Are we Safe Yet?

Over the last several years, we have put up with an awful lot in the name of keeping us safe. Especially in the DC metro area, we have concrete barriers and security checkpoints enough to outfit a military base. So are we safer?

Let's see. There haven't been any more airplanes crashing into high-rise office buildings, true. But there was that one lulu of a flood in New Orleans, and that collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, and let's not forget all the good folks who won't be coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda hasn't been able to demolish our way of life, true. But greedy bankers, corporate executives, and crooked politicians have that base covered pretty well. It's getting harder and harder to stay in the shrinking middle class these days, what with all the cutbacks and layoffs and life savings evaporating into the ether. And the next few generations will get to share in the fun as they try to keep up with the interest payments on all that debt.

Bottom line: whether you get blown up by a terrorist, or go to an early grave because you can't pay for good health care, or crash to a watery death because the bridge rusts out from underneath your car, you're just as dead one way as another.

I'm just sayin'...

Travel Journal, Part 7

January 1, 2009. Boa Ano Novo!
We started the new year by finishing up our packing while we washed sheets and towels and tidied up the condo. We left for Lisbon shortly after noon, and made the drive in alternating drizzle and downpour.

Close to Lisbon, the highway split, one way going to the south of Lisbon and one way going north. Since we hadn't had to choose a direction on our trip to Almancil, we weren't sure which way to choose, and in the few seconds we had to make a decision, we stayed on the main highway going to the south side. Oops. Wrong choice.

So Carole drove and I tried to navigate, using a map with markings that seemed to bear no relation to the signs we saw along the way. Things were getting tense, since we were supposed to meet a man from the rental car company at the airport at 3:00 so we could drop the car off. We didn't have cell phones, and we had no idea how long it would take us to find the airport from where we were.

I saw a highway on the map that followed the Rio Tejo and would lead us to an airport access road -- at least we would have the river to keep us oriented. But we couldn't see how to get onto this road, and we wound up downtown. Most of the shops were closed for the holiday. The upside of things being quasi-deserted was that found a parking space close to a public phone. Carole called the rental car company, and the man we were supposed to meet said not to worry if we were late. He had to stay at the airport until about 7:00 anyhow. I used the time to try and find our location on the map, and find a route to get ourselves back on track. I thought for sure we had it -- turn at this traffic circle, look for that park. But up ahead was a sign that said "buses only", and we had to make a turn onto a tiny street that had only a few inches of clearance between our tiny Fiat and the cars parked along both sides of the street. Carole's nerves were frayed, and my stomach was tight. Where were we?

Don't ask me how, but we pressed on ahead and found ourselves looking at the Rio Tejo, and the highway that I had tried to get us on in the first place! We headed north, keeping the river on our right, and by that time, we were starting to see signs pointing toward the airport. We made it into the airport entrance without further incident. Oh no! Were we supposed to go to terminal 1 or 2? We followed the road toward the "departures" level, as we had been told to do, and we reached terminal 1 first. There was the man from Rentauto, waving us in! What a relief. (Note that this company, which has no on-site office, had sent a man in on New Year's Day to take care of a few individual customers, and he recognized our average-looking little gray car as we were driving in. You don't get that kind of service in the States.)

We finished the paperwork for the rental car, transferred our bags to a taxi, and let someone else do the driving for a change. The driver gave me a look like "so?" when I told him "Hotel Turim Lisboa", but he seemed slightly mollified when I gave him the address in Portugese. Rua Felipe Folque vinte. The driver was not Mr. Chatty, and he was a very aggressive driver, but he did know where he was going. We got to our hotel in 15 minutes. The hotel was on a quiet side street near Edward VII Park, not the ultra-narrow kind of street, but small enough to have almost no traffic.

The hotel desk clerk spoke very good English -- apparently, this hotel is well known to tourists from Britain, Germany, and Spain. He checked us in, and after conferring with the maintenance man, recommended a nearby restaurant -- Antonio's -- that would be open on New Year's Day. Our room was quite large by European standards, more like an average-sized American hotel room. After a bit of head-scratching, we found that the way you turn the lights (and the rest of the electricity) on is to put your room key card into a slot by the door. That's one way to make sure you don't leave all the lights on when you're not in the room. The lights in the hall outside were motion-activated, another energy-saving measure.

We walked the couple of blocks to Antonio's and had a simple, filling dinner. Back at the hotel, it was still early, so we stopped into the hotel bar for a glass of wine and a chat with the bartender, then called it a night.

