My
daughter, Faye, and I are down in the lovely Portuguese Templar town
of Tomar, just north of Lisboa. It took a bit of time to orientate
ourselves when we arrived, as the place has two sorts of street-name
plaques – 1. Absent, and 2. Written in some curly medieval script.
Neither is very useful as you're trying to negotiate the narrow,
cobbled streets and to obey the No Entry and One Way
signs. In a car, I mean.
Armed
with advice from our expert on Portugal, Alfie Mittington, we were
able to quickly identify the hostel he recommended. And that's when
the fun started. The young man at the desk was pleasant but inept. We
got through the registration process well enough, using a mixture of
Portuguese, Spanish and English, but things went downhill from
there:-
I'd
like two single rooms, please.
OK.
The price is X, including breakfast.
Fine.
Except
we don't have any single rooms for tonight.
OK,
how about a double room with two beds.
OK,
I'll just get the key.
We
move into the corridor and he tries the key. After a minute or two,
he finally gets the door open. To find that the room contains a
double bed. Back to the desk, where he picks up another key. We then
move, via a seriously steep set of stairs, to the next floor. Again
he wrestles with the lock. Finally, he opens the door, looks in and
tells me it's 'under maintenance'. Back to the desk again for a third
key, and back up the vertiginous flight of stairs that Alfie failed
to tell me about. I feel we should be roped together and wearing oxygen
masks but say nothing. To his evident delight – and after the by
now standard wrestle with the lock and door knob – he lets me into
a room with two single beds and I say 'Fine. But where is the
heating?” He points to the radiator, says something like
'mechanical' and tells me it comes on at 5.30. Needing to conserve
oxygen, I don't argue.
I
return to the car to tell Faye we're fixed up for the night but she's not happy about sharing a room. I ignore her protestations and we
take out bags to said room. Having seen it, Faye trots off down the
corridor to see if she can better it. But she can't. We then return
to the car so I can put it in an underground car park I'd seen. This
was large but contained only two other cars. My suspicion was that
this owed something to the fiendishly complex schedule of 15m, 30m,
45m, etc. charges displayed at the entrance. I tried to get Stephen
Hawkings on the phone to help me with this but, as usual, he didn't
pick up. Without his input, I managed to work out that the overnight
charge would be over 20 euros, more than I've ever paid in the centre
of Madrid. These Templars may not have been good Christians but they
were clearly ace businessmen. I don't think it's a coincidence there's a synagogue and a Hebrew Museum here.
Having
settled in, Faye and I set off in search of the restaurant
recommended by Alfie.
Which
is when we got caught by a freak wind and hailstorm as we were
crossing the raging river to the new barrio on the other side. So,
it was good to find the restaurant closed when we sought refuge in
its entrance. As was every café, bar and food place within a quarter
mile of it. Except for a pizzeria that Faye felt she just had to
avail herself of.
And
then we finally found an open café, with WiFi and the girls on the
next table smoking. Which came as a shock. But I guess Portugal is
still at where Spain was a couple of years ago, leaving to the owners
to decide whether or not to ban smoking.
And
so, as I finish my beer, in the café and contemplate the challenge
of finding a restaurant open, I raise my glass to Absent Alfie. Just imagine
what problems we'd have had without his input!
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