Having
been enchanted by Ponte de Lima - and wanting to enjoy the fresh
trout and vinho
verde
in the Ecanada
Restaurant
- we decided to stay over and were happy to find our quiet room was
available for a second night. I say 'quiet' but the room (named
Chocolate
for no apparent reason) was only metres away from a church bell which
chimed on both the hour and half-hour. Happily, it took a break
between 10pm and 9am.
Coffee
machine.
I did think I wasn't going to be able to test my theory it'd be the
most bitter I've ever suffered. I spent ten minutes at 8.30 trying to
find out how it worked. Even checking the plug in the wall. Finally
it was my friend, Mike, who discovered that, apart from the
press-switch on the front, there was also an on-off switch at the
back. Access to which meant that pulling the machine away from the wall.
Anyway, having got it going, I was able to confirm the coffee was too
bitter to drink. For me, at least. Mike found it quite palatable.
Health
& Safety?:
After our visit to the Terceiros
Museum,
we repaired to the main square for a coffee I could stomach. As I
opened my laptop and moved backwards to access the wi-fi kindly
provided by the municipality, one of my chair-legs fell several
inches into a narrow rivulet between the granite slabs. Holding my
laptop aloft, I beseeched Mike to take it from me as I put one hand
out to stop myself falling flat on my back. As he dallied to ponder
taking a foto, I was manhandled out of the drain by not one but two
Portuguese gentlemen who'd rushed from the table behind us. Another
pleasant memory of Ponte de Lima.
Noise:
At lunch today, we were flanked by at least twenty Portuguese diners.
None of them spoke much above a whisper. I was reminded of a lunch in
Oporto a few years ago, when a Spanish foursome entered, took the
only remaining table and proceeded to make more noise than all sixty
Portuguese diners put together.
Local
Amenities:
The town is, for the most part, undeniably pretty and, as I've
intimated, it's serenely calm and quiet. There are, however, certain
aspects of Spain that it lacks. Most obviously, the massed ranks of
pretty young women one is accustomed to seeing in Pontevedra. Where
shorts and high heels are currently the fashion de
rigeur.
None of this nonsense down in Port de Lima. And so it is that I
continue my search for Portugal's only pretty woman. Which could take
years yet.
But
it's not all bouquets of roses . . .
Lunch:
As planned, this was at the Encanada restaurant, on the terrace
overlooking the river. The Menu - which used to be a two-sided bit of
cardboard - was now a leather-bound, multi-page, A4 booklet of some
quality. And the drinks now included Champagne. But what the Menu
didn't have was fresh trout, once the place's speciality. Though it
still had vegetable soup and cabrito(kid).
And the local vinho
verde
was still good. And came in its own little jacket. The dessert menu,
though, was still the same cheap list of proprietary ice creams, with
the home-made stuff hidden at the back.
Muzak:
I was going to write that the music piped to the lampposts was
pleasant and never intrusive but tonight they turned to pop and upped
the volume. A double blow. And an inexplicable one.
Finally
. . . Our room, we were told today, was called 'Chocolate' because
various parts of the furnishings reminded one of a bar of the stuff.
Yes, well . . .
Talking
of names and labels . . . I told Mike today that I was planning to
see a physiotherapist on Friday. I needed to do this because
of a lingering pain in my shoulder. I wanted to do this
because I'd been told she looked like Penelope Cruz. Thinking I'd
said 'Penelope Keith', Mike asked whether she wouldn't be getting on
a bit by now.
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