January 2. The weather went from drizzle to downpour and back to drizzle all day. No matter, this was our one day in Lisbon (at least, our one day when we weren't exploring downtown totally lost and stressed out). We set out on foot along the limestone mosaic sidewalks. (The sidewalks in the Algarve were mosaics, too.) This helps on a rainy day, since the water drains into the sand between the stone chips.

Another Lisbon sight that reminded us of the Algarve: many apartments had small inflatable Santa figures attached to their balcony railings, climbing up the outside of the railings like a second-story man.

We walked from the hotel to the Baixa, the central shopping region, and site of many historical buildings, near the riverfront. We took a quick espresso break (and got out of the rain for a moment) at a tiny shop next to a police station. The two tiny tables wedged in next to the shop window must have been designed for hobbits. Certainly not zaftig Americans. Police officers wandered in and out, chatting up the shopkeeper. The only thing that was missing was a rack of doughnuts. Some things are the same all over.

As we were taking in the sights around the Praca do Comercio, Carole spotted a tram that was just loading up people for a tour. We got the last two seats, and we welcomed a chance to dry out a bit while touring the city. We plugged in our headphones, tuned to Channel 2 for English, and off we went.

I couldn't get positioned well for photos, and I was more interested in listening to the tour narration anyway, so no photos of this part of our day. We saw churches and museums, residential neighborhoods built in the Pombaline style after the 1755 earthquake, elegant tilework, narrow streets. Very narrow streets. At one point, the tram driver had to stop and ring her bell to summon a driver who had parked his car at a slight angle, protruding about a foot into the street. Clearance was so tight that the trolley couldn't get past. Luckily, the man was close by, and he repositioned his car. At another place, the driver had to slow the tram to a crawl as she skootched the tram around a parked car, with only inches to spare. Everyone on the tram was watching nervously, and we let out an audible group sigh of relief when she made it past. I didn't know you could skootch a tram car, but apparently you can.

We had a late lunch at the Cafe Nicola, very famous locally, with a long history. Art deco decor (1930s remodeling) co-existed with the 18th-century statues and oil paintings. The waiter was very amused to have a couple of Americans as customers, and he teased us, asking if we wanted the whole swordfish or only a single serving.

We slogged around a while more, and bought some souvenirs. A man was selling CDs of fado music from an antique van that had been converted into a traveling shop. We each bought a "best of" CD by Amalia Rodrigues, an icon of Portugese fado music who died in 1999. Then we headed back to the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel around 5:00 PM, just as the clouds were beginning to part and the sun was shining through. Wouldn't you just know it. Dinner at the little restaurant across the street, and an evening of suitcase-packing.

January 3. The taxi arrived at the hotel right on time. After a white-knuckle ride to the airport (I swear we must have been airborne a few times), we checked in for our flight. The flight was uneventful, and we got back to Newark about 2:30 -- a half hour early. Eric showed up right at 3:00, and we regaled him with tales of our adventures on the way back to Carole's house. I stayed at Carole's place that night, making amends to her poor neglected kitties (yeah right -- the cat sitter treated them very well) and catching up on what little chit-chat we had left in us after two weeks.

January 4. On the road again. A big car crash tied up traffic outside Wilmington, but otherwise the trip went smoothly. Back home around 3PM. My Christmas cactus was in full bloom, as if to welcome me back.

Travel Journal, Part 6

December 31. We spent our last day in Almancil taking it easy. It rained off and on all day. Coffee and bolo (cake) for pequen almoco (breakfast) at a tiny coffee shop, a stop at the Western Union to check email, a stroll around the neighborhood. Lunch at Gamboa's, the same place we went on our first day in Almancil. The owner recognized us and gave us a warm handshake. Spent the afternoon packing our bags, napping, reading (I got most of the way through Julia Cameron's "Walking in the World" over the course of our trip).

Dinner at Ferriera's, the restaurant run by the Brazilian lady. It was New Year's Eve, and we didn't have reservations, but she remembered us and she had an open table. She had prepared a very elegant multicourse dinner that night, and some of the patrons were dressed in their holiday finery. We hadn't brought any realy dressy clothing, but we did our best, and we fit in with some of the more casually dressed patrons. We enjoyed a lovely dinner, and we left fairly early so we could make a last visit to Rumours.

