We woke up in Sardiñeiro in Galicia fairly early after a rough night’s sleep. That bed had been both a sweat pit and a dream killer. The weather outside was beautiful; despite being only 9 in the morning, it was way above 20 in the sun. I packed the car in a pair of shorts as I would have just ruined any shirt with sweat. This was becoming a routine now: each time we have left a place, the lovely weather has made it harder to leave.
I drove to the bakery to hand in the keys and say goodbye, then we sped off southwards towards Santiago, then Vigo and Braga. The scenery on the way to Santiago was once again breathtaking, the roads winding, providing a combination of slow, cumbersome agricultural vehicles in front and tailgating thugs behind, not always at the same time.
On the motorway, the farmers disappeared but the thugs multiplied. There is nothing more satisfying than annoying a speed freak, especially when I’m going at the national speed limit and they come at me really fast flashing their lights and gesticulating. So on the two-lane sections where the traffic can get heavy, I make their lives a misery. You can see them virtually foaming at the mouth.
On the other side, I really, REALLY hate slow drivers, more than fast ones. You know, the type of self-unaware twit who drives dangerously slowly while dithering and equivocating, causing a tailback of several vehicles. There are some real geniuses out there looking for a particular building or taking a phone call; showing a passenger something or fiddling with the dashboard gadgets. If you can’t handle it, pull over! But then there are people who really shouldn’t be driving: the type who are driving manuals but can’t multitask. They can’t look both ways at a junction and manoeuvre the car into the next road at the same time. They can’t simultaneously control the gearstick and the pedals. Either buy a manual, or give in your licence.
So our journey to the frontier was mainly me trying to keep up with the very fast-moving traffic while looking at the stunning views. When we crossed into Portugal, we experienced a totally new phenomenon: crossing a time zone on land. We have done this by sea on the way to and from the UK and France, or under the water in the Eurostar, but never while self-propelling. It was quite a moment, but just like the changing of the date at New Year, a fairly underwhelming experience that didn’t really live up to its billing.
But that was not all.
About 5 minutes inside Portugal, I pulled over to get my bearings and think about what to do. Should we go to Porto or to Braga on the way? All depends on how much time we’ll have. I had told the owner of the next property that we would be there at around five or six, but it was already 12:30 and a three-hour drive awaited us. Oh no, wait… it was 11:30, we’ve gained an hour! Oh well then, that’s fine – we’ll go to Braga and have a spot of lunch and a walk around.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that Google Maps told me it wasn’t working any more. And nor was anything else on my phone. We got the phones and the contract in the winter and this was the first time we had left the country. As we all know, mobile phone companies have a habit of making it difficult to travel, even if you’re just inside the European Union. So I would have to make it to our next place by the old 20th century method of guesswork, which I wasn’t prepared to do.
Stepping out onto Portuguese soil, or rather stone, for the first time was the accomplishment of another milestone – my eighteenth country, and the children’s ninth already. They are getting used to the concept of countries and languages spoken. I don’t really think too much about the number of countries visited, I prefer to record what I did there and make sure I leave without any regrets. The same will go for Portugal.
We took a look at the old city of Braga – much smaller than Santiago, but a very pretty place. It reminded me of Roskilde in Denmark, or Tunbridge Wells in the UK. There were many independent shops and a great number of cafés and restaurants. I saw a café specialising in pasteis de nata, the Portuguese equivalent of the custard tart, and decided that if there was anything I was going to do to initiate my arrival here, it was to eat one of these fabled pastries. In Luxembourg they sell them everywhere, as there is a high Portuguese population, but eating them in their native land brings a certain extra level of tastiness that is hard to replicate abroad – and that goes for most things.
I settled the rest in the café and went off to firstly get some coins. I took 80 euro out of the cash machine – trick here: if you need a smaller denomination banknote, never ask for 50 or 100. Always a number between that. Then I went to a shop and bought some water, asking the cashier to break up my note into something smaller. I got a new ticket and headed back to sort out the connection issue. The guy running this tart and coffee establishment, who could have been only in his early twenties, had only opened the place the day before. He was the son of the owner. Luckily he had Wi-Fi set up. Calling the phone company, they gave me the secret to configuring the phone and we were set.
The woman serving us spoke to us in French as she had spent 20 years working in western Switzerland. The girl serving the drinks opted for English. I am trying to live up to my own expectations of using the local language wherever possible, but I’ll need a few days to get into it. Anyhow, it was really the first time that the kids actually behaved themselves for a whole visit to a restaurant. And I have to say, my boeuf en croute was phenomenal – I could have eaten it with a spoon, it was that tender. And the vegetables that accompanied it were perfect; I could have eaten a full plate of them alone. Bonny Bee’s pasta was very filling, and she could barely finish it.
