May 16, 2011

Well, our words were prophetic about crime.  Our side wing window was broken overnight or early in the morning even though we left it in a parking area and paid the meter. We even paid the watchman in the neighborhood.  Our hotel reception clerk assured us that the only thing we needed to worry about was making sure the meter was paid at 8 AM because they start towing cars at that hour.  We lost some souvenirs including the DVD from El Soplao and a necklace. They looked in all the nooks and crannies obviously-left the dirty clothes and the car tools.  The car is insured, but we needed to take care of the window.

The biggest hassle has been doing the police report and trying to get the window replaced.  We started with the local police station-pitiful-but the cop, an older gentleman did feel sorry for us but spoke no Spanish or English.  We muddled through in Portuguese.  We ended up at the Police Station for the Ministry of Tourism and completed the report.  The officer there was completely fluent in English and Spanish.  He told us to drive to the Porto airport and have the car exchanged by the rental agency.  We drove to the Porto airport-about 30 minutes.  It turns out that there is a National car rental place there but they are agents of the leasing company in Spain.  Again, no Spanish or English.  We did manage to hear the supervisor say she was going to eat breakfast when we were asking for help.  We sat outside the agency (disgusted) and tried to contact the office in Spain for customer assistance.  When we finally got through on our cell phone, the girl, who was very nice, told us to contact the Bilbao office where we had picked up the car.  She had been trying and they were not answering, so we tried too, and they did not answer.  By this time, our Mexican resourcefulness took over and we taped up the window with paper and a plastic bag so we could at least protect it somewhat. I sat in the back seat as there was glass everywhere.  We also contacted to travel agent in Germany for guidance and he was helpful, did a lot of the leg work on the phone for us and promised to call later, which he did with some options.

We decided to drive to Obidos, a quaint little town about 3 hours on the way to Lisbon.  We couldn't go to Fatima today because there was no way we could leave all our luggage in the parking lot with a broken window.   Obidos was lovely, but crowded and again, we took turns looking around while one of us stayed with the car in the parking lot.  This has been a very stressful day.  Hopefully, tomorrow, we will go to Fatima with a repaired window, but in the worst case scenario all our stuff is here in a great hotel room in Lisbon. So we will go with or without a broken window.  We tried to get a tour to avoid driving all together, but it only runs on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Of course! Right now, it is 9:30 PM and our hotel clerk here in Lisbon has been helpful in getting us some names of car glass places that make house calls.  We just sent an email to the place-in Portuguese-hope that works out!  More tomorrow.