Describe a quiet place in the countryside you have been to

I want to talk about a farm in the Alentejo, it is a big region in the south of Portugal. The farm is of my friend's grandparents. There are many cork trees and olive trees around, and the nearest village is twenty minutes far by car.

I went there last spring with my friend Inês. First we took a train from Lisbon to Évora, it took about ninety minutes. From the window I could see the city change into fields. Then her grandfather picked us with his old truck, and we drove on a small road without asphalt.

We did many things there. In the morning we gave food to the animals and we took the eggs from the chickens. After that we walked between the cork trees. Every tree has a number painted on it, and I learned it shows the year when they took the bark. In the afternoon we swam in a lake, and at night we watched the stars, there was so many of them.

At first I felt strange, because it was too quiet and I couldn't sleep in the first night. But after two or three days I became very relax. There was no signal for my phone, so I didn't use it, and I felt very calm. When I returned to Lisbon, the city was so noisy for me.

I'd like to describe a farm in the Alentejo, which is a large rural region in the south of Portugal. My friend Inês's grandparents live there, and it's really isolated: there's nothing around it except cork trees and olive trees, and the nearest village is about twenty minutes away by the car.

I went there last spring with Inês. We caught the train from Lisbon to Évora, which took around an hour and a half, and it was nice to watch the city slowly turn into countryside through the window. Then her grandfather came to pick us up in a very old truck, and we drove the last part on a dirt road.

We spent most of our time outdoors. In the mornings we helped to feed the animals and collect eggs, and then we usually went for long walks. I found out that the numbers painted on the cork trees show the year when the bark was last removed, which I'd never known before. In the afternoons we went swimming in a reservoir nearby, and in the evenings we sat outside and looked at the stars, which were incredible because there was no light pollution at all.

At first I actually felt a bit uncomfortable, because it was so quiet that I couldn't get to sleep on the first night. However, after a couple of days I started to really relax. I didn't look at my phone, mostly because there wasn't any signal, and I felt much calmer than usual. When I came back to Lisbon, everything seemed so noisy, and I realised how much I'd needed that break.

The quietest place I've ever stayed is a farm in the Alentejo, the big rural region in the south of Portugal. It belongs to the grandparents of my friend Inês, and it's surrounded by cork oaks and olive groves, with the nearest village a good twenty minutes away.

We went last spring. We took the train from Lisbon to Évora, which takes about an hour and a half, and watched the suburbs gradually give way to rolling fields. Her grandfather picked us up in a pick-up truck that was older than both of us combined, and the last stretch was a bumpy dirt track with nothing on it but a few sheep.

The days had a lovely slowness to them. We'd get up with the roosters, collect the eggs, and then wander through the cork trees. Each trunk has a number painted on it, which turns out to be the last digit of the year its bark was harvested; I'd lived in Portugal all my life and never known that. In the afternoons we swam in a reservoir nearby, and lunch somehow lasted until four. At night, with no streetlights for miles, the sky was so full of stars that the Milky Way looked almost like a cloud.

Oddly enough, the first thing I felt was restless. The silence was so complete that I couldn't sleep the first night; I kept waiting for a car or a siren. But by the third day something had shifted. I stopped checking my phone, partly because there was no signal, and I noticed I was breathing more slowly. When we got back to Lisbon, the city seemed deafening, and I've been trying to hold on to that feeling ever since.