I had to go to Tojeiro this week. For parts for the boiler. You probably have no idea where Tojeiro is, dear readers, but the best part is – I didn’t either. The senhora of the shop had very kindly sent me a link so that I knew the way.

That I wasn’t dependent on the signage

Everyone knows the reality: the signage doesn’t mean much. It’s there, it’s not there, suddenly there are other names on the signs, and in Coimbra city they want you to believe that deer can jump right in front of your car. L-O-L .Then the phone is a lot better.

Unfortunately, I’m not that great on the phone. I call and whatsapp with that thing. That’s about it. If I have to look something up, I do it on the laptop, because it’s always close by, and I find that much more convenient than fiddling around on that small screen.

I think that’s to my advantage: less screen time, less addiction, less dopamine, less turkey neck danger. In this case it was clearly to my disadvantage. Now she had sent a map plus a link to Google maps, so I could enlarge it, and see where exactly I had to go.

I don’t have a digital lady who tells you where to go, because when I have to go somewhere I usually know the situation there. And otherwise I look at Google maps beforehand, and write something down if necessary.

But this time I was a bit more ambitious, since I love to combine. The boiler parts store is not that far from the tile factory where they make a beautiful collection of colored tiles, one of the few left, and that is not that far from Tentúgal where my friend Paula lives.

A nice round, I thought, optimist that I am. Let’s go, hit the road!

The road to Tojeiro was not that difficult, especially not because I had printed the maps in the old-fashioned way. Now I have an extra handicap: my driving glasses are different from my reading glasses. Before I can see anything on a phone or a map, I first have to put on my reading glasses. But then again, I can’t drive with those. For driving I have far-sighted sunglasses.

Only two wrong turns, and I noticed that in time. That keeps you busy for a while, and I lost some time checking the route on the computer at home and printing those maps, so I arrived there around noon. In Portugal, that means you have a dilemma. Then you can really rush to get to your next destination before lunch, or you can take it easy and accept that it will be after lunch.

Lunch hour is sacred here. You really can’t go anywhere except a restaurant. I did the rushing thing first, but when I checked the road at the side of the road after fifteen minutes and realized that I was speeding in the wrong direction like an idiot, I accepted the facts. The tile factory would be after lunch. Lucky for Mira. We went for a walk in the woods.

I was seriously surprised by the signage

Even on the medium-sized roads it is terrible. Sometimes you have to go around a roundabout twice to know exactly where you have to go, and at the next roundabout every name you’re looking for has disappeared. Anyway, I only had to go back a few times, and at the gas station on the first zona industrial they very kindly showed me how to get to the right zona industrial.

The senhora of the Ceragni factory was very cooperative and friendly, but since they had only just restarted production after the holidays, there were no tiles to take away. “If you come back in a week or two, we have tiles and a lot of broken tiles, which you can take with you for free.”

(Do they have such clumsy workers? I thought, but you won’t hear me about that of course!) That’s very good news, because colored tiles are completely out of fashion. It’s grey, black, beige or marbled, all over the place, and as a mosaicist you don’t get much excitement out of that.

Interior design has also completely lost its way, if you ask me, but hey, what can you do about it

From there it went downhill. And uphill too, by the way. I ended up on the wrong road, to Coimbra, and thought I was being clever – that I could take the shortest route to Tentúgal at Trouxemil. L-O-L again. If you already have complaints about the signage on the N-roads, then you can have a lot of fun in the category below.

I saw a lot of villages whose names I don’t even remember, drove through a lot of narrow streets, up and down hills. When you ask a lost pedestrian for directions, they look at you as if you are a time traveler who has just come from 1900. I even did some wrong-way driving for a short while! Absolutely unclear how and where to go, if you have to rely on the signposts.

It took me quite some effort to find the main road to Coimbra

Okay, okay, I’ll go via Coimbra, I thought, and then along the north side of the river … but before I knew it I had to continue to the south side of the Mondego, and I was stuck in a traffic jam. The local council had come up with the idea that in August, the holiday month, it would be a great idea to asphalt all access roads to the centre at the same time.

My car started to overheat, the dog too, and I wasn’t completely cool anymore either.

During the second attempt to get on the A-14 towards Figueira da Foz, on the north side of the river, and ending up on the N-road towards Porto again, I started to give up. Paula called: “How are you, is something wrong, are you coming?” I had agreed in the Portuguese way: “I’ll be there after lunch” – but when it gets close to five, even for the Portuguese that becomes too much.

This was clearly too ambitious, at least without a GPS. With a digital helper it probably would have worked, but with my old-fashioned way you get completely lost these days.

Perhaps signage is a thing of the past?

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We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, Holland to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal.

A big step, especially with two small children.

We are busy to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa which has been turned into several holiday houses, rooms and a campsite.

You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere.

Since 2018 we call ourselves the first B&B&B in the world – Bed & Breakfast & Bathrobes. You can buy a home-made unique bathrobe/housecoat with us.

Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation

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