We are in Portugal for a chess tournament at Figueira da Foz, a place by the sea, popular with the Portuguese in the summer time, when I hear that its immense beach positively heaves with holidaymakers. Rather gentile and quiet at the moment, with soft rain splattering on the swimming pool. But it's very mild and, you never know, we might even get some sunshine. Anyway, the ritual weighing of the suitcases. For a number of years we have only ever travelled hand-luggage-only. It's not just that we are cheapskates, although it is noticeably cheaper when you don't have bags to check into the hold. The main advantage is being able to get off the plane and stride out of the airport without waiting for the carrousel to spit out your luggage. And so we have a handy gadget to weigh our bags, ensuring that we are within the limits set by the airline.
Now, this time we travelled with a Portuguese airline. They are ever so nice and friendly and polite. They even do old-fashioned things like give you assigned seats on budget flights. And they give you free food and drinks during the flight. None of the meanness of other budget airlines we could mention. However, and it's quite a big however, about two kilos worth of however, their hand-luggage weight limit is only eight kilos. And that has to include my handbag and its contents! So I started off putting in a suitcase all the stuff I wanted to bring and Phil did the same. Then we weighed them. Then we took stuff out and weighed them again. Then we moved stuff around from one bag to the other and weighed them again.
Of course, it was extra complicated because I HAD to bring my hair straighteners and the chess player HAD to bring all sorts of chess related gear. And there are the electricals - computer, iPad, iPhones, Spanish phones because we are going on to Vigo after the tournament - and their associated chargers and cables. When we simply go to Vigo, of course, we don't need quite as much paraphernalia as we have duplicates for some things in the flat there. But this time, with a reduced luggage allowance we needed more stuff. Nightmare! Sacrifices were made! My running gear went by the board; in Portugal I shall only walk and running will wait until we get to Spain. We have one iPad between us instead of one each. Of course, I know that this is all luxury stuff and we are spoiled and so on but our status as retired baby-boomers allows us to do this.
But finally here we are, after an overnight stop chez offspring number one and his little family. Budget flights do not go from the northwest of England to the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula in the winter months. Clearly northerners only want to go to sunny Spain and the Algarve. Only Londoners are expected to fly to more "cultured" places. And so we flew from Gatwick and will fly back the same way, making another, slightly longer family visit en route for home.
We were ever so kindly met by a friend of the chess tournament organiser at Oporto airport and driven here to Figueira da Foz. I tried out my Michel Thomas Portuguese on him during the journey. All my plans to study really hard between going home from Spain and coming here and to learn a great pile of vocabulary every day went by the board, naturally. But, haltingly and with a fair amount of Spanish and Italian coming out of my mouth, Antonio and I discussed motorway systems, the corruption of politicians, the state of Scotland, the Irish question and, inevitably, the fact that I DON'T actually play chess. Serious stuff. I quite impressed myself.
More about the delights of eating out in Figueira and generally being out and about will come over the next week. For the moment, an "uplifting" finish. Almost everywhere we go in Spain, the lifts are provided by the Otis company. This hotel uses a different company.
We brought our suitcases up to our room in Schindler's lift! What more can I say?
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