Time traveller alert. This post is being written not in retrospect, but, more or less, in real time, because…

Bernice and I arrived on Sunday night after a very uneventful direct flight from Tel Aviv to Lisbon, and a two-and-a-half hour drive to Penamacor. We left very cold, wet weather in Maale Adumim, fully expecting that the one benefit of such wintry weather would be a kind of acclimiatization in advance for a Penamacor winter.

How wrong we were! We landed in a Lisbon bathing in the last rays of a bright, warm sun, and our entire drive was through a mild and still winter evening. This was in strong contrast to our drive back to Lisbon airport in November, which was through alternate driving rain and very patchy fog. On balance, I wouldn’t recommend driving, at 3:00AM, along a road you are not very familiar with, a road that in some sections winds through wooded valleys, where you occasionally come out of a bend and drive straight into a bank of fog, all the time hoping that your calculation of how much time you need to allow in order to catch your flight has sufficiently taken into account driving conditions. In the end, that journey ended safely and with time to spare; nevertheless, this week’s drive was much more relaxed, not least because it was towards our family and not away from them, and because it would not really make any difference if we arrived a couple of hours later than planned. In fact, we arrived more or less at the time I had expected, 10:15PM local time, which felt to us like 12:15AM the next day, of course. Tao was, naturally, fast asleep, and Tslil had also gone to bed. She very wisely takes advantage of Tao’s sleep pattern, and, no doubt partly for that reason, looks very well.

So, our welcoming committee consisted of Micha’el, who is suffering with a cold and sore throat that are leaving him more tired than usual, and Esther and Ma’ayan, our daughter and other daughter-in-law, who are here for a week, to help me continue my birthday celebrations. You can, I am sure, imagine how good it feels, for all the family to be together, especially for all of us to be together without having to worry about organizing a wedding, for a change. This is pure quality time for (I hope) all of us.

After chatting for a while, and enjoying a cup of tea, Bernice and I left for our bed.

When we were planning our first trip to the kids, we decided to take a leaf out of my parents’ book. In the 1980s and 90s, my Mum and Dad, of blessed memory, would visit us in the Jerusalem suburb of East Talpiot for 2 weeks, once a year. At the time we lived in a three-room, 55 m² apartment. That’s under 600 ft², if that means more to you. If neither of the numbers means much to you, then let me give you a few indicators. Indicator 1: If we had not had direct access from the flat to the communal garden (a large grassed area with a couple of trees), and if we did not live in a country where we (and particularly Micha’el and the dog) could be outside for most of the year, then it is likely that not all us would have survived the 9 years we lived there. Indicator 2: Bernice and I slept on a futon, because our bedroom was so small that it was impossible to open the wardrobe until the futon had been folded up. Even with the futon closed, we could not both get dressed at the same time. Indicator 3: We could vacuum the entire apartment with the cleaner plugged into one socket, and without using an extension lead. That should be sufficient indicators for you to get the idea. The first few times my parents visited, they slept in the kids’ bedroom, which was a little larger than ours. However, it didn’t take them long to decide that they would rather stay at the hotel in Ramat Rachel, and spend all day every day with us.

One of the shortcomings of our Penamacor house is that there is only one toilet and bathroom (combined). For six adults and a baby, this seems like a challenge, albeit a first-world challenge. Another shortcoming, and one that is more significant for us, is the location of the combined bathroom and toilet: on the ground floor. Once the kids have moved onto the land, we plan to convert the third bedroom into a bathroom. Until then, for those of us whose nights are punctuated by not infrequent trips to the bathroom (I can already see some of you men, and maybe even some women, nodding in total understanding), the prospect of traipsing down the 15 stairs and through the salon in a Penamacor winter in the small hours, after the wood fire has burnt out, is not particularly attractive. The fact that there is an outside chance that, at whatever hour, Tao will be awake and downstairs is a significant compensation, but even so…

I hope you can understand why Bernice and I decided