There wasn't much going on at Rumours, but we sat at the bar and ordered drinks. A Portugese man sat next to us at the bar. He kept staring at us, but he never did try to talk to us. Another Portugese man, there with a couple of buddies, struck up a conversation, mostly with Carole (I had trouble following the conversation over the music). He had long, graying hair, and half of his teeth were missing, but he spoke passable English and he seemed very knowledgeable about American politics. We couldn't convince him that Los Angeles wasn't the capital of California, but he knew about Nixon and Reagan, and he had been following this year's election race. But the guy was sloshed, so the conversation was a little erratic. The bartender (who owned the bar with his sister, the one we talked to the other night) stopped by a couple of times to see if the guy was pestering us, but he seemed pretty harmless. I saw a schoolteacher and her son, expats from Newcastle (UK) we had talked to a couple of nights before. She was there with a couple of friends, and I wandered over to join their conversation. One of her friends went over to the karaoke machine, where he was joined by the bartender. They struck up an off-key version of "American Pie" and they were joined by Carole's toothless Portugese friend. The schoolteacher's other friend was visiting from Sunderland, a coastal town southeast of Newcastle. He thought it was a great novelty to be talking to Americans while he was in the Algarve. We all talked together until the bar closed, around 11:00.

We went back to the condo and watched part of "Blazing Saddles" on the TV movie channel (Portugese subtitles), then we went out on the balcony to watch the New Year's fireworks. There was supposed to be a big show on the Quarteira bridge, to the south of us, and I think that's what we saw. It was kind of an odd effect, seeing distant fireworks filtered through fog.

Happy 2009! Tomorrow, we drive to Lisbon.

Travel Journal, Part 5

December 29. Today's trip: Sagres, The End Of The World. The sky was cloudy as we headed to the westernmost corner of Portugal. The clouds grew very heavy, but the rain managed to hold off until we had finished our visit. This made for some very dramatic scenes: sheer cliffs with the waves crashing far below and the clouds looming overhead, the sun shining on the water a mile or so out to sea. It wasn't hard to find the Forteleza Sagres: just follow the signs and then head for the gigantic stone wall directly ahead. The wall encloses a large courtyard, mostly empty except for a few buildings, a church, a monument to Henry the Navigator (who assembled a group of cartographers here, although the school for navigators appears to be just a legend), a circle of stones on the ground forming a huge compass rose, and the disembodied stone head of an argonaut statue. On the leeward side of Sagres Point is a harbor, with hotels and a beach.

Between the courtyard and the sea is a wide stretch of open ground, full of heavily weathered, light-colored, hole-ridden rocks that look like lava. The rocky field looks like an alien boneyard, with various kinds of plants growing among the stones -- succulents, sea thrift, thistles, and some kind of tiny yellow flower. Seagulls allowed the tourists to get close, but not too close. Old cannons pointed out to sea, their iron barrels weathered and flaking to the point where they looked like they were made of wood.

After our visit to the Forteleza, we drove around the town of Sagres. We found a post office, a souvenir shop, and a tiny restaurant, where we had a mid-afternoon lunch. We headed back east, somehow missed a turn right around Lagos and wound up heading west again. After trying to right ourselves several times, we decided to give up on taking the local highway back -- it was getting dark anyway -- and we got onto the freeway and headed back to Almancil. Dinner was more of our purchases from Sunday's farmers market. We made a quick trip to the Western Union office to check our email, then called it a day.

December 30. This was the sunniest day we had seen for a while, although a few gray clouds still lingered. We got onto the A22 and headed east to Spain. Crossing the Rio Guadiana border was uneventful, no more hassle than crossing a state line in the US. The bridge was very modern-looking, with tall triangular supports that suggested the form of sails. As we crossed over into Spain, the scenery was less seacoast and more agricultural. We saw fields with acres of white plastic shelters that looked like quonset huts, protecting rows of small green plants with white flowers. Strawberries? We couldn't tell from the road.

We turned off the highway near Huelva, and followed a side road to the beach at Punta Umbria. Along the way, the trees had the stylized look of Art Nouveau prints. The beach was solidly covered with seashells, like a crunchy carpet. Some people were flying a kite that looked like a parasail from a distance. We stayed a while and watched the waves, the seagulls, a man contemplating the scenery.

We got back onto the road and drove through park-like forests and upscale resort developments. We explored a resort area called Cartaya, then found our way back to the main highway, and headed back west over the border to Portugal.

We got onto the N125 at the border towns of Castro Marim and Vila Real de Santo Antonio and drove as far as Tavira. There, we stopped and visited the Plaza do Republico in the center of town, and walked along the Gilao river for a while. The walkways and streets were covered with the same cobblestones, and what we thought was an interesting striped-stone walkway along the side of the plaza turned out to be an indication of where the cars were supposed to drive. I guess you were just supposed to know that -- or you would find out soon enough when a car honked its horn at you. The side streets were very narrow, and some of them had stone steps. The streets reminded me of the streets you see in the James Bond movies where the car is driving down a flight of steps or navigating a street with just an inch or two of clearance on either side. I was very glad to be on foot.

