Places that make you realise how small you are – Serra da Estrela, Portugal

One of the things I say the most about London (which I believe it applies to big cities in general) is that it is a demanding lover. You do love it, so fucking badly, but it demands so much of you that tires you up. So, despite loving this, sometimes my body requires a break from everything – the crowds, the noise, the confusion, the queues, the pollution. And it’s sort of funny that I only realise this when I look at my life in London with some distance.

I am happy to be able to go to a place I call home at least twice a year – Portugal. I am just a girl from a small village of a small town. Knowing for sure I could not bear to live there for long now, it’s good to know it exists as a safe place of mine. That is always going to be there, by the beach that I so much adore.

I was really happy to go back there for the Holidays, specially because the year before I had to stay in London. And even happier to be able to explore some places where nature still rules.

One of those places is called Serra da Estrela (a literal translation will be Mountain of the Star), the highest point in Portugal geography. This is one place where you won’t need filters in your photos. It was so beautiful when I went there. It was a lovely sunny day, the snow had become ice, the lakes where just so blue. And the sunset light would reflect in the icy ground and produce a peaceful atmosphere. That’s when you know it. That’s when you realise how beautiful the Earth really is. That despite everything, despite the chaos that your life might be, all those issues, concerns, stressful things in your life, are just nothing compared to that. How small we are and how ignorant and vain to think that we are anything at all compared with this.