Our Home in Armação de Pêra and What Do Portuguese Look Like?

This Airbnb is really luxurious. Not in a super expensive way, but the thought put into details. For example; when I’m someplace for a long time I want to clean up… like sweep or vacuum. Pascal, the owner, has a soft good quality broom and there’s even a little battery-powered vacuum like a Dyson. It’s so easy to just whip around and clean up the debris blown in (because we always leave our doors open and Portugal has yet to embrace the concept of window screens). All of the pots and pans are excellent. They have a Nespresso machine—my favorite. And they even provided me with a box of Nespresso brand coffee pods! They also had a bottle of white wine. All of the black-out blinds are electronic. Just push a button and walk away. It’s really nice.

I sit here on my giant patio with a view of the pool and all the various things people do on vacation. A lady and her husband come everyday with a little tiny puppy in a carrier. They just left to be replaced with five teenage boys. Oddly enough one brought a guitar. They stood around for awhile making half-hearted attempts to sing along with him, but they got bored and now they’re trying to work up the courage to get in the cold water. Portuguese men have this really interesting thing they do… they clap their hands when they’re passionate about something. You’ll see that when they’re arguing, or in this case they all clapped their hands to get themselves worked up to jump in. It worked. They are all in now.

We’re in the upper end of town away from the tourism. In the morning it almost feels like a campground with the various waking up noises. One dog begins to howl the second his master leaves for work. It sounds like something between a human in mortal agony and a basset hound. The sound of babies is everywhere because babies are everywhere. There’s one little baby girl who always says, “Ola,” to me and waves her little hand.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me what Portuguese people look like. For some reason this question always throws me for a loop. What do they look like… besides Portuguese? I guess I’d say a mix between Spanish and Italian, maybe. Olive-complexions, straight noses, dark thick hair, dark eyes, tall around 5’11”, short around 5’. Mostly slim, though the elderly ladies can fill in like little barrels. For the women, no need for make-up, therefore they wear very little.

In Portugal, especially southern Portugal, the dress is very casual. Up north lots of men wear suits to work, but otherwise it’s jeans and shorts. Women dress in slacks or dresses for work, shorts and skirts for casual. I have never seen a Portuguese person of any age wearing pajamas or house slippers in public… maybe shorts and no shirt, or a bikini top, but not pajamas.

Those who wear sweats in public wear the nice ones. For many, many years, I’ve had people tell me, “If you want to stand out as an American, wear white tennis shoes!” This is definitely not true. The vast majority of people in Europe, and especially Portugal, wear white tennies. Other colors are worn, but usually not the heavy dark walking shoes we wear. White is in.

The other night an elderly couple was dining with a younger couple. Grandma, around eighty, was dressed in a black fitted dress. She had lots of make-up on, and her hair was pulled up into a French twist. When it came time for the photos, she yanked down the front of her dress to show some cleavage. Some things never change.

The normal swimwear is shorts for a man (though some men wear a speedo-type trunk) and thong bikinis for the gals. It doesn’t matter what the girl’s butt looks like, if she’s under fifty years-old she’ll be wearing a thong. I stand out as an American because mine covers my bum. As for hair, women wear it long and unstyled. Either in a ponytail or not. Men have the classic short hair on the sides and slightly longer on top. There’s a barbershop on every corner.

The language sound is somewhere between Spanish and Russian. Hard to describe, but it has a harsh sound to it combined with the shhh sound which softens it. But, like Italians, they talk with their hands with lots and lots of emotion.

Attitude? Hmmm… that’s a tougher one. They come off as being content, comfortable in their own skin, proud of their heritage—but respectful of other’s. It seems as though some of the older crowd is a little sick of tourists. There is sort-of an invisible wall between us, which usually crumbles once we start talking to them but not always. All-in-all, I’d say they’re unpretentious.

Armação de Pêra; Settling in amidst bruises and sniffles

So, I happily left you with the statement that we slept nine hours and felt brand new. That was Tuesday. A lot’s happened since then. We spent that day trotting around town to all our favorite haunts. We came back to our place and changed for dinner. Feeling energetic we headed off for our twenty-minute walk to Café Império. Instead of waiting a couple of minutes for the next green crosswalk, we decided (with very little forethought) to trot to the crossing. Next thing I knew, I was flat on my face on the cobblestone sidewalk. It happened so amazingly fast it defies logic. Joe said I leapt back to my feet almost as fast as I went down. I knew I was hurt, but I had my pride to think about first. We went to the restaurant where I immediately went to the bathroom to wash my wounds. So, to make a long story short, I hurt everywhere. I landed on my hands, elbows, and knees with the bruises to prove it.

That changed our plans for the next day. We’d planned to go to Cascais for the day. Instead, we walked around our area, slowly. We discovered a new restaurant called Al Portofino. It’s a hole-in-the-wall place on Rua Morais Soares. They christened me by knocking a to-go pizza box off the shelf and dousing me with half my glass of wine. Oh well… I didn’t really want the whole glass—honestly. The poor waitress was so apologetic. I told her to not worry, I was wearing all black. We had a pizza that was enough for two, two glasses of wine (minus a splash or two), two beers, two limoncellos (for Joe)—all for 24 euros.