We explored the old walled city (8th century Phoenician) and made a brief visit to the Igreja do Misericordia (church). Inside, blue and white picture tiles reached halfway up the walls, and there was an ornate gold altarpiece.

Nearby, an old stone wall that looked like a very small castle enclosed a wonderful little garden. Plaques identified the various plants: bouganvila, hibiscus, poinsetta, blue nightshade, banana plants. Cactus plants grew between the stones of the castle walls. Narrow stone steps went to the top of the parapet, which overlooked white stucco houses with red tile roofs.

We looked around a couple of craft stores, then headed home. We got to Faro right around rush hour, almost wound up in that hospital parking lot that messed us up the first time, got out of the traffic circle one exit too soon, and took an unplanned tour of an industrial section of town. We finally righted ourselves and got back to Almancil without further incident.

Problems seeing my pix? Please write in.

A couple of you have told me that you weren't able to access the pictures from the links in my blog. I am not able to duplicate this problem (even when I'm not logged in to my account), and several people have been able to see my pictures just fine. I would like to find and fix any problems on my side of things, so if you can't see my pictures, please post a comment (if you have an account), or send me an email (nmcguire@wordchemist.com) with the following information.
1. Copy and paste the link you used and the date of the blog posting where the link appeared. If you can capture the URL from this link, put that in too.
2. Copy and paste the URL that you got when you followed the bad link -- this should appear in the narrow box at the top of the web page.
3. Tell me (briefly) what web page said when you followed the bad link -- page not found? you don't have privilege to access this page? etc.

In the meantime, you should be able to access my pictures through the main album page (again, tell me if you can't):
http://picasaweb.google.com/wordchemist.photos

Travel Journal, Part 4

December 27, Saturday. The morning was cloudy, but not cold. We drove to the Igreja do Sao Lourenco (Church of St. Lawrence), just a little east of Almancil. Augie and Gia were married in this church, and they recommended it as a must-see. The church was smaller than we had expected, but the interior was absolutely stunning. You'll have to take my word for it because we were not allowed to take pictures inside. The entire interior of the church was covered with blue and white tiles with exquisitely detailed pictures of scenes from the life of St. Lawrence. Here's a tile picture from the outside of the church. The grill you see in the background depicts the fact that St. Lawrence was tied to a grill and (shudder) slowly roasted alive for failing to recant his beliefs.

A gold-covered altar piece at the front of the church reached toward the high domed ceiling. Statues occupied several tiers, with St. Michael standing at the top. Very celestial-looking. Outside the church, Carole and I had a nice conversation with a visiting Scotsman named Lawrence and his wife.

We drove north to Loule, then walked through a narrow litte market street just south of the Sao Sebastiao Municipal Court (if my Portugese translation is correct). After wandering around Loule for a bit, we headed further north into the hills, toward a little town called Querenca.

The villages tucked away in the trees along the way were lovely. We made another Portugese discovery that might be worth emulating in the States: the smaller towns have traffic lights that only turn red if you are speeding. Portugal has a reputation for fast drivers, and they are using every innovation they can think of to slow people down. In any case, it was a very scenic and leisurely drive through the hillside towns. We drove as far as we dared, not really knowing where we were or how much farther up in the hills the road went. As it turned out, we could have reached a major highway had we gone a little farther, but the clouds were getting rather dark and not all of the streets were paved. We found ourselves on a very narrow street in Querenca, and we managed to follow it around and through a church driveway until we got back onto the main road in the direction of Loule.

We got back to Almancil about 2:30 PM and explored a bit more of the neighborhood before it started to sprinkle. That night, we went back to the Rumours Sports Bar for a drink before dinner, then to O Sagrado de Aoho restaurant for a cod dinner. By the time we finished dinner, the rain was coming down steadily, and we had left our rain gear at the condo. By the time we got back, we were pretty well soaked. Luckily, it still wasn't too cold.

December 28. We woke up early, intending to drive across the border to Spain that day, but it was misty outside and not a particularly good day for sightseeing. As the morning went on, the mist became a steady rain. We went a block down the street to the Western Union office and caught up on our e-mail.

Later that morning, we saw canopy tents in the vacant lot on the other side of the park. People were coming from that direction, carrying shopping bags. We grabbed our rain gear and wandered over. The Sunday farmer's market was in full swing by the time we got there, mud and all. You could get just about anything, from fresh produce and artisanal cheeses to sox and undies or kitchen utensils. We bought oranges, figs, cashews, radishes, bread, and cheese -- then went home and feasted. The oranges, which still had leaves attached, were some of the best I have ever had.

