good company, great scenery and excellent food, what can I ask for more?

(there are a lot of stories to tell, along with some excellent photos, but those will have to wait for a later time, as I’m writing this in a hurry now! 😛 )

Anyway, in retrospective, these 3.5 weeks I spent in Porto were great, albeit they went past very, very quickly – I managed to mentor 5 high school students, train towards and run a half-marathon, work on my ^”!$!^*! paper (which is still not ready – every day we uncover new things that need to go into it, it is the sad life of a researcher!) and do lots of rowing and running (and even some cycling, which didn’t end the way I wanted to, though…).