Thursday dawned a new day with less pain and we boarded our bus to the Algarve. Three hours goes quickly when you’re deep into a good book. I was reading The Prince and The Pauper by Mark Twain. Great book. (A little travel hack—I bring a tiny non-skid daisy with me to keep my Nook propped up so I can read it. It’s also good to keep your laptop from sliding around.) 

We arrived safely with no further mishaps. I knew exactly where our Airbnb was because, nerd that I am, I’d googled it. The owner’s adorable mother met us with a steady stream of Portuguese, which we somehow understood. She called her son and he clarified a few things she couldn’t quite explain with body language.

This place is gorgeous. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath condo with a massive patio overlooking the pool. ($3,200 for 6 weeks). First thing we did was hit the grocery store, Pingo Doce. We loaded up on the basics knowing we’d have to make a second trip. First thing this morning we power-walked over to Continente to get a few other things like barbecue sauce and chicken.

As I write this, the chicken is smelling delicious and the view of the pool is great. Jesse Cook is playing in the background. I think we may just refuse to leave. I’m hopeful I will actually get in and swim laps soon. I think my shoulder will feel up to it tomorrow. Today we went to the beach again to people-watch… and eat. It’s a very good thing we walk so much.

We have a little café we just love, called Tinirose. It has four great qualities; nice people working there, all locals, dirt cheap, and has my favorite red wine in Armação for one euro. One euro. Joe’s Super Bock Stout is only 1.50E. I could live here for a very long time. As a reminder, look for the signs on the table telling you they take cash only. For 2.5E you should be able to fork over the cash, but make sure you pay attention to this little sign.

I’m assuming you all know this, but I write this blog over a few days before I post it. And, of course, things change. I woke up yesterday with a sore throat. I took all three of my Airborns to hopefully avoid actually getting a cold. Today I woke up with a sore throat again. Oh well, colds are part of life I suppose. Thankfully I have some Nyquil from the states. I’m glad I seem to feel fine during the day. We swam a few laps and worked out on our patio, then spent the day wandering the coast and stopped to share a chicken wrap at a cute little beach café.

Hopefully the next six weeks will bring adventure of a better sort. ;)

Portugal; Two Incredibly Long Days of Travel

We just arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, yesterday. It wasn’t a great trip. You know I believe in sharing my mistakes with you (which is a good thing—otherwise I wouldn’t have much to write about!), so here it goes. I decided to try a different airline (Norse Atlantic) because it’s so cheap we could afford to go first class. It’s a nice airline and I recommend it. What I don’t recommend is everything else. Normally we drive a rental car to San Francisco airport and take a direct flight on TAP Air to Lisbon. The problem is that we hate driving home in San Francisco rush-hour-traffic after an 11 hour flight.

So here’s what I did; I booked a Southwest flight from Sacto to LA, Norse from LA to London, TAP Air from London to Lisbon. At each layover we had to collect our luggage and cart it to the next ticket counter to check in again, which meant going through security again and again and again. What made it worse was that we had to go through immigration twice—London and again n Lisbon. Honestly, they were both super easy. They have the new system of just placing your passport facedown and then letting the computer read your face. If you're from America, you probably have the electronic passport, so go through that line. It has this symbol on it:

The real problem was in the baggage claim and security. In London we hustled straight over to collect our bags and stood, and then sat on the floor as we ALL waited an hour and a half for our luggage! We had a super long layover, but most people didn’t and they were freaking out. When the belt finally started up everyone actually broke out in spontaneous applause.

Once we got our bags, we dragged them to the ticket counter for TAP Air, which the nice lady sitting at the counter kindly told us wouldn’t open for another 45 minutes. Once again we sat on the floor with everyone else while she chatted and looked at her phone. Mind you this is after the ten-hour flight from LA with maybe two hours sleep. While waiting we heard repeated announcements apologizing for the super slow security check point. Great! We finally rushed to get in the queue (not line—remember we’re in Britain) and took baby steps for another 30 minutes. The guard kept stopping the line to prevent it from being too chaotic. Unfortunately he cut it off after Joe and left me behind. Joe wisely refused to progress through the security line without me. While I waited the security guard whispered to me that the line was long because they’d had 100 canceled flights the day before and this was the backlog. Apparently the flight-control personal all got sick that day?

Once inside, we tried to sit and have a beer and a glass of wine, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Our gate wasn’t posted yet, so we sat in a corner and tried to stay awake. We finally went to our gate and leaned on each other in the uncomfortable chairs. When we got on the plane and seat-belted in, we both fell asleep. Being completely exhausted (and not in our twenties anymore), we grabbed dinner-to-go at the airport in Lisbon (a half bottle of wine, two beers, and two quiches). Then we went out front to get a taxi only to find yet another line. A sweet taxi driver chatted excitedly in English about his upcoming trip to Paris with his girlfriend to Disneyland all the way to our Airbnb. I didn’t even know they had a Disney in Paris. As a side-note; Uber drivers have to pay airport access to pick you up. That’s not a huge problem, but we choose the taxi when leaving the Lisbon airport (24 Euros). When we go to the airport we take uber, and they drop us off near the doors and hurry away.

Once here, we were greeted by Ines. She was so incredibly welcoming and sweet and even gave me a hug. We slept nine hours and woke up feeling brand new (almost). Lots of odd things happened, but I’ll wait for another blog to tell you about it. Next time we come here, I’ll find another way of doing it.