The sun came out in the afternoon, so we took the car south toward Quarteira. We wandered around lost in Vale dos Lobos, which is a haven for multimillionaires. You could practically smell the money. After we finally found the way out (presumably, all the chauffeurs already know their way around and have no need of street signs), we went back to Faro. We decided to explore the Old Town -- very old town. As in 8th century BC Phoenician old town. The walls surrounding the town were ancient-looking, and the limestone mosaic streets inside the walls were narrow and winding. Storks had built nests on the rooftops. Storks are very large birds -- it's easy to imagine them carrying babies in bundles. We don't have them in the States, so this was like seeing a fairy tale come to life.

On our way out, we saw a sign for a catamaran tour of the Ria Formosa. This was an opportunity that was too good to pass up. We paid our 20 euros each and took our seats along with the English, Belgian, and Portugese tourists. The tour guide repeated all of his explanations in Portugese, French, and English so we would all know what was going on. We left port at high tide, and you could see just the tops of the islands. Gray herons, sandwich terns, oyster catchers, white egrets, and cormorants covered the islands, waiting for the tide to go out so they could fish the shallows. The catamaran only had a half-meter draft, and the pilot knew the complicated path between the submerged islands.

We went ashore at a barrier island that had been evacuated (by humans) and set aside as a wildlife sanctuary in 1987. People were not allowed to live or camp there, but there was a visitor's center and a few shacks where fishermen could store their gear. Across a narrow inlet was another barrier island that had a small village. We spent half an hour wandering the beach on the Mediterranean side. The waves were quite high -- these barrier islands saved the city of Faro from the tsunami that followed the 1755 earthquake, and you could clearly see how much calmer the sea was on the other side of the island.

The sun was going down as we headed back toward Faro. The pilot let a 9-year-old girl, the daughter of Portugese expats on a visit from their home in Switzerland, drive the boat until we got well into the area with the sand bars, then he took over again. By the time we got off the boat, the Christmas lights were on in all the streets -- bells, stars, ribbons. A display in a tent showed a miniature version of Bethlehem, with the manger scene and villagers going about their business. A creche scene in the nearby park had life-sized statues.

Back in Almancil, the only place open on a Sunday night was a British fish and chips place. They didn't usually open on Sunday nights, but they were expecting a large football crowd that never materialized. Carole and I just about doubled their business for the evening. We went across the street to the sports pub, had our beers, and chatted with the owner while we watched more darts tournaments on the telly.

Farmer's market, Phoenician castles, Moorish ruins, bird watching, and darts on the telly. Not bad for one day.

Pictures!

I finally figured out how to get Picasaweb linked to iPhoto on my Mac! (Not that it was all that difficult, but I'm new at this.)
So now I have photos to go with my travel journal. Here's the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/wordchemist.photos

I will be uploading more photos as I update the travel journal. Enjoy!

Travel Journal, Part 3

Boxing day, December 26. We headed west on N125, then north to Silves to see the castle and cathedral. On the way, we passed acres of orange groves, and a whole series of fruit stands selling fresh oranges. We also saw young women, each one standing alone near where the side roads met the highway, apparently waiting for a ride. They all had very short skirts and high-heeled knee boots. Some were talking on cell phones. It seemed an odd place to practice the world's oldest trade, but we couldn't imagine farmers dressing like that. We also saw older women in long dresses, big babushka scarves, and heavy shoes -- more along the lines of what we had pictured as rural folk.

The Silves castle, which was occupied by Moors and Catholics at various times, is made of red stone, and the design is very blocky. (The tour book I have compares it to a Lego fortress.) You can walk around the parapet of the castle wall and look down at the archaeological dig sites in the center. Look the other way, and you get a good view of the town below. Silves is an eclectic mix of upscale new buildings and very old row houses that sit right up against some very narrow streets. Orange and lemon groves stand between the castle and some very large, new houses.

Close by is the cathedral, which wasn't open that day. We stopped for lunch at the Cafe do Se (cathedral cafe), a small al fresco snack bar operated by a very taciturn Englishman. We asked where he was from. His mum, he said.

Then it was on to Portomao, where we walked along the Praia da Rocha (Rock Beach). This is a sandy beach, and you reach it by walking down a very long flight of steep wooden steps that go down the face of a cliff. On the parts of the cliff that aren't completely vertical, giant agave plants and colorful wildflowers grow. The steeper parts are bare stone, yellow-ocher and burnt umber. The cliffs appear to be volcanic tuff, and if you stood too close, you would get a shower of fine sand falling in your hair. Steep-sided rocks jutted from the water and the beach, and the waves would wash over the smaller ones -- very dramatic. One of the larger rocks, about 25-30 feet high, was surrounded by water, and a lone fisherman stood on top with his (very long) line in the water. I have no idea how he got up there.

