Before a trip, I often wonder what I could possibly find to write about. Fortunately, people are never the same and we’re always running into something new. Somethings are the same every time, but they somehow never grow old. For example, I can never resist taking a video of the cave tour boats coming in. They’re full of guests. The ocean is rough, they don’t have a dingy to go fetch the guests out of the tour boats. So the obvious answer is to drive the full boats up onto the sand at full throttle… what could go wrong? Then they have a tractor drag them the rest of the way up onto the beach. Once it’s ready to go again, the tractor turns it around. Puffing around to the back of the now full boat it shoves it out to sea and hurriedly backs out of the salt water. It’s quit the show!
Another joy is going to the barber. Joe likes the place with a chess board out front and a pool table inside… neither of which he gets to do, but it’s a cool concept. I always tell the barber exactly what I want. A 2 guard on the sides and a 3 guard on top. They never do it that way, but it looks good anyway.
Going to five grocery stores to find the various things we want is an adventure. This time I shocked the butcher by asking if they had filet mignon. She said yes and pointed to the intact tenderloin. I said I’d take the whole thing. It was only 36 euros for basically six steaks. We had two that night and I froze the rest. Joe went to fire up the BBQ and discovered it was locked with a big padlock. I texted Pascal in Paris and asked him what the combo was as this is one of the reasons we stay at this condo. He gave it to me and explained that the last guests didn’t keep it clean and it caught fire. Now he’s worried. Now I’m worried too. But Joe cooked up the steaks with no mishap.
Then we went to Lidl to see if they had the correct coffee pods for the Nespresso machine. They didn’t. The adventure was when we tried to leave. There’s no exit without scanning a receipt. Joe dashed out the front door when someone came in and then couldn’t get it to open for me. I finally asked an employee how to get out. He pointed to the line. I complained, so he went to the long line and said something loudly in Portuguese and everyone resentfully moved to the side while Joe laughed from the other side of the giant window.
We have our favorite cafes. The one we really like is a little Portuguese one by the local market. It’s cheap, good, and they’re super sweet. Yesterday I decided to try my meager Portuguese on the waitress. I said this was my favorite café. I think I made a friend for life. Today we went to Carvoeiro to walk the cliffs and have lunch at our favorite hamburger place. The Uber driver was eager to communicate, so we chatted the whole way in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. It was comical. Coming back was a different story, but then again the guy wasn’t Portuguese. He never spoke. Not once.
On a side note, I’ve begun the process of mapping the locations of the film (The Tattered Book). I have a paper map of Florence, Italy, and I pop open Google Maps. With my screenplay program open also, I toggle back and forth and pinpoint all the scenes taking place in Florence, Cassino, and Alvito. Although this time we’ll not be going to those southern towns. I love the Google street level function on the maps. It lets me get exact walking info. I realized I’d had Marco Marino take his dog for a walk. As a fictional writer, it doesn’t really matter how crowded something is or what festival may be going on, but for a movie it’s critical. Now I needed to place him in a neighborhood near a park… a park without a wall around it and a locked gate. It took me awhile, but I found one. ;)
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