Portugal 2009 - Day 4

To get to Estoril we took a tram to Lisbon’s main railway station and picked up the train easily. They ran every forty minutes or so and the journey was roughly the same length of time. The peace was shattered however by two blokes who came through the carriage and stopped right by the doors in front of us. The older of the two suddenly started talking quite loudly making me jump and I thought, oh no, there are nutters everywhere you go, when I noticed the other bloke had an accordion. He started to play it and the other man stopped his rant and started to sing. Oh this is really embarrassing. What do you do? You just want them to shut up and go away but they’re now onto ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ and in full flow. Avoid eye contact, stare out of the window, pretend they’re not there. They stopped eventually and the older one went through the part of the carriage in front of us with a plastic cup. He approached everyone and not one person gave him anything. Good for them I thought. He won’t be too disappointed when he comes to me then. But before he started to approach our part of the carriage he abruptly sat down and kept talking and muttering to himself but in a very loud voice. The accordion man had also sat down and cup man suddenly got up again and joined his mate on the same seat. It was at this point that two policeman wandered through the carriage and stood by the doors at the far end. As soon as the train reached the next station the accordion and cup man both got off, followed, surprise surprise, by the two police officers, cup man still ranting.

Luckily we never saw them again.

We got off the train at Estoril and turned left out of the station immediately onto the beach promenade. Pauline asked a man where our hotel was and he pointed along the coast. We started walking but after a while began to realise that our hotel wasn’t suddenly going to appear so Pauline asked again, this time it was a waiter standing outside a beach restaurant. He pointed back the way we’d just come and said we should have taken a small side road leading up from the promenade about halfway back. We turned round and when we finally found the turning it took us to the other end of the station platform that we’d been on when we got off the train. If we’d walked the other way to this end of the platform in the first place it would have taken about a minute instead of the fifteen minutes or so spent dragging our bloody suitcases up and down the promenade.

As Pauline was checking us into the hotel I stood to one side with the cases. The bell boy, a young lad, came over to me gesturing at the cases and offering his assistance. We only had two cases so I said, “No thanks, it’s OK.” He smiled, nodded and hovered. Once Pauline had checked in though, he suddenly appeared by my side with a trolley and indicated I put the cases on it. I said, “No really it’s OK, I can manage – oh OK then,” as he ignored me and started to pick up the cases anyway. Short of having an unseemly tug of war with each case there wasn’t much I could do about it. He showed us to the lift and followed us up in the other one. We were on the fifth floor but Pauline quickly noticed that the room didn’t have a balcony. “Oh, no balcony,” she said to the young lad, who suggested we talk to reception and dialled the number for us. The receptionist said that they didn’t allow bookings for balconies, and she didn’t have any available anyway, even though Pauline had booked one back in the UK. But on reflection and after Pauline’s persistence she finally said there was one available on the first floor but it would be noisy as it overlooked the main road. Funny that. A room with a balcony suddenly turned up all of a sudden. It must have been out for a walk. So, I stayed in the room on the 5^th floor while Pauline and the lad went down to reception to get the key and look at the other room.

They soon came back and Pauline said, “We’ll have it. You’ll see why when we get there.” The young lad, who by the way was called Michael, loaded up the cases again and we were off to the new room and this is when Michael really came into his own.

“You are in Room 107,” he said, pointing towards the lift, “Here, you press 1 for first floor.” Oh I see, yes, I thought, the first digit of the room number represents the floor – how unusual. Is this what he expects a tip for? Showing us where the lift was? You could hardly miss it in the lobby. Explaining that 107 was on the first floor and we have to press 1 once in the lift? And look, you have to walk along this corridor with a sign that says ‘Rooms 102 – 130’ until you come to a door with what certainly seems to look like a number 107 above it. Well let me guess old son, this must be our room. Yep, it is. That’s a relief then. I thought we’d be searching all day for it. I thought maybe 107 might have been 184 in disguise. But thanks to Michael we’ve arrived safely. But wait, there’s more to come. An explanation of how to put the card key in the slot to open the door and then once inside it’s more demonstrations.

“This is the TV remote control,” Michael said. Funny that, because it looked just like a TV remote. Glad he pointed that one out. I didn’t want to be trying to turn the TV on with the complimentary hotel pen and having to call reception to say it didn’t work and the man coming all the way up to our room to tell me I was using a pen instead of the TV remote which was on top of the TV. Oh how we would have laughed at such an understandably silly mistake.

