zhisou

Driving from behind the mountains to the coast takes a surprisingly long time.   A confusing spaghetti of motorways take you in illogical directions.  I’d found Póvoa de Varzim on Google Earth then read about it on Wikipedia.  I thought it’d be a Portuguese Santa Monica, a trendy beach resort squashed full of restaurants and fun.  The perfect place for a lazy family week on the beach.

It’s a long time since I’ve been to the Alicantes and the Lanzarotes of this world, and I guess I’d forgotten a lot.  Póvoa was more Blackpool or Benidorm than the trendy South Beach I’d hoped for. An old scruffy fishing village turned into a popular concrete jungle by a casino and marina.  The weekend playground for Porto types, now connected to Portugal’s second city by a smart new overground metro.

The Hotel was the first disappointment – the room was fine, the facilities acceptable and the location superb.  The good news stopped there.  We ordered pizza for lunch and even I, a professional pizza eater, could barely finish it.  Tasteless, thin and crispy: a burnt slice of dough.  It was like eating a piece of wood.  Serving it on a searing hot platter with a little mallet to slice it up helped a little, but not enough.  I drank my beer and thought of sarcastic things to say.

The Waiter came and asked if we would be cutting the pizza into four.  I looked up, a touch startled, and started to tell the poor fella that that’s none of his business pal, that I’ll cut the pizza up any damn way … then I realised he was asking if we wanted to charge it to our room.  To our quarters, as they say in Portuguese.  Anyone could have made that mistake, I can hardly be blamed.

I drank my beer.

We got the lift back up to the room to change.  It took over 20 minutes.  Now, I’m no rocket scientist and I’d struggle to land a 747, even on a clear day, but I know how to use a damn elevator.  That skill alone puts me in the top 5% of Portuguese society.  I don’t mean to show off, with my fancy button-pressing ways, but when I get into the lift, I press the button for the floor I want – and not every other button.  When I’m waiting for the lift – let me know if you want me to slow down – I press the button to indicate if I want to go up, or … (anyone? anyone?) … go down!

Another 20 minutes later and we were back down in the lobby, heading for the town.  We walked along the prom, dodging people and tricycles, and took a beer in a pizza bar, the only place we could find that was open.   Crowds crowded round outside, craning to see the local processions – it must have been the town festival.  Church bands marched by carrying Saints and Virgins.  I drank my beer and thought of sarcastic things to say.

Once the freezing pea-souper fog had cleared – about 5pm – we walked down to the beach and sat there fully-clothed while the breeze whipped at us.  We had ice-cream to warm up.  We ate dinner in a beachfront bar: a tasteless cod and bechamel fishcake type thing.

I drank my beer and thought of sarcastic things to say.

We trudged back, it would be An Experience, we decided, something Different.  We got back to the hotel to find the bar full, people fighting for access to the single Internet terminal.  The games room was alive with the noise of clacking Jenga pieces and ping pong balls being thwacked too hard.   The entertainer sat behind his organ belting out his own version of “It’s Not Unusual“.

I ordered a beer, a chap can’t be sarcastic with a dry throat …

(Some photos on zhisou pix here)