We left the beach, and drove aimlessly around the narrow old streets of Portomao until we found a parking lot and a large villiage square. At the Cafe Ingles, we found almond tarts, espresso, and (yes!) free maps of the Old Town area. We wandered a bit more on foot, got lost again, then found our way back to the car. We found the highway toward Faro more by luck than anything else, missed the entrance to the N125, and wound up going home on the A22 freeway, which was ok because it was starting to get dark. We found our way back to the condo, remembering where to turn by the kind of Christmas lights on each street.

That night, we treated ourselves to a "real" dinner at the Figueira Restaurante nearby. We got there a little before they opened, not knowing that the restaurants around there never open until 7PM, but the owner saw us and welcomed us inside. We sat in the lounge area, drinking red wine and looking at the menu until our table was ready. For a while, we had the whole restaurant to ourselves. The owner, a very friendly Brazilian lady, was a wonderful host. After a wonderful sea bass dinner, she treated us to a wonderful drink made from amarghuinha (an almond liqueur) and fresh lemon juice, served ice-cold.

As we walked back to the condo, we heard a loud voice coming from the park, and we saw a couple of police cars with their lights going. We weren't sure if this was something we should stay away from or satisfy our curiosity and check it out. Curiosity won out, and we were treated to the sight of about a hundred people of all ages processing by candlelight. The voice we heard belonged to a priest chanting the rosary over a PA system. Toward the end of the procession, several men carried a statue of Our Lady of Fatima on a platform, and other marchers carried a banner to honor Sao Lourenco (St. Lawrence). We watched them go past, through the traffic circle (no cars were out night) toward the Igreja Sao Lourenco (Church of St. Lawrence) a couple of miles away. Later, we found out that this procession was a seven-day affair, and they visited all of the churches in the area.

Then it was back to the condo to rest up for another day.

Travel Journal, Part 2

Bom Natal! Slept in until 9:30, got a nice hot shower and a nice pequen almoco (breakfast). The condo kitchen had a microwave-toaster combination that really saved on counter space. I'm going to have to see if I can find one of those here in the States. The morning clouds dispersed, and it was a beautiful sunny day.

It was my turn to drive the Fiat, and it took some getting used to. Carole and I both had the typical American driver's ed experience, and neither one of us can drive a manual transmission car worth beans. The Fiat had automatic transmission (after a fashion), but you had to think like a stickshift driver. No parking gear, so you had to remember to set (and unset!) the parking brake. And if you're stopped at the top of a hill, keep your foot on the brake until you're actually starting to move forward, or else you'll roll backward! After a few days, we both got used to driving the car, so no more teeth-jarring stops or nail-biting gear shifts while entering a crowded traffic circle.

Speaking of traffic circles, I really like the way the Portugese do traffic circles. They mark their circles with big, simple signs, and everybody knows you're supposed to yield to the traffic in the circle. You don't get these lines of traffic braiding in and out, trying to figure out which lane to get in, like you do in Washington DC. Of course, this was during the off-season, when there was very little traffic and most of the folks were local. There's no telling what the circles are like at the height of tourist season. But the Brits have circles too, so maybe they have this thing mastered.

So anyway, I was behind the wheel of the Fiat today, and we headed east on the N125 (the local highway that parallels the larger freeway-style highway along the south coast). We went through Faro, the capital city of the Algarve, and went on to Olhao. (There's supposed to be a tilde over the a, but I'm in no mood to do a bunch of HTML coding right now. The name is pronounced ole-YOW.) We found a beach access road that led to a marina and what appeared to be a large indoor market. This being Christmas Day, most everything was closed. But we did find a snack bar (this region is big on snack bars, and they use the English term) and got sandwiches for lunch (8 euros for the both of us!). A fair number of people were sitting outside at the bistro tables, having their espresso and enjoying the sunshine.

Near the promenade and the shops was a waterside park, with a carousel that had foreign-looking imitations of American cartoon characters instead of horses -- Mickey Mouse, Sylvester and Tweety, Fred Flinstone, etc. Little kids were riding the carousel, which was playing familiar-sounding carousel music.

Heading back west, we turned off onto a beach access road that went through a posh residential neighborhood. It looked like one of those golf-course retirement communities in the States. Not as over-the-top as the mansions that we saw farther west (more on that later), but very prosperous looking nevertheless. Lots of medium-sized white stucco houses with red tile roofs, surrounded by palm trees. To the south of the residential area was a road that ran along a marshy area, with the ocean beyond. In one spot, a lot of cars were parked along the side of the road, and there was a walkway heading south. We decided to investigate.

