Part III – Pontevedra and Lisbon

Sunday, March 11th

We woke up in Santiago and had a spectacularly shitty breakfast of cheap store bought donuts and other crap that we picked up at the super market before my skull covering was ruined. Then we headed out to Pontevedra.

The drive was quick and uneventful. We then found a garage to park in and Kathi’s sister STILL couldn’t put the fucking automobile between the lines. I haven’t seen a display of ineptness this mind-boggling since Jorge Larrionda last June. Once again I expressed my dissatisfaction.

We got out of the parking lot and set off to explore the city. My first move was to pick up some stamps and acquire a map so we could find our way around. We saw the cathedral and a few other sites but I have to say that, as a whole, Pontevedra was nice but underwhelming. We hit a bunch of the major attractions before heading off to lunch at the Praza 5 Calles. I ordered another Galician pork dish called Zorza which was a bit more spicy than the delicious Raxo that Kathi’s sister ordered. That stuff is awesome. But anyhow, our lunch was made a little more stressful by the family that was sitting next to us outside and their god damn shitty, unruly kids. They were running around like little savages so imagine my delight when one of them fucking biffed it hard. Eat shit little girl!

There was one thing that was really cool about Pontevedra though. Everyone knows that Columbus set sail for India but found the New World instead and most people even know that his flagship was called the Santa Maria. What most people don’t know is that the Santa Maria was built in Pontevedra and - more than that - since she was a Galician ship, she was actually called Santa Maria “La Gallega.” The ship that discovered the Americas and “changed the destiny of the world” (from a monument to Columbus…). Not too shabby, eh?

After we finished exploring Pontevedra (it was tiny so we only spent the morning and afternoon there), we got back into the car and drove to Lisbon. There is something else that warrants mentioning. Kathi’s sister was REPEATEDLY outsmarted by the power windows button in the car. She would push the “window up” button when she wanted to put the window down. When that didn’t work, she didn’t try the button in the other direction. That, you see, would have been logical and much too out of character. What she did instead was push the button (in the wrong direction) harder and then harder still, even though results were lacking. If it were an isolated incident, then I could chalk it up to an innocent mistake. This was the fourth or fifth time though and I regret to say it wasn’t the last time the window button threw her for a loop. Once again I voiced my concerns. Later, we had to gas up for the first time and she couldn’t open the gas cap. And the last thing I’ll say is that we went off track once because she can’t understand directions. There was a fork in the motorway coming up but I had foreseen it and told her the direction we needed to go. I thought that was a pretty clear indicator but as the fork drew nearer she asked which way we needed to go. I pointed to the right but she drove to the left. I asked why she went in the wrong direction an she replied that I hadn’t given her a clear enough signal. I MOTHERFUCKING POINTED, IT’S NOT SEMAPHORE OR SOME COMPLICATED ASS SIGN LANGUAGE! FUCK!!!!!

But I digress. There was something else to irritate me.

I wrote before about the maddening lack of street signs in Spain. Portugal was even worse. Way f’n worse. We got into Lisbon as the sun was setting and, though our hotel was in the center of the city and should have been reasonable easy to find, we spent a very maddening hour and a half in the vicinity of the hotel without finding it. Getting stuck in Lisbon traffic is a fate worse than hell. At one point we missed our turn because the street wasn’t marked and couldn’t even turn around for well over a couple of miles. That’s not even the worst of it: we drove over the Golden Gate bridge (at least it looked like the Golden Gate bridge) and ended up on a highway we couldn’t get off of, ended up on the other side of Lisbon (remember, we were within a mile or so of our hotel when we went astray), were finally able to turn around and go in the direction but we had to go back over the Golden Gate bridge into the city, where it becomes a toll-bridge. When we finally found the hotel, the place was a dumpy shithole. But our bed had dolphin themed sheets. As far as Kathi’s sister was concerened, it was five-star quality.

Monday, March 12th

We woke up and headed down to breakfast which was surprisingly good. Afterward, I got a map from the old dude at the reception desk as well as a crash course in Portuguese.

We bought a pass for the public transportation and headed out to see Lisbon. We were put in the right direction by a kind woman at the bus stop and that was one of the last positive things that happened in Lisbon. Although we were on the right bus, it took AGES to get to the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos and we were next to some fucking stink bag French tourists. And I mean that literally, not just because they were shithead Frenchies but because they really smelled like a bag of smashed assholes. Way to enforce stereotypes there, bungholes.

When we got to our destination, it was actually pretty cool, if only because I’d never seen a church that was a good one-and-a-half to two football fields long. This thing was insane. From there we saw the monument to Portugal’s colonial days and then the Tower of Belem, which was also pretty cool though it was closed and we couldn’t go inside. It was at this Tower that I was offered a genuine Armani watch at a discount price. At least I was assured that it was genuine when I raised my doubts by laughing in the guy’s face. I still decided to pass though.

We took a train back to the center of the city and walked up to the main square. This is the spot where I received the first of my five offers for drugs. No more than 50 feet away from a police officer, no less. Lisbon was shady. And there wasn’t much to see there that I was interested in. I mean, in Spain you could still see traces of the empire's glory. In Lisbon? Not so much. To be frank, I pretty much hated it. I would curse Portugal often enough that it started to irritate Kathi’s sister so I made her a deal: when I started to complain about hating Lisbon, she was to remind me that the US beat Portugal in the 2002 World Cup and that made me feel better about the whole situation.

If Lisbon had a redeeming feature, was the castle. I have to admit that it was pretty kick-ass and we heard a street performer type guitar player that was so awesome I bought his cd. Still, the city as a whole was still a huge disappointment. To make things worse, I developed a blister on my right foot that I couldn’t do anything about since I didn’t have anything sharp enough to pop it with and I didn’t want to tear off all the skin as I knew there was still plenty of walking to be done on the trip.

It got dark and we headed back to a square near our hotel where I grabbed something to eat and got to watch the first half of that night’s Benfica game. That night was also peaceful between Kathi’s sister and I. Since she didn’t have to drive, we didn’t have a reason to argue. Word.