f Portugal Diary - Spring 2018

The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Laundry R Us

What better way to spend Mother's Day than with the task that most often falls to mothers? I'm talking about laundry! Yes, today was laundry day at the Marvins' Movable Mansion? One of the advantages of renting apartments over staying in hotels or B&Bs is the availability of laundry facilities. It allows us to pack a little lighter and avoid the need to schlep dirty duds through the streets to a coin operated laundromat (assuming we could even find one!)

Besides, we were tired and just needed a down day to regroup. I don't think Margene even got out of her jammies all day (another advantage of the slow travel mode!)

Electricity is expensive in Europe and floor space is at a premium, so while washing machines are fairly common in rental apartments, when the listing says "dryer," don't automatically assume they mean a US-type clothes dryer. The odds are the "dryer" is just a folding rack where you hang clothes after the spin cycle and let nature do its thing. We had the machine and the rack, but this was the first time we encountered a ceiling mounted rack that you lower to load up, then hoist to the ceiling to get it out of the way while the clothes dry indoors! Pretty clever!

As I said, today was about laundry ... and I mean ONLY about laundry ... so there's really not much to show you. I did find a pizzeria about three blocks away and snapped a couple of photos when I wandered wandered out to pick up a pie for dinner. The Spar market just around the corner has been our home away from home since we arrived. While it is considerably smaller than a typical supermarket, it has most of the major items you might want, just not quite the full range of brand choices. They even have a small deli and bakery so an earlier run today yielded artisan bread, fresh sliced ham, cheese, mustard and mayo for the lunch sandwiches.

The modernistic cube is the Casa da Musica concert center a block from the apartment. There was an American jazz group I like performing tonight. Tempting, but Margene wasn't into it and the only seats left were in the very back of the hall, so I took a pass as well. I may kick myself for that later. The pizza was good, though!


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