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...)