A path led to a wooden bridge across a stretch of water, and onto a barrier island, a part of the Ria Formosa area that protects this stretch of the mainland from the waves of the Mediterranean. (The Ria Formosa saved the city of Faro from the worst of the tsunami following the 1755 earthquake, which wiped out a good bit of coastal Portugal.)

We came to a wooden shelter, under which was an open-sided train with wooden benches. A man sat on the train platform, watching us impassively. A walkway ran alongside the train tracks, but we couldn't figure out how to get to it. Finally, the man pointed to the steps down to the walkway and we set off to see what we could see. We had gotten a fair distance down the walkway, when the train passed us. I'm guessing that the man we saw earlier was driving the train, but I didn't see for sure. We hadn't thought to ask if the train was running that day, we just assumed it wasn't. No matter. Somewhere along the walkway, I saw a sign that said Pedras d'El Rei, so I assume that's where we were (it's a barrier island just south of Tavira). At the end of the walkway was a beach, with a boardwalk and shops (closed). We watched the ocean and soaked in the sunshine for quite a while. The beach wasn't crowded, but quite a few people had come out to sit with their books, walk their dogs, and just generally enjoy a very pleasant day. As we walked back toward the road, another train came by, presumably taking people to the beach to watch the sunset.

We headed back toward Almancil, and made a wrong exit from a traffic circle in Faro, ending up in the hospital parking lot. Something had gone wrong up ahead, and a long line of cars just sat there, not moving. People came in behind us, and the road was one-way, so there was no going forward or backward. After what seemed an eternity, and cars backed up all the way back to the traffic circle, someone at the back of the line finally backed up into the circle (brave move!), allowing the rest of us to back out and right ourselves. We took the most promising looking exit off the circle, and found ourselves heading north toward Loule (accent mark over the e). We didn't think that was right, so we backtracked to that same circle in Faro and went around once again, carefully avoiding the hospital parking lot. We couldn't find any exit that looked even half right, except the one we had just taken, so we headed toward Loule and hoped for the best. As it turns out, that was exactly the right exit to take, and we should have just gone on a little further. Some force there is that watches over ditzy tourists, and we made it back to the condo safe and sound.

We wrapped up the day by seeing what there was on TV. One station showed American movies with Portugese subtitles. We also found a show that runs amateur video clips -- some funny, some just scary (car crashes and the like). Another show we came to like was called "No ha crise", which means something like "No problem". It's like Candid Camera, only funnier. The host spoke Portugese, but a lot of the clips appeared to come from Canada.

All in all, not a bad way to spend Christmas.

Travel Journal, Part 1

It's been a month since my last posting, and part of the reason is that I have been noodling about the Algarve for a couple of weeks. (I was looking for a chance to use that phrase!) The vacation included a traveling companion (Carole) and a car (Fiat), but not a computer (except a couple of sessions at the Western Union office when it was pouring down rain -- more on that later). So my next few postings will be a slightly edited version of my travel journal. Pictures to come -- when I can figure out how I want to post the darned things.

December 23: I drove to Carole's house in New Jersey. We had tea and conversation with Giselda, Carole's neighbor and wife of Augustino. We're going to be staying in Augie and Gia's condo in Almancil, Portugal. This is the kind of opportunity that seems to only happen to other people, so when they very graciously offered to let us spend the winter holidays in their summer home, how could we refuse? Our good buddy Eric drove us to Newark Airport and after a very long wait to get past the one TSA person working the international security checkpoint (what was up with that???), the adventure began.

Winter is the off-season for most tourists to the south of Portugal, so pretty much everyone on the plane was going home for the holidays. Not much English being spoken on the plane, and Carole and I looked a bit out of place with our Anglo-Saxon faces. The couple across the aisle from us had a bichon frise/poodle (bidoodle?) that was the best behaved little doggie I've ever seen on a plane.

When we touched down in Lisbon Airport, it was 6 AM on December 24, local time. Apparently, it's customary for all the passengers to applaud the pilot upon landing, even if the flight was uneventful. That's a pretty cool job perk!

Our bags arrived safely too, and the guy from the rental car company was waiting for us. So far so good. Augie had printed detailed maps for us to find our way out of town, and Carole took the first turn driving the little Fiat. We found our way onto the highway and headed south through the morning fog. The countryside was hilly, with trees scattered here and there. Flocks of white sheep and herds of butterscotch-colored cows grazed, totally oblivious to us.

