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.