Lisbon was going to be one of the highlights of our trip –
Bill really wanted to go there to experience listening to Fado music in one of
the many Fado bars in the Alfama district, and I was looking forward to it
too. I had booked a lovely 2br 2bathroom
apartment here for 3 nights, prior to leaving Australia. A deposit had been paid, so we were locked-in
to the apartment for these dates.
Well, we arrived in the city around 1.00pm and headed for
the apartment. The place was just
buzzing, people everywhere, walking in the middle of the road, the traffic was
unbelievable. The area we were heading
into was in the old town, with cobbled streets, tramcars, tramlines
everywhere. Trev was driving this
section, with me as navigator and Kate, our trusty??? GPS assisting.
What a nightmare! I followed Kate’s instructions, which took us
down a narrow tramline street, which unfortunately was only for Trams! We were abused by a Lisboan who told us very
strongly to ‘turn around, go back, you stupid bloody tourists, can’t you read?’
(at least, that’s the impression I got of his angry Portuguese!) Poor Trev had to do a u-turn on a two-way
tramline street about one metre wide
(believe me, that’s what it felt like) with a Portuguese man abusing him. Not funny!
But Trev kept his cool, and calmly drove us out of mortal danger. We managed to find a park (illegal, but that’s
the way it was) near a busy little square while we tried to sort out our
options. We were so close to our
apartment we could just about sniff it, but we couldn’t drive in there as it
was only accessible to residents.
Our strategy was for myself and Bill to walk to our
apartment (if we could find it), while Trev and Lorraine stayed with the car in
our illegal parking spot. So, off we
went with Kate, our GPS. We eventually
found it – when we were previously driving down the tramlines we were about 50metres
away from it. We had rung ahead to
arrange for someone to meet us there and give us the keys, but when Bill and I
got there, no-one was around. I phoned our contact to find out what to do,
and he said that someone would be there, but unfortunately we couldn’t check
into the apartment for about 3 hours, as the previous occupant (who, as he
said, was French) had not understood she had to get out by a certain time and
the apartment was still being cleaned.
Nooooo!
Meanwhile, the person who was supposed to meet us came out
of the one of the apartments and explained the same thing. But, he said we could leave our luggage in
the apartment and come back in about 3 hours. We
explained our problem with getting the car and our luggage to the apartment,
and he said he would do what he could do to help, but it was very difficult in
these historical areas. He did mention
that there was public parking near where Trev and Lorraine were, but it was
very expensive - he didn't mention just how expensive.
Bill and I headed back to the others to discuss our
options. On the way, we went past the
public parking area where we discovered the price – 135 Euro for 24 hours –
yes, that’s right, about $200 per night!
It’s just getting better and better….
So, we found Trev and Lorraine, who were still illegally parked and
being watched by one of the local shop owners, who was not happy.
We discussed the situation: ridiculously expensive parking, dragging our luggage down long, narrow,
cobbled streets in the heat of the day, not being able to get into our apartment
for 3 hours. When the police eventually arrived to
move us on, we made a decision. We had already
paid a deposit of 150 Euro (around $220) and still had another 900 Euro to pay
to stay for three days, but we decided to cut our losses, relinquish the
deposit and just try to get out of Lisbon and stay somewhere else. It was all just too hard, we were tired and
hot and had had enough. I contacted the
apartment manager, who did try to help, and he was most upset at the thought
that we didn’t like the apartment. I
explained that it was not the apartment
that was the problem, it was just the logistics of getting there. So, now we had to find somewhere else to
stay……so disappointing.
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