As we got closer to the Algarve region, the hills got higher and the trees got thicker. Also, the freeway exits got fewer and farther between. This turned out to be a problem, because the fuel gauge in the Fiat was in the red zone near "E". It turns out that the F was on the left side, and the E was on the right side, so what we thought was an almost full tank of gas leaving Lisbon was actually nowhere near full. Oops. We finally found an exit and asked the lady at the toll booth where we could find a gas station. Luckily, "diesel" is the same in English and Portugese, and she told us where to turn to find a small town, Sao Bartolomeu de Messines, with a gas station. Would it be open? It turns out that Sao Bart was very small, and the attendant spoke no English at all. Our few Portugese words and a lot of pantomime got the message across, and we soon had a full tank of diesel. For the record, the cheap diesel was running about a euro a liter.

We finally made it to Almancil about 11:00. Finding the condo was a combination of Carole's good memory (Augie showed her photos of the condo and the surrounding neighborhood) and just dumb luck. The Portugese are not big on street signs, preferring to put street names on pretty tile insets in buildings and walls, when they bother at all. We knew that the condo was across from a park at the city center, and Almancil is not very big, so we did manage to find the place. The building was very new -- it was built on land that used to belong to Gia's family, and they still owned part of the building. The condo was large -- two levels, four bedrooms and three baths, plus a spacious living room and kitchen.

We spent some time putting our things away, then ventured out to explore the surroundings. The sun was shining, and our sweaters were definitely not necessary. An old building, which looked like it might have been a barn or a stable, occupied the back part of the lot, along with some orange trees in full fruit. That and some very old stone walls were what was left of what must have been Gia's family's farm. Nearby, a man watched over a donkey and a cart. As we got closer, we noticed that a small group of people had set up camp in a vacant lot. We had been told that there were gypsies in the area -- Roma, the real deal.

We found a restaurant that Augie and Gia recommended, Gamboa's, just down the street. This place has a seven-euro lunch, which was very filling and good. Lots of working people come there, as evidenced by overalls with landscaping company logos and paint-splattered pants. Walking around, we noticed a lot of new construction, and some of it looked to be just sitting there partially completed. A lot of the condos had "se vende" (for sale) signs. We wondered if Almancil had been hit by the same kind of real estate crash that is plaguing the US.

We went to the little market down the street to get supplies in case nothing was open on Christmas. The market was familiar and not, at the same time. Bread and cheese and meat, but different kinds and different brands. A lot of English tourists and expats come to the Algarve, so the market carried a fairly good selection of items to appeal to Brits, as well as the local Portugese necessities.

The condo was very definitely set up for summer -- lots of tile and marble kept the place very cold. No matter. Augie and Gia had just installed high-tech room heaters, and the weather outside was right around 20C (something like high 60s F). So we turned on the heaters to take the chill off, and everything was fine for a little while, until all the power went off in the condo. OK, so we checked the breakers, but they were all still on. Plus, we had no hot water.

We didn't want to spend a week and a half freezing in the dark, and we had no idea what to do next. Luckily, Augie and Gia had given us the phone number of Augie's brother Ysidros, who lived nearby. We had no cell phones (big mistake not getting phones that would work in Europe), so we walked to an area with a lot of shops and found a phone booth. Ysidros couldn't break away from work right away, so he sent his co-worker out to help us. He didn't have any more luck than we did, so Ysidros drove out from Faro to help us. Both of these men were very gracious, and fluent in English (yay!). It's such a relief to have someone to rescue you when you're in an unfamiliar place and you don't know what to do. Very soon, we had our electricity back, and the gas was turned on for hot water and the stove. Word to the wise, when your main breaker will only go up to 15KW, you don't want to be acting like an American and heating all of your rooms at once.

By this time, the sun was going down, and the Christmas lights went on outside. Each street had a different light display: red and white stars and snowflakes on our street, tree shapes on the next street, and pine branches on the street beyond that. Atop a building on the other side of the park was a white shooting star, which we would later see repeated over many public creches. (Portugal has no hang-ups about putting manger scenes in the public parks.) That shooting star was to become my little talisman, the last thing I saw out my window at night and the first thing I saw in the pale morning light.

We weren't in the mood to spend our first evening abroad in the condo, so Carole and I headed down the street to see what was open on Christmas Eve. Not much. We wound up in Rumours Sports Bar, a hangout for British expats. The kitchen was closed, but the bartender took pity on us and made us toasteds, aka grilled cheese sandwiches. That and a beer made a very nice dinner. We watched the darts championships on the telly and chatted with a couple of the regulars.

Given that we had been up for a day and a half with no real sleep to speak of, Carole and I were pretty much wiped out by 8PM. And so to bed. (to be continued...)