A Visit Starts

I have been loafing around lately. Sorry to all my dedicated readers. But the tale I am about to tell you will give you some idea what I have been up to and why a bit of down time was needed.

Diane (a friend for many years) and Roberto (her devoted manservant) came to visit. They were only here for three weeks, but they packed in the sightseeing. While they were here we went to Porto, Coimbra, Tavira, Obidos, and various other towns that placed themselves between our daily destinations and us.

Di and Ro saw even more of Portugal. They added Evora and few small towns in the Algarve to their schedule. And this was all done before we hit Spain.

In Spain we managed to see Ronda, Gaucin, Sevilla, Malaga, and Jerez. The Spanish weather was challenging. While we were visiting Ronda, the wind blew so hard the rain accompanying it seemed to be coming at you horizontally. The umbrella merchants were pleased because that day umbrellas lasted between five and ten minutes. Then the wind would turn them inside out. There were a lot of garbage tins filled with discarded umbrellas around town.

But, back to Portugal... Di and Ro turned up a few days early and few dollars short. Kootenay and I were doing one of our many nightly walks on the beach, when a head popped out of a car and called her. I turned and there they were, arriving early, and me with a dirty bathroom. Damn. Their first few days on vacation had been challenging. First their luggage was lost, and in the course of getting it back they learned that in Spain not only is the customer not always right, but also the customer can actually be an inconvenience. I shudder at what UBC’s “secret shoppers” would say about interactions with Spanish customer service workers. But,they got their bags back eventually, and headed to Lisboa. They hadn't reserved a place to stay so they came straight to Nazare to regroup. Unfortunately I didn’t realize they were doing this or I would have given them my Portuguese highway tip. Always Always Always get a ticket at the toll center when you enter a highway. Or, you will end up donating to the “Portuguese Road Improvement Fund”. So after lost luggage, toll fines, and some generally crappy weather they unpacked in Nazare and we headed out to have dinner and celebrate Roberto’s birthday.

One of my earliest memories of hanging out with Diane, outside of the UBC Bookstore where we worked, was of going to a Crowded House concert. On Roberto’s birthday we headed down to NBar where Carlos kept our glasses sociably full and there was a band. Almost twenty years after we met Diane and I sat and enjoyed a drink listening to Crowded House songs. These ones were sung with a bit of a Portuguese accent, but that only made the experience better.

And this was just our first day together. Wait until i tell you about trying to follow them through Seville's rush hour traffic in a rented Fiat.