travel diary
Still on the road, because it never ends, because it is our condition if we are alive ...
I'm naked, lying on a bed as a priest in the room 320 of the hotel Arcada Aveiro (P), but the air temperature is identical to that of Bologna, home of Charles last night: 28 ° C.
are the 20 local time in Italy are 21. Decides to take a thought, rather than a thought, a promise to phone home. Or rather, I try. I hate phones and phone calls. International calls are also always a puzzle to be solved step by step, trying again and again, each country has its own combination and it would take a hand climbing burglar!
The bedroom window 'on a square overlooking the Canal Central. The sun is still impossible stare, his light still hot. I recently finished trumpeted and processions of cars, because Portugal beat Romania to the European football ... TV sends Germany - England, while my head summarizes the long day that has brought me this far (and still unfinished, though the sun does not decide ...).
The trip was quite boring air travel picks up the first time, then the other tires. At least I was quite on time. Landed in Porto (Oporto I do not like the term, which does not use almost none) I changed $ 400 in escudos, then I took the car, with the usual problems of language and bureaucracy typical dell'Europcar. I started driving the Renault Clio 1.2 NR-new new westminster blue. The serious problem, given the weather, is that the AC is not working or not, that there is only the light (I am reminded of a trip in Puglia on a Daewoo on which they had "forgotten" to assemble) .
In the room the thermometer dropped to 27.5 ° C, I back the mood, try to call home. Still pit. I decide to smash the phone that manages to combine a triangulation on the first try. Again, this is it!
The story of the day is better to stop and think about finding a place to put something in the stomach. Today I ate only sandwiches elastic, plastic and croissant sandwiches, frozen ...
But the inconveniences of travel are many and got excited about traveling: to say that I left the key in the lock of the suitcase in the car (good idea to lock ... to leave the key in the car is just an oversight). Moral: I have to get back the wet towel after a refreshing bath.
Out now is fresh and inviting me to this walk. There is the old neighborhood (rearranging all the floors are paved in) and the new shopping mall run by architects with skill. Okay, it soon becomes clear that there is poetry, that it is prose, but a very good prose. Moreover mix poetry and I think how we can trade to mix water and oil.
E 'being a book fair with the participation of many local publishers, writers and a few too many players here? Many youth running idle, refreshed after a long hot day's work. I visit all the center, the gallery is reminiscent of the Expo in Lisbon (but cheaper), I climb on the roof-terrace fitted with roof garden and watch the turning off of each color in the sky.
Ceno Iron restaurant, a room for local furniture with polished by time, sink into a wall of the room, sweaty and brisk waiters, cast and simple dishes. At the tables seem to see friends at the weekly ritual of dinner, the first stage of a long Saturday night, only a few tables are occupied by odd dive in the newspaper or the cigarette hung with thoughts. Summing up a big dinner and economic.
Leaving see so many guys who fill the streets and squares (Aveiro is the university and students are perhaps the idle or before), but sleep is so and the white wine does the rest.
These notes are, in fact, taken the morning after, when the sky is torn between the blue and gray.
I had been wrong to AC '.
The traffic and the signs are not to be: I wanted to sail around Porto and instead we ended up inside. I also saw where he will spend the night Hotel Dom Henrique at the end of the month. Obviously step and point to the south, but I lose time in traffic jams and arrive a little late on the road map (detail I still can not forget ...) to the Santa Maria da Feira. I decide to stop only if I find a shady spot, luckily I find it. From 10 to 20 there is a medieval historical re-enactment, with lots of stalls selling fabrics, embroidery, sausages, honey and jams and people dressed up as pathetic and hypothetical ancestors.
I go to the castle, which has little of the medieval, but is in the midst of a dense and cool park. I take a stroll through the streets, but the heat is unbearable and I think today's good to continue the journey toward Ovar.
Here I make an expenditure in food (water, tea and biscuits), where I enjoy it here as well AC works, then try, with a constancy that deserves a better fate, the museum much-vaunted by Saramago, I find at last after much hard work, but is closed for structural repairs, no less!
The town is deserted, the bars come out the effects of the match between Portugal and Romania, the hot air as nearly chipped a wall, the cars are hot items and properties, it seems to me to return the child, the world's Mexican ...
again south to Aveiro, where he arrived and already I get lost. From the highway, which would bring in Lisboa, I see, beyond the marsh, the university campus I visited a few years ago ', still under construction: I recognize the library and the water tank of Siza el' Institute of Souto de Moura . Will I be able to make us jump tomorrow (ie today)? Bumps into the hotel I am the guide suggested we Mondadori and over again: the daily duties of travelers is made.
