Day Twelve – Lost in Translation

Day Twelve – Lost in Translation (January 7, 2011)

I’m getting tired of waking up at 4am and lying there in bed, trying to work out how to get back to sleep. This morning was no exception to the trend I’ve developed here in Portugal. I did manage to fall back to sleep eventually, and managed to sleep right through until our alarm woke us at 10am.

Today we’d slept in intentionally – it was planned as a travel day and therefore we didn’t have any plans in particular. We had a leisurely morning packing up the accumulated detritus of four days in a self-catering and loaded up little Aurelia. Unlike the Avis hire car guy, we didn’t even attempt to cram our giant cases into the miniscule boot, instead folding down the rear seats like normal people. Despite the lacakadasical nature of our morning preparation, we were on the road by not long after 11, which was surprising. We loved our little room at Casa Rosden and were sad to leave it.

Our destination for the day was far on the other side of Portugal – the fortified hill town of Marvão. We’d estimated the drive as taking more than a few hours, and had we listened to little Tracy it probably would have done. We managed to get most of the way here with no incident, driving through the most bizarre landscape I think I’ve ever seen.

When we were in primary school as children, we learned about glacial till and the resulting landscape, and I think what we saw today was the result of that – massive boulders strewn about as if a giant had had a major tantrum at some point.
Apparently we’ve offended Tracy at some point in the last while, as she decided that as we approached Marvão that the challenge of driving wasn’t enough, so she thought she’d route us up tiny side roads and through even more tiny villages. We got stuck in some unnamed village at the base of the rather large hill leading up to Marvão and decided that Tracy was more or less fired for the rest of the trip.

We’d seen signs back on the main N road pointing to Marvão, so decided to find them again and follow them up to the town.
This seemed to be the right tact to take, as we could see the town perched on its cliff and we seemed to be getting closer and closer to it. Then the road got steep. Second gear steep, with sharp switchbacks and sheer cliffs just to the side of the road. Nervous driving, although I would have loved it on my motorcycle.

We reached the top and were faced with a problem – the town is surrounded by massive walls, and the road went straight through via a very narrow gate. I’ve been in these small walled towns before, not the best place for cars in my experience. We parked up just this side of the gate and walked in, doing a quick scouting mission to find the hotel. It turned out to be embarrassingly easy to find the hotel, and there was plenty of free parking. After checking in, we went back to collect Aurelia and settle in.

At this point we were a bit hungry so we started a search for a lunching location. It turns out that there aren’t a plethora of options in Marvão, especially in early January. We finally found the tourist office who drew on a very small map showing us the four options we had (one of which being our own hotel). We walked back down the steep streets and found a place which looked not too bad.

I’m not sure what it’s called, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s the one near the big (by Marvão standards) town square with the cafe on the ground floor and the restaurant on the first floor. Lunch was actually pretty good and again very cheap. We’ve discovered the thrifty joys of Portuguese sangria, which is not only good value for money, but allows us to pretend that the weather is suitable for sangria, rather than the grim cloud and foggy rain we’ve had. I think they started cooking my veal sometime last week, and Jamie’s pork was swimming in a deep pool of butter along with her rice and chips. Two litres of the sangria and the sheer entertainment of the Portuguese soap opera that was on the telly more than made up for the shortfalls of the meal and we had quite an entertaining afternoon eating and drinking.

After lunch we did a tour of the walls, taking photos as we went. Holy crap, but it was windy. The wind was so strong that at one point of the wall, where a small rivulet of water was flowing over the edge, the wind picked it up and sprayed it back up over the railings, to distribute it somewhat evenly over the hedges and parked cars in the area. I’ve never seen water flowing uphill, let alone virtually exploding in an upwards direction.

The castle at the end of town is very steep and seems to have been build with defence in mind. Between the steepness of the cliffs leading up to it and all the battlements, I can’t imagine it ever being attacked let alone taken. We spent quite a while wandering around taking photos, and waiting for the wind to blow some of the clouds away. Unfortunately this was not to be, so eventually we admitted defeat and walked back down the hill to our hotel for a restorative beverage.

Some time later, we felt that dinner was in order. Neither of us were particularly up to braving the hill again, and it seemed the fog had rolled back in (although at this altitude I guess it’s called a cloud). Fortunately, our hotel comes equipped with a restaurant downstairs, so we went there. Like many things, apparently January is not their big season, as there was only one other table taken.

We sat down and perused the menu. It seemed to be a fairly traditional Portuguese place, with much salted cod and pork products. We both clocked the breaded chicken and thought that we would go for that. The waiter came over and we both ordered the same thing – breaded chicken. At the last second, I decided that a mixed salad as a starter would be nice, to get some vegetables and vitamins in after the excesses of the last few days. This is where the trouble started.

“I’ll have the mixed salad also” said I.

“Just the mixed salad?” questioned the waiter.

I thought of the several salad options on the menu, which included such things as tuna and eggs.

“Yes, just the mixed salad” I responded.

I thought nothing of this exchange. The waiter, it seemed, heard something completely differently. When our dinner finally arrived, Jamie got a plate of breaded and fried chicken, and I got a mixed salad. To be fair, it was quite a large mixed salad, but a salad nonetheless. Evidently, he had thought that I’d changed my mind at the last minute and had gone for the salad alone. At this point, we were both too embarrassed to point out the error. I quite enjoyed my salad, and Jamie was good enough to donate some of her chicken to the cause. Healthier than I’d been planning, but quite tasty.

After dinner we debated going to the hotel bar for a final drink, but decided that we had enough wine left over from Casa Rosden that we’d dragged to Marvão to float a battleship and that we should probably try to make a dent on that. So we have. It’s been a very entertaining evening indeed.