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| I took a photo of the food at another table - I know, I'm incorrigible... |
We had an excellent cup of coffee and went back to the car, as we still had a good couple of hours’ driving ahead of us. After one stop at a fuel station about 45 minutes from our destination where Livia decided to take her mother’s bag where she keeps the receipts and let them fly all over the windy terrace outside, I put my foot on the pedal in anger and desperation to get this journey over with.
We arrived at our destination in the town of Penacova, about half an hour east of Coimbra, a few minutes before six in the evening. It had been quite a brutal journey, but the welcome we received from the owner of our next place of residence more than made up for it. Susana and we had a lot in common: she and her parents had lived for many years on the border of Luxembourg too, but on the Belgian side. She had lived in this place until a year or so ago, but her burgeoning family meant she needed to move out, so she converted the place into a guest residence. Her parents still live above and came to introduce themselves in French.
Susana showed us the place, then left us to get on with our lives. I unpacked the car for the fifth time and brought all the gear inside. It was also much easier to handle because of the spacious layout of the apartment. The children asked for some TV time, and I wasn’t going to deny them that. However, the TV was one of those so-called “smart” ones that had more channels than the Nile Delta and so many settings it was virtually impossible to find anything. In the end I managed to get it on a kids’ TV channel in English, but not after having caused all three to take it in turns to complain about it taking so long…
With them settled there, I decided it was time to go shopping, if only to get away from everyone for a while. Susana had told me about the two main supermarkets in the town: Lidl and Auchan. I’m not a fan of Lidl as every time I go there it looks like a few badly-run market stalls masquerading as a shop under bright lighting. You know what I mean. You show up to buy some milk and a razor and end up finding the former stacked high in the corner next to a corral of dubious toolkits, garden hose nozzles and wellington boots fresh from their factory at least six hours’ flight away, and the razors are called a knocked-off name like Giflette or Willinson Sworb and will perforate your skin so much you may as well have used the potato peeler.
So I went to Auchan. Now… in Luxembourg, Auchan is massive. So big, in fact, that the two stores are commonly used to orient visitors to the country. “The National Library is next to Auchan on Kirchberg”, or “The European Union’s translation headquarters is situated a block away from Auchan Cloche D’Or” are fairly unsurprising sentences to find, that’s how big they are. Here in Penacova, it was situated 5 minutes out of town in a crumbling roadside warehouse converted into a supermarket with a very dodgy one-way system through the underground car park.
More than anything, I needed muesli and milk, so considering Lidl was German, I should have gone there. Auchan was disappointing, although it did have a great butcher section. I bought some minced beef, tomato passata, grated cheese, onions, garlic, mafaldine pasta and herbs. If you can’t guess what I was going to make, you should seek help. I also got some mortadella and a few other things, but I decided I needed to breach the gates of Lidl if I were to find some decent muesli.
It was also much closer to the centre of town, and had a proper car park. Susana had told me it wasn’t like Lidl in northern Europe, and I should have listened. It had not only proper muesli, but unlike the other place, it also had several kinds.
Lesson learned.
First impressions of Portugal: the food is phenomenal, the landscape is sublime. The people are friendly, but I would say the Spanish are a little more helpful and practical. Despite the Big Country Syndrome in Spain, I think they’re more modest and critical about their homeland than people give them credit for. In Portugal, the driving is mental, especially compared to Galicia, and the roads are in severe need of reparation, despite paying vast amounts of toll money. Where does it all go? Who’s pocketing it all? Someone somewhere is making a pretty packet, courtesy of the Portuguese car driver.
That evening, I sat on the terrace overlooking the town and the river valley and watched the sun setting and the house and street lights coming on. Saturday would be another new experience. After sleeping in pretty small rooms with beds narrower than a Brexit voter’s mind, it was a huge relief to finally spend the night in a much larger bed with proper air in the room. Due to that, I didn’t get out of bed until well after 10 – I obviously needed the rest.
After a leisurely breakfast, it became apparent that the kids were also not really in the mood for much, so they just spent the first part of the day resting up and watching TV. I made the pasta ragout and afterwards they started getting a little obnoxious, so I decided to give Bonny Bee some quiet time to work and took all three to the local beach on the river.
After a while, the water was getting a bit cold, so I decided to get out and go to the café. Dainoris was furious, but the two girls were ready for it. After another round of drinks, I dropped them at the apartment and went to Lidl to buy a few days’ worth of shopping. Reaching our place of abode for the week, I settled in for a peaceful night.
This coming week: we need to find something to do for my birthday on Tuesday, and I should tempt Bonny Bee to drop her work for a day or two in order to enjoy the country.
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