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.