Staying: Camping Costa Nova - Costa Nova (Portugal)
Date: Saturday 12th April
Distance Travelled: 184.7 Miles
Song of the Day: We Gotta Get Outta This Place - Eric Burdon and the Animals
Oh my days, what the hell hit us there. This had to be the most awful experience of the entire trip so far. Now, I will be the first to admit that we did break cardinal rule number 1 - Don´t enter a city without a map. Our confidence was high after a great run since Bordeaux. Oh how wrong were we.
Now, if you drive into a new city, and you see these three signs, which would you go for:
Centro Commercial
Centro Cultural
Centro
Yip, yip, that´s what I thought you would choose. Well you would be wrong. It's none of them. And we know, cause we checked. All of them. Centro Cultural we checked Twice. And we still couldn´t find central Porto.
As an idea, for you all, imagine driving around a city the size of Wellington and getting stuck driving round in Wainuiomata for 2 hours while looking for Te Papa. Or imagine driving round Walthamstow for 2 hours looking for Big Ben. It was so bad, that we pulled up in some random suburban road, ate our cheese sandwiches in silence and then drove on.
And this wasn´t the worst of it. You would think that a city with 350,000 people would have signs on how the hell to leave the place. But again, you would be wrong. I have to admit to some choice turns of phrase directed at a few town planners during our escapade. I´m not proud of it, but they were accurate.
Finally we got back onto the motorway and headed south having seen nothing worthwhile of Porto what-so-ever. Although, I can tell you some areas you wouldn´t want to visit, just in case ;-)
Did I mention that petrol is 30c a litre dearer in Portugal compared with Spain? Maybe the town planners and the petrol firms are in league. They make you drive round for hours trying to find something that isn´t there, just to get you to buy petrol you didn´t need in the first place. Hmmmmm. I have to admit, Portugal did not endear itself to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I so know what that's like - and we were only driving around Scotland and Ireland! However, we did have a map - it's just that it didn't match any of the road signs. Aaah, life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long.....
Post a Comment