People-watching in Armação de Pêra

People absolutely fascinate me! They’re a never-ending source of entertainment and provide an excellent supply of characters for my novels.

On a grand scale, 180,000 motorcyclists just converged on the Our Lady of Fátima shrine inland from Nazare. They came for the annual helmet blessing. A couple of days before the big event we heard so many motorcycles going by we actually leaned over our balcony to see the main road going through Armação de Pêra. It was a constant flow of motorcycles for about ten minutes.

The other day we were having lunch and we struck up a conversation with a nice couple next to us. They were from Germany. I mentioned that I could remember my mother singing German lullabies to me (though she didn’t speak German—she must’ve heard them when she was young). Mom could even sing Silent Night in German. The lady began to softly sing a lullaby to me. I was so charmed. Then we started talking about the Prussian part of my family (the Schussmans) which always leads nowhere. I think they may have been mercenaries, especially considering the name means “sharp-shooter.” Oddly enough this brought over an Irishman who’s a Prussia history buff. He’d escaped from his tour group and settled down at our table to talk world history and politics in a barely understandable Irish brogue.

At Sardinha’s, we made friends with our waiter, Kareem. He’s a gregarious guy from Bangladesh, who speaks several languages poorly. It was comical when he taught us the wrong way to ask for another beer. He was pretty excited to tell us about his wife and two teens coming to live in Portugal in February. He fell out of favor with me when he was asking Joe about his workout routine and then turned to me and said, “You don’t work out, do you?” I didn’t know what to say… “I work out every day, you just can’t tell by looking at me.” ???

There’s a cool American diner near us called Fabio’s. It’s very popular. We were there on a slow night and Spencer, our waiter, hung out with us and told us about his obsession with The Blues. His dream is to go to America and tour areas famous for their Blues musicians. He’s been waiting for us to come back when he’s not busy so he can play some music for us.

We go to Saboya’s the most. It’s near our place and the food is delicious. The chef comes out periodically to ask if you liked the food. She’s adorable. Our waiter on the other hand has a very good poker-face. It takes time to get on his good side, but we knew we’d succeeded when Joe told him he wanted a scoop of ice cream… with only one spoon! Joe pointed to me and shook his finger, no. The waiter brought a scoop with the smallest spoon I’ve ever seen. Joe picked it up in wonderment. After he got the reaction he wanted, he pulled out a large spoon from behind his back. The other day a lady was holding her cigarette off to one side and he snuck up behind he and snatched it away and then strutted around pretending to smoke it. Then later, same lady, he snuck up behind her again—this time with a pair of scissors. Her friends ratted him out before he could snip off the tip.

Joe’s barber isn’t exactly interesting, but the barbershop is. There’s a pool table, dart-board, and a chess board out front to while away the time while waiting. Joe tried to teach me how to play chess while we waited, but was frustrated with my moves. Apparently, I made some good moves, but he couldn’t figure out what to do because they were so uncommon and didn’t follow traditional chess strategy! I still have no idea what I was doing, but it was fun.

We needed to load our cell phones with money, so I googled Vodophone stores near us. The next day we hustled over to the shop and were told that Google had lied to us… no Vodophone services whatsoever. The nice man explained that Armação de Pêra isn’t a big enough town for Vodophone or MEO or any other phone service. We’d have to go over to Albufiera—a 24 Euro roundtrip Uber ride! First of all, it’s hard to believe that this city with its 100+ condo complexes is considered small, but it actually only has a resident census of 3,000 people. It swells to 85,000 during high season. Sooo, we walked out disappointed. Joe suggested we try the little barbershop/cell phone shop around the corner. They promptly pulled a Vodophone sim card off the rack and changed out our cards for us… 9 Euros each for a month. By the way, they still have operable phone booths here—I know because I picked up the receiver and got a dial-tone!

There’s a boardwalk that goes all the way over to Salgados Golf Course. It’s a very pretty 45 minute walk and a beach restaurant waits at the other end. It was okay. Nice service, but too pricey for our taste. What was remarkable was when I went to the bathroom. When I went in, I noted a large purse sitting on the sink and someone in one of the stalls. Seriously! I can’t even fathom doing this in California. I won’t even hang my purse on the hook on the stall door for fear someone will reach over and snatch it. I’ve even seen this phenomenon in Lisbon, which I don’t recommend—there are tourists there… some are from California!

We were at the grocery store the other day, and I wanted some salmon. So, I went up to the meat counter and saw that a woman was already waiting. I pulled the next ticket from the little machine. Then a Portuguese man walked up and picked up a discarded ticket near the machine. I thought this would probably be interesting. I was right. The butcher called out the next number and the guy looked at his ticket, saw it was correct, and went to the counter. Big mistake. The Portuguese lady ahead of me immediately confronted the poor guy. She pointed to herself and to me. The butchers watched the drama unfold with curious faces. He made it clear that he’d made a mistake, but the lady wasn’t buying it… she seemed certain he’d tried to trick us all. Anyway, he backed up to take his place behind me and war was averted.

At the register, I noticed a posterboard with two plastic boxes attached to it just beyond the check-out. I snuck over and took a quick photo. By the way, you don’t dilly-dally at the register in Portugal. The clerk must’ve noticed my interest and gave me 3 plastic chips. I made the connection that the boxes held the chips and I was supposed to vote on something. I broke out my phone again (after paying for my groceries) and opened my translator app, which translates whatever you take a picture of. I learned that one box was for a youth rope system for exercising, and the other was for cleaning out the garbage from the swamp. I voted for both; one for the swamp and two for the ropes. I felt very neighborly after that!

Today we woke up to blustery cold weather. It’s been raining for days, but it was warm. Today was cold and it was our day to swim laps in the ice-pool. I almost died of hypothermia. Later we wandered along the beachfront until we were thirsty. We decided to head into the town and found a British pub with a rock’n’roll band. They were actually quite good. We sat down near two giant dogs and received a warm welcome. The cool thing was when the lead singer cruised the crowd with his tip jar, he explained that all tips went to a charity for abandoned cats and dogs. So sweet.

There’s an old guy who has a condo facing the pool. Every morning he rolls his wheelchair out onto his balcony and watches the antics of the condo complex. Every other day we are his source of entertainment as I put on my big fins, my scuba goggles, and my snorkel. I step into the icebath and he stares, fascinated. We started waving hello to him about 4 weeks ago. After a week, he started waving back. Last week we introduced, “Bom dia.” He stared. But after several attempts to draw him out, he responds now. This morning was my breakthrough. He laughed at me when I stood shivering in the shallow end watching Joe swim laps. Victory!