The 'It Made Me Laugh' Edition

So, this may rub some of you the wrong way, but I can’t resist. Some times things happen that make me laugh, mainly because I can picture it happening to me. I remember, years ago in L.A., we were hanging out at the hotel pool courtyard. Along came a guy. Seemingly very important based on his expensive suit, shoes, sunglasses, and his cell phone glued to his ear. He appeared to be having a power discussion as he arrogantly strutted past us. The pool saw him but he didn’t see the pool… he walked right into the deep end—fancy suit and all. Everyone rose to their feet to rescue him, if needed, but he dog-paddled to the ladder and got out. That was memorable.

The other day, sitting out front of Pedro’s, a group of maybe ten millennials sat around a couple of tables pushed together. They were a good looking group. The best looking one was a raven-haired beauty in a tank-top and loose linen shorts. A seagull flying overhead indiscriminately went pooh on her. Stunned silence was followed by hysterical laughter. Sounds mean, huh? But she was the comedian. When she showed them that it had gone into her shorts pocket, the group was gasping for air, they were laughing so hard.

There’re a lot of pedestrian streets in Armação de Pêra. Can you guess where I’m going with this? A car went creeping down the narrow, steep street the other day. I could tell they didn’t want to be there, but couldn’t figure out how to escape. Literally everyone watched them until they got down to the bottom where a one-way road goes by at a sharp angle. This is when it got worse. They turned down the wrong way, realized their mistake and tried to back up onto the pedestrian street. You know that at this point they were probably completely stressed out (I would’ve have been). Anyway, in their first attempt to back up they hit a garbage can. Then they drove forward to within a couple of feet of a table with people eating lunch—they promptly vacated their seats. Then it backed up over a curb as Joe and I scurried out of danger. They did eventually get going the right way. We laughed only because we’ve all been there to some degree or another.

Have you seen those round window shades for car windows? I have one and they take awhile to figure out how to make them collapse. Apparently there’s a beach pup-tent based on the same principle. The other day we watched a dad attempt to reduce this wind block structure to a little round thing meant to fit inside a bag the size of a grocery bag. It was hysterical to watch this battle. He would almost get it to the right size and it would spring open to its preferred shape. It was so entertaining to his buddies, they pulled out their cell phones and recorded the contest. It appeared that the tent was going to win, but after twenty minutes of sweating and covered in sand, he finally squeezed it into its bag.

Children are basically left to wander where they want. No one is going to hurt them. The other day at a café, a little toddler was wandering around with a couple of giant strawberries clutched in his hands. He saw something else he wanted to pick up. Faced with a dilemma he came over to our table and set a gooey strawberry on the seat next to me, then went back to fetch the seashell and carried to his parent’s table. I picked up the strawberry and wiped the seat off just in time for him to return for it. He stood staring at the clean seat in confusion. He looked up at me with absolute conviction that I was the thief. Mom came to my rescue.

Freedom Day was a couple of weeks ago on April 25^th. It’s a super important day here and Armação de Pêra was packed. This holiday celebrates the day the citizens calmly went out en-mass to place red carnations in the barrels of the militia’s guns. They’d decided they would rather be a republic than a have a socialist government. They succeeded. The next holiday was May-day, or Labor Day. This is a day off from work if you work at a grocery store. It least that’s the way it seemed to us. We needed groceries so we innocently headed out with our little rolling grocery cart. It blew me away that our big store was closed. So we tried the next one, and the next, until we’d tried all five grocery stores. We stopped at our favorite café to have a cup of coffee and rest our feet. The waitress claimed everyone had the day off except the restaurant industry.

Last but not least, I have to poke a little fun at the Brazilians. They are so different from their Portuguese cousins. This sturdy little group of Portuguese are seemingly in awe of the loud, flamboyant Brazilians. They play music on the beach, which is taboo here. They wear the craziest stuff too. Kinda hard to describe really. But the other day Joe and I watched with open mouths as an exotic woman poured an entire one liter bottle of Coke all over her body on the beach and rubbed it in! What? I bet the sand ants loved that feast!

