(We’re here!)

We have arrived! Less than a hour’s drive and we’ve crossed the border. We forgot about the time change (we’re now back to Irish time) and went looking for coffee at 9am! But that’s one of the great things about Portugal – there’s no set time for meals or coffee, you can get fed and watered any time of the day. Really, really helpful for the confused travellers.

(Is that the time?)

We were very confused last night… We decided to mark our last night in Spain by going out for dinner. So, as you do, we looked up some restaurant reviews and it turned out that 6 minutes away from our parking spot there was a very good and inexpensive place. Of course being Spain, they opened for dinner at 9pm.

(Festival time in Pontevedra)

On this trip we have dinner around 6pm and I go to bed at 9pm (it’s insurance against grumpy behaviour!) so it was a struggle both to stay awake and eat nothing, but I managed. Two minutes to nine arrived and we were on our way. A quick look in the restaurant window showed lots of empty tables, brilliant we’ll have the pick of the seats. The owner welcomed us in with a huge smile and said some Spanish words that sounded very like “do you have a reservation?”

(Secret passageway)

We didn’t. He said some more Spanish words and gave us his business card. Time to mention we don’t speak Spanish. He was very apologetic and spoke to us in English. The tables were all booked, it was the weekend and there was a festival. He suggested that we walk on to the old town, we might be lucky.

(That’s Spain over there on the other side of the river)

We were not lucky… Well, we were very lucky, actually.  Sure we were hungry and I was tired but here we were walking the streets of an old Spanish town in the middle of the night (a full half hour past my bedtime by now) full of happy smiling people. We tried loads of restaurants and there were no tables free so we headed home to (half a stale baguette) toast and tea. But then just around the corner from the very first restaurant, Denis spotted a pizza restaurant (I had given up by then and was looking forward to toast and bed). Long story short, they had a table! The owner was really friendly and spoke a little English and we got exactly what we wanted on our pizza and it was delicious.

As I write Denis is barbecuing sausages in the car park – hopefully that’s not against the law? Mairead.