We are beginning to struggle a bit with Portugal. We had high expectations and many people told us we were going to love it. But so far all of our stops have been near misses. Nothing has been bad, but there is always a little hitch in our plans that throws us off. One example is that at most toll booths our credit cards are rejected until we press the help button and the invisible attendant intervenes. The attendants are always nice, and it only takes a minute or two for them to fix whatever is causing our card to be rejected and we are on our way, but it is annoying, and has never happened anywhere else in Europe.
Today we have moved to a new region in Portugal called Alentejo. It is about 1/3 of the total land in Portugal but only has about 8% of the people. It is also a famous wine region. We were really excited about coming here as it is the kind of place we usually enjoy. Our plans were to visit a tourism office they have set up for their wine industry where their website claimed they would help you plan a trip thru the regions wineries.
So after our night of luxury in the posh hotel we were up early for the 20 minute drive to the campground in Evora to get checked in. When we arrived they asked how long we were planning to stay and I said a few days, and was told that we could only stay a maximum of 2 days. This is not their fault we didn’t book in advance, but it threw our plans off and is unusual in the shoulder season.
Our next stop was the wine route tourism office. We were there right when they reopened at 2pm, and followed a group of about 6 people in. The office website says that in addition to help you plan your route they will give you a tasting of two local wines. The building is quite nice, and they had an interesting display explaining the wines of the region. We looked around for about 15 minutes while a young guy ran around. He finally approached us looking a bit frazzled and said that he was truly sorry but he could not help us today. He said that in addition to the group in front of us, he had a group of 30 coming shortly and they were short handed. We told him our dilemma as we had counted on their assistance, he looked truly sorry, and spent a very rushed five minutes with us, handed us a map of the region and said he really had to go. We mentioned we were in a RV and he said that some of the wineries allowed RV’s to stay and they had an interactive map that would show us which ones. He then showed us how to use the interactive screen, told us to make sure we contacted them in advance of arrival and said he really had to go, and we did not see him again.
From the interactive screen we took pictures of the contact information for 5 wineries that said they would host RV’s. We then went down the street to a little coffee shop where I went on to the website for each winery, and using their email contact page sent them a request to visit tomorrow. We finished sending the emails by about 2:30 and then took a tour of Evora. As I am writing this it is almost 9pm and we have not heard back from anyone, so we are working on a plan b that involves going to the Algarve and meeting our new Thai-German friends. This has been typical of our Portugal experience, nothing bad, the people are nice, but other than the second day in Porto, nothing particularly memorable or interesting. A lot of missed opportunities.
By the way Evora is a lovely city with interesting architecture and a well preserved Roman temple. We did enjoy our afternoon stroll thru town.
Note: Right before I hit publish for the day one of the wineries reached out and said we could stay on site tomorrow, so plan A is back on.