Day 28 - What the hell am I doin’ here?

After a fairly decent nights sleep, apart from me constantly scratching my multiple bites, in our small double bed, we had coffee from our courtesy coffee machine on our balcony. The coffee was so lovely to the point that Jackie sent a WhatsApp message to the management asking if we could have extra coffee capsules for which she would happily pay for (a bit rash!).

We then drove to the beach & chose our spot, but within minutes we were being surrounded by other beach goers including kids. This was not good, so we scouted around for a better spot including the official naturist beach in a cove on the southern end of the beach, where we witnessed some odd little mushroom shaped genitalia.

We relocated, not to the naturist beach, but to a quieter corner of the beach and had a full day in the sun with wine & a couple of crisps for lunch. I also got to listen to the exciting last hour or so of play in the play in theirs day of the 3rd Ashes Test. We actually have a good chance of winning this Test……at the time of writing.

Upon our return to our apartment, we found that we had been left a box of coffee capsules free of charge. I made Jackie admit again (and again) that I had come up trumps with choosing this apartment.

That evening we took a stroll around the cobbled streets of Odeceixe and heard the haunting lyrics of Creep being sung. I had to check it out & found a man with a guitar singing on a stage behind a building. At the end of the song, I discovered that he was a live jukebox & was doing his sound check for a performance commencing at 9.30pm. I confirmed we would return & left as he started to belt out ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.

We found a Portuguese restaurant down a back street that seemed pretty popular. We ordered 2 ‘Cow Steaks with mushroom sauce’ as it was described in the menu and a litre of house red. The red was very full bodied. When our Cow Steaks arrived it was like we had been transported back to the continent 30 years ago. Our steaks came with chips, rice, salad, grey peas & carrots and the sauce was heavy on peppercorns served by surly couldn’t give a damn waiters. It was all very underwhelming, particularly as I had to leave some of my steak because it was too sinewy. We left without leaving a tip.

We returned to the live jukebox, which was a peculiar set up & felt more like a wedding reception. We bought several tiny beers at €1.50 a piece and sat down with a young Spanish couple from Madrid. For €2 you could pick a song from a list of about 100 that he would sing and play live. I chose Hurt & Proud Mary. He played our songs shortly before midnight & then we called it a night. Sadly his performance in front of an audience was nowhere near as good as what we had heard in the sound check.

Song of the Day : Creep by Radiohead.Read more