The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
The Road to Lisbon
I mentioned the toll roads in Portugal are pricey. What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that electronic tolling
makes even secondary roads subject to usage fees ... which created a bit of a wrinkle. Portugal uses transponder-based
toll collections and all rental cars come equipped with the necessary unit. Your choice is to whether to have it activated
or not ... for an additional daily fee, of course.
I knew the A1 -- the main north-south motorway -- had the options of picking up a paper ticket when you got on and paying
the toll when you got off. Most of the time we would just be toodling around local areas anyway ... right? I saw no need to
add another daily fee, so didn't ... but I called that one wrong. First of all, in all the confusion of picking up the car,
I mis-read the transponder form. The daily charge was only an additional 1.50 euros, not 10.50 euros. (At 10.50, the charge
to use the transponder would have been about as much as I was paying for the car itself!
As it turned out, while the main routes do use paper tickets, there are numerous electronic toll stations on most of the
secondary roads to and from most anywhere you might want to visit. These sensors pick up your car and add the toll to your
account which, for most people, gets paid automatically from a credit card or bank account. If you don't have that set up, though,
you still owe the money along with a healthy fine if you don't pay ... and the rental company, stuck with the tab,
will track you down!
To stay out of trouble with the law, you can go to a post office. They can look up your plate number in the computer to
see how much you owe. Fortunately, you can pay the tab right there and clear your record. Of course, the premium for doing
it this way is more than the daily charge the rental company wanted! Chalk this up under Lessons Learned.
For the most part, the view on the drive down was the same boring scenery you see on most interstate highways. But we took a quick detour when we passed Obidos, site of an old fortification and a Roman aquaduct. Our brief foray up the hill ended abruptly when we ended up in a parking lot jammed with tour busses, so we turned around and headed for the big city.
The route got rather circuitous at times, but our little GPS took us right to the front of our apartment building where we met the irrepressible Ana Mateus. The apartment actually belongs to her brother, a diplomat serving in Argentina. When he and the family are in Buenos Aires, she takes care of renting out his apartment on AirBnB. No reserved underground parking this time, but there seems to be plenty of spots on the street in front. It's another two bedroom, two bath so there's plenty of room. Alas, the king bed in the master bedroom is too low for Margene to get out of unassisted, but fortunately a single bed in the kids' room works. I miss her at night but it beats the need to wake me up everytime she needs get up to use the john!
Ana recommended a small local restaurant a block away as a good, cheap place for a meal. We'd
never stopped for lunch so I was hungry but Margene didn't have the energy to go out. I looked the restaurant up on Google
maps and it gave me the picture with the little green awning. I went down the street to the corner and seeing nothing else
around, went into the little bar with the green awning. OK, the name was different than the place I was looking for but
they had cold beer and I managed to talk them into making a sandwich for me. The owners were friendly, the sandwich was
adequate and my total bill was about US$4!
Of course, as soon as I stepped out the door to head home I saw Restaurante Trindade on the opposite corner! I had walked
right past it as I came down the road. Wonder how I possibly could have missed it? (Margene thought it looked like an
abandoned public restroom! Point taken.) I guess signage and curb appeal isn't that big a deal when your market is entirely
locals. The place looked to be nearly full with families, so they must have something good going on. Margene is scared by
the look of the place but maybe I can finally manage to check it out before we leave.
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