ON TO PORTUGAL

Well, it's back to Gassaway's Adventures.  Since Our Camino has ended, at least for the time being, we are switching gears, being flexible, and continuing on.  After a week in Burgos, we were going batty.  To make matters worse, there was a overhead display of Mary Poppins on the street next to our hotel (See Photo) and of course for any self respecting display there has to be accompanying music over loud speakers.  Can you guess what song was played over and over all night long for 4 days?  That spoonful of sugar, does not help the medicine go down if you've gone nuts and have that song rattling around in your head.  Ok, everyone, start humming.

Once we decided to stop walking and go on vacation, I did a whirlwind planning marathon over two days to come up with places to go and where to stay.  I managed, much to my surprise, book six places to stay over the one month we will be in Portugal, with only one day still to reserve.    We can only hope that I made the right choices, a difficult task given the rush and the fact that the only thing I know about Portugal is that it is next to Spain.

So there will be one hotel, two vacation apartments, on the beach and four B&B's in the interior of the country.  I used booking.com and my own research for the hotel and the B&B's and airbnb.com for the vacation rentals.

I have also been dealing with credit card issues and had to cancel one card because it was used by someone else.  So much for chip security.  One place I wanted to make a deposit was declined by Capitol One, so I called them and told them to authorize the charge.  I resubmitted the charge while I was on the phone with Capitol One and it was still declined.  Good thing I have a PayPal account, which worked like a charm.  In Europe almost all business use a portable handheld credit card reader and they all, at least so far, will read your read your credit card from your electronic wallet on your cell phone.  It is the most secure way I can see to charge something as it takes a scan of my fingerprint to authorize the charge.  At least it's been working so far.

I wanted to say something about Javier, a hotelier I met last time I was in Santiago.  He remembers me because of my girls name, Dana.  I stayed at his family run hotel, Costa Vella, two years ago and made reservations for last year when we had to cancel after Cathie got sick.  When I made reservations this year, he remembered me and asked how Cathie was.  A nice touch.  Now that we have cancelled the rest of Our Camino we need some extra nights in Santiago so I called the hotel.  I spoke with a girl who said they just had a cancellation and reserved the room for me.  Several hours later I got a call from Javier who said a mistake had been made and the aforementioned room was not available.  Turns out Javier and his family have three hotels in the same block and we were made an offer we couldn't refuse.  $150 dollar room, with balcony and breakfast for $100.  Not too shabby, thank you Javier.

Tomorrow we will leave Santiago, in a rental car I think I have reserved.  We will return to Santiago at the end of our trip for two more days before heading home.  Next time you hear from us we will be in Portugal, I heard it is near Spain.  A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down, medicine go.......damn.

 

TRIP PLANNING 

 

CATHIE MAKING FRIENDS

 

COSTA VELLA HOTEL BAR SCENE

 

TAPAS IN SANTIAGO.