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Since I started learning Portuguese in Moscow State University, I have traveled a lot in Continental Portugal: I fell in love with the region of Algarve and its infinite rocky beaches, I got charmed with Porto and its hills that bestowed me breathtaking views, and in 2014 the city of Lisbon captivated me forever. It seemed to me I already knew every village and every path among the Sintra rocks, I was almost a local inhabitant in Portugal. But in 2018, on the 12th of June, just after my last exam of the Master Program in Lisbon, I caught a plane to spend Saint Anthony's Day out of the capital, in the place I had dreamt to visit since my first school lessons of Geography. The bright celebration of the patron saint of Lisbon with colorful tinsels and grilled sardines was casually relocated to the biggest port of the Azores. Ponta Delgada was a piece of a long emerald pie of the island of São Miguel, crowned with Chantilly cream of silver clouds. When the plane landed, I felt a countryside mixture of aromas: frothing creamy milk and freshly cut grass. That simple smell took me back to my childhood and happy three summer months I had passed with my grandparents in Russia, being a tiny goatherd and a responsible gatherer of warm eggs. In Ponta Delgada, I stayed in a cozy hostel where I tasted the best breakfast ever: crispy granola with Azorean milk and juicy pineapples. How couldn’t I love it? After my daily early-bird awakening I used to catch a bus at 7:05 a.m. and hit the road to the Lagoon of the Seven Cities, the Lake of Fire or Furnas Lake. I didn’t have a car and I had to discover the island by bus, that was a crazy challenge. All the trips began with first sunny rays and ended in the last bus, where I was enjoying the beautiful hills in purple reflections. It was always a fascinating game: running fast to the bus stop and trying to see all the sights in every location before coming back home. I was traveling alone but every day I managed to make new friends from Brazil or France in that only one morning bus and discover the volcanic secrets with them. We shared the joy of taking hot ferric baths and eating fresh vegetables cooked in fumaroles, climbing down to the valley of Lake of Fire and taking pictures of nimble trouts and enormous flocks of seagulls. The nature of São Miguel was charming, peaceful and meek like the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty. I had never seen so many hydrangea bushes on the roadside, so serene cow pastures and so fast-flying clouds. On the last day of my vacation, after being sunburned and sodden at the same time, I walked in the forest around the twin lake for two hours without meeting any person or animal, tasted the most delicious vanilla ice cream made from Azorean milk on the quayside of Ponta Delgada and almost saw noble whales on the horizon. It was almost because I really needed one more day without running behind the bus to sit down on a rocky shore, lay my makeshift table on a big stone, taste some São Jorge cheese with a glass of white wine from Pico Island and stare off at the horizon to finally observe whales. Probably next time I’ll see them, making the islands less unknown than they were during my first stay.