Regarding my screenplay, I’m still scouting places we can film if Florence won’t cooperate. I was leaning toward Pistoia and then I heard about Prato. It’s a beautiful city right by Florence. As I researched its personality, I discovered it is struggling with gang activity right now because of the Chinese textile factories. Their people are controlled by the Chinese syndicates and the Italian mafia doesn’t like that, so occasional skirmishes occur. As pretty as it is and the wonderful history it has, I’m not really interested in placing a film there. This week, I’ve been looking at Lucca. Lucca is one of my favorite cities in Italy. We will make it a day trip to go explore it for the scenes to see if I can adapt it for that city. It doesn't hurt that this will be the week of Lucca's History Festival with all kinds of medieval reenactments.

Um copo de vinho tinto e uma cerveja preta, por favor!

Restaurants are the center of social life here. We encounter the same people at our hangouts. For example, there’s a blond Swedish woman who hangs out at Saboyas. She comes alone and drinks a couple of glasses of red wine and knows everyone who comes in. We’d never spoken to her before but other night she suddenly said, “Am I imagining things, or is there a seagull in that restaurant?” We all looked across the street to see a giant seagull desperately trying to get out by flying at every window as employees chased it around or crouched under tables depending on their courage. It was quite the drama to watch as the bird cleared elegant table settings with its wings. They succeeded in getting it out and introductions were made.

A Portuguese man arrived to sit with the Swede. A lively discussion ensued about careers and medical problems… you know, older adult subjects. Oddly enough, the subject that stood out to me was the proper pronunciation of Ikea. Apparently the Swede was a worldwide Ikea financial trainer. She announced that Americans say Ikea wrong. It’s not eye-key-ah, it’s eh-kay-ah. Not eye, but eh. Got it? I’ll probably forget by the time I get home.

We were at another café called Pedros. It was packed because a band was setting up. Seeing as how we had two seats available at our table and a sweet looking older couple was trying to find a seat, I offered for them to sit with us (not unusual here). The Swiss lady and I got into a struggling conversation as I don’t speak French or German. I dreaded the moment that introductions would happen. Sure enough, she burst into laughter when I said my name is Heidi. She wanted to know if my husband was Peter. I need to make up a name when I’m around the Swiss. That same day, a photographer was wandering amongst the guests taking pictures. He took a great photo of us and wanted to know if we would like him to email it to me. Sure! I gave him my email and then I waited for the opportunity to get a good shot of him, then I emailed it to him.

A promenade café with a black cat on their logo is an easy place to stop for a glass of wine to people watch. The other day, when I ordered my wine the kid got a nervous look on his face. Another waiter brought Joe’s beer, but no wine yet. Pretty soon I see the kid trotting back from the grocery store down the street with a bottle of wine. Shortly after, he calmly set a glass of wine on the table.

Another place we go to when we’re willing to walk for 40 minutes, is Os Salgados. It’s at the other end of the boardwalk spanning to wetlands. It’s a little spendy, but worth it for the great wine and even better steak fries. On the walk over we got to see a horseback tour.

A favorite of ours is Pappas. They serve the best curry shrimp I’ve ever had. We get an order for two. The servers have been there for years and always greet us like friends.

Sometimes we take an Uber over to Portimão for the day. There’s a restaurant on the beach we like that we call Rita and Leo’s place, even though neither one of them work there anymore. There was giant pipe right along the whole length of the beach. The manager explained that this was a huge project to restore the sand to their beach from the eastern end of the beach, Pria Rocha. They pump the sand into the pipe with lots of water and it travels to the end (about a mile) and dumps out into a huge trough. Three pipes drain the water from the pond as the sand settles. The manager broke out her cell phone and showed pictures after last winter’s stormy season—one of the worst in memory. The beach was corroded right up to her deck.

