Driving in Portugal - 1st July

We hadn’t given much thought to just how much of a challenge it would be to collect the car from the Lisbon Airport and drive merrily off into the sunset. Sounded pretty simple in theory. After all, we have our trusty GPS!

We were in for a big wake-up call.

It just goes against every natural instinct to be sticking to the right... and unfortunately Portugal seems to be as big on round-a-bouts as Albany is. As a result, I don’t think the kids have ever been so quiet as they were on that first day... they picked up on the extreme tension in the front two seats and thought it best to lie-low.

So, off we roared on the motorway on the wrong side, trying to work out who-gives-way-to-who. Sweat was literally dripping off Dave’s forehead... and that was with the air-conditioner on full blast. One thing that makes the Portuguese famous to other European drivers is the lack of distance that they feel is necessary to leave between vehicles. It is such a national “problem” that there are frequent signs reminding them to leave two markers (on the road) between each car... but Portugese aren’t big on signs either as we soon discovered when we were beeped to for sticking to the 90km speed limit. 90km means 130km.
TERRIFYING!

When the GPS-voices were made for Portugal, I can’t imagine how long it took to record every different street name. We plugged in the address... Rua Professor Egas Muniz No 15, Cave Esquerda, Cova da Piedade, Almada 2800 and stuck as close to the route as we could (the kids kept count of how many times the GPS said “recalculating” and how many beeps we got.) It felt like a lot longer drive than I thought it would be, and the streets began to verge on “slums” but were took a positive approach and imagined getting an authentic suburban experience. Finally, we found the street.

Problem. No. 15 was a vacant block.

Our first thoughts were that we’d been tricked (apologies Linda) and there WAS no house for exchange (a scenario we had joked about with friends before we left)! But, after further playing with the GPS, it turns out we got one letter wrong in the address ... “Moniz” not “Muniz”... what are the chances of there being a Professor Egas Muniz AND a Professor Egas Moniz??

A valuable lesson for the rest of our stay!