It's my last week here in Portugal. Because of that realization, I've begun making mental checklists of all the last minute things that I have yet to do, see, try, and buy. On the work front, I've pretty much finished up, with only a few minor pending follow up items that need to be sorted out. In terms of the food, there are dishes that I still want to try, desserts that I have yet to sample, and chocolates from Pingo Doce (local food store) that have yet to be bought for me to take back home for Gavin and a few others. Lastly, I've narrowed down from the huge wine selection available in Portugal, to the select few that I want to take back with me.
I'm excited to be heading home, no doubt about that. Europe is fabulously wonderful and I expect to fly back here someday, hopefully with Gavin and the Boyfriend in tow for some kind of semblance of a holiday. Well, we'll see..
Thinking back on the 2 and 1/2 months that I've been here, I can't help but laugh at some of the funny things that I've experienced. A lot of which have happened right here at the hotel that I've come to call as "home". (I've been in bed pretty much the entire day today just resting, so at 1am Portugal time, I find myself writing the funny things so I can cheer up, and then eventually sleep.)
1. Nao Fumar - In Portuguese, it means "no smoking".
- All the hotel rooms here have bold red signs that say, "Nao Fumar". This of course poses a bit of a problem for us who are here because we all smoke. Furthermore, all the rooms have extremely sensitive smoke sensors that will go off even with the shower steam. Because we just couldn't be bothered to get dressed for the cold and to walk out of the hotel to get a quick smoke, we've resorted to either sticking half our bodies outside our hotel room windows to smoke (teetering as far out as we can so the sensors don't detect it), or locking ourselves in the bathroom, using the bidet as an ashtray, and then spritzing half the contents of our perfume bottles to make sure there's no evidence. This is the reason why, everytime the fire alarms go off, the first question in our minds never has anything to do with the possibility of an actual fire, but rather, "which one of us was smoking in the room and was stupid enough to let the detectors go off again this time." I normally get a ping asking, "did you set off the alarm?" I of course to this day, have always been extra careful so I've never set them off at all.
2. Do Not Disturb
-Like any normal hotel, you as a guest have the option to not be "disturbed" by hanging on your doorknob the sign that says, "do not disturb." For some reason that concept is so totally foreign here. They DO have the signs and everything, but even with that hanging out on your door, the cleaning ladies still barge in and clean it anyway. So some of us have been woken up by the loud knocking on the door, or worse, getting walked in on while we're half undressed. And it happens all the time. You look at them and you hope they get the hint and bugger off, but nah, doesn't happen.
3. The Night Man
- The guy who mans the front desk during the night (bless his heart), is elderly, knows little to zero English, is almost always asleep after midnight, and worse, sleeps like the dead. Small European hotels have actual old school doors that are usually locked. So if you need to get into the hotel you'll have to knock. There are no doorbells. Very rarely will you find the glass sliding doors that most hotels have nowadays. Our hotel, although not very old, has both. So the glass sliding doors are found a few feet after you enter the massive old school door. After midnight, the elderly man who mans the desk (bless his heart) is literally gone from the desk and can be heard snoring from the bar area where the comfy chairs are. I guess it's kind of funny now that I think about it, but at 3 or 4am and when you're drunk from a night out and just want to crawl into bed, the last thing you want to be doing is standing outdoors in the freezing cold (and sometimes rain) and knocking on the damn door to be let in. I tell you, 40 minutes in the cold rain, drunk and knocking so hard til you bruise your knuckles is not funny after all.
Well, these are just some of the fondest memories that I have. I actually have a lot more, but I'm getting sleepy now.. so I guess blogging did help after all. I will write about them in more detail next time.