Next it was the air conditioning remote control to try and identify. “Here it is,” said Michael. Oh yes, there it is, it’s got ‘air conditioning’ written on it. Michael carried on, “To turn air conditioning on and off, you press this button,” and he showed us the big red button which had the words ‘Start/Stop’ printed on it. “I think I’ve got that,” I said, “oh hold on, maybe not, just show me that again. Is it the big red button with ‘Start/Stop’ written on it or is it that complimentary hotel pen that I use to turn the TV on and off? I’ve quite forgotten. New technology eh? Always confuses us old ‘uns doesn’t it?”

“No, it’s this big red button with ‘Start/Stop’ on it,” said Michael, “don’t worry, you’ll soon get the hang of it. Shall I write it down for you?”

“Would you? That might be a good idea, here, use this pen,” I said, handing him the TV remote control.

Then we got to a physical demonstration of turning the air conditioning on and off. Having mastered the technology of using my finger to press the big red button with start/stop on it, Michael then showed me how to point the remote at the air conditioning unit, and - this was the hard bit - simultaneously pressing the big red button with start/stop on it.

He did this from the middle of the room but nothing happened. The air conditioning unit was above the pelmet which ran across the top of the balcony patio door, so he moved a few steps closer, holding the remote slightly higher. Nothing fired into life.

“Here, try this,” I said, handing him a complimentary hotel shower cap, “oh no, sorry, that’s the TV remote control isn’t it? My mistake.”

“No, no, no,” he suddenly shouted at me, “that is not the TV remote, that is a complimentary shower cap! This is the TV remote,” and he pushed the complimentary hotel pen into my hand.

“Oh of course,” I said, “silly me.”

“No, no, excuse me, no,” he shouted again, his voice beginning to crack a little, “that is a complimentary hotel pen.”

“Well I know that,” I said, “I was wondering whether you did. It’s easy to confuse the two. They are very similar aren’t they?”

By now Michael was standing about a foot away from the unit, holding the remote above his head and pressing the big red button like crazy but still no air conditioning came on.

“Perhaps it’s the batteries. Here, change them, I’ve got a couple of new AA batteries in my pocket,” I said, handing Michael two complimentary hotel chocolates that were lying on the bedside table next to the ‘Pillow Menu’ – (Pillow menu? Don’t ask, just don’t or we’ll be here all day).

By now he’d removed the complimentary chocolates that he’d inadvertently put into the TV remote by mistake and was about to put them into the air conditioning remote when he stopped, looked at the chocolates, looked at me and realising what he was trying to do, suddenly broke down sobbing.

“It’s OK,” I said, “calm down, blow your nose, wipe your eyes, here’s a tissue,” and I handed him a coat hanger.

“Thank you,” he said, “now where was I?”

“You’re trying to get the air conditioning unit to switch on,” I said, “but none of the remotes you’re using seem to work.”

“The problem,” he explained, and this is absolutely true, “is the remote control signal is being blocked by the window pelmet. The only way to get a signal is to get as close as possible to the air conditioning unit.” And with that he stood on a chair and pressed the remote physically against the air conditioning receiver. He pressed the big red button with start/stop on it and, guess what, nothing happened. He pressed again – nothing. The third time there was a beep and the air conditioning switched on.

“This is how you work the air conditioning,” Michael said with a grin as he clambered down from the chair, “you see?”

Wonderful. Wouldn’t it have been better to have had a switch on the unit and a long stick?

As Michael left I said, “Thank you Michael, for all you’ve done. Here, have a drink on me,” as I pressed a complimentary hotel sachet of Nescafe into his hand. 

It’s a 20 – 25 minute walk along the front to Cascais and we spent some time looking for somewhere to eat before we found a narrow side street with bars and restaurants down each side. The street was so narrow that by the time each bar had its tables and chairs outside there was only a narrow centre aisle for pedestrians to walk along.  We spent a few minutes looking at a menu outside a bar on our right, decided to eat there and a man said good evening sir and ushered me to an outside table on the left side of the street. I sat down and Pauline shouted over to me, “That’s a Thai restaurant, we don’t want that do we?” I looked at the man who was indeed oriental and I got up with a sheepish grin, apologised, took two paces and sat down at a table on our right which was for the restaurant we’d decided on in the first place.

Good oriental ploy though eh? Invite confused Englishman to sit at their restaurant after confused Englishman had decided to eat at the other restaurant. You could almost see the oriental staff inside, sniggering and slapping their hands in glee as another confused Englishman is suckered into the wrong establishment.