But Tasca’Lado is the best. We went there right after we got here and ordered the meat platter for two… a rib-eye and a rump-roast with grilled pineapple and steak fries. The waitress, Andrea, is a sweetheart. We told her we would be back for my birthday. When we came in last night, she clasped her hands together and said, “That’s right, It’s your birthday!” she seated us and brought me a glass of red wine saying she opened a special bottle for me as a present. It certainly was good—from the Alentejo region. 

She was so disappointed that we didn’t order dessert (too full) that she brought me a crème brûlée with a candle on top and sang happy birthday to me. Isn’t that sweet?

My latest work effort is researching Pistoia, Italy. It’s near Florence and shares an ancient medieval history. Florence is overwhelmed with tourism at the moment and my producer is concerned that the local Florentine municipality may not want us filming there. If that’s the case, I will need to rewrite the script to be in a different city, such as Pistoia. It needs to be a city that could support an old crime family like the Scutaris from the story. I will be looking at Lucca and Pisa also. Do you have any ideas for cities similar to Florence? We will meet with the city officials when we’re there, so I’ll keep you posted.

Filet Mignon and a Barbeque That Didn't Catch Fire

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 quite 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. ;)

Arrival in Portugal

We’re back in Portugal! We flew out from SFO on the April 17th on TAP Air, which is an adventure in and of itself. I don’t know what makes TAP so unique this way, but they always have weird little quarks. To start with, I bought Known-Traveler-Numbers (KTNs) for us for Christmas a couple of years ago. When you purchase airline tickets online they provide a little space for you to enter the KTN… this gives you TSA privileges to go through the short line. There’s no place to input this number on the TAP site. I did a little reconnaissance and discovered that it can be put in when you check in for the flight. Unfortunately, it only lets you do one passenger, so I had to start the whole process over again to get Joe in there! But we got to go through the short line.

Flying eleven hours means movie-binging time to us. I watched Zootopia 2, Flow, Frozen, and Miss Congeniality. We arrived in Lisbon at 3:00 pm completely exhausted. I forgot to mention that Europe is rolling out a new system for controlling its borders… which is codeword for chaos. First I got a notification from TAP saying we needed to download the new app to register our facial and fingerprint recognition. I looked at the app and discovered it’s a piece of junk and doesn’t function at all. When we arrived we had go to a special line that led to a wall of facial and fingerprint machines. I took special note of the frustrated app owners who also had to stand in this line. Six of the twenty machines were functioning. Then we got the joy of standing in the immigration line for over an hour.

After we got our sim cards switched out, we ordered an Uber and went to Oscar’s house. His fluffy little white dog, Kiara, led us to our room with little encouraging woofs. We walked next door to check out the park I saw on the map. Wow! What a great discovery. It was full of families and dogs. We sat at the café and watched until our stomachs started growling.

The next morning we went back to that café for coffee before heading to the bus depot which was a polar-opposite version of the park. My favorite was the oily gentleman sidling up to people and offering to sell them a priceless gold Timex watch. We watched in fascination as he cornered a twenty-year-old guy and somehow convinced him to hold the watch… BIG mistake. Never, ever, agree to hold something someone is trying to sell. They will not take it back. If you find yourself in this situation lay the priceless gold watch on a nearby surface and walk away.

Our arrival in Armacao de Pera was uneventful until we got to the door of our Airbnb and no one was there to greet us. After a few text messages to Pascal in France he sent me the number of Angela, the door greeter. I called her and quickly realized she didn’t speak English, but fortunately someone near her took over. Apparently Angela had gotten the wrong time for us. Five minutes later a Portuguese dude showed up to let us in.

We went to our favorite beach bar and watched the children wrestle in the sand. Then we went to Smiley’s Pizza for the best pizza in Portugal. Joe dozed off at the table a few times so I hustled him back to the condo and tucked him in bed. By the way, the last time we stayed here, we loved everything but the cement bed. Since then Pascal bought a mattress topper and the bed was heavenly last night. 

Now we’re on track and I’m sipping an espresso from the little Nespresso machine and Joe is working out in front of me, which is a better view than the beautiful pool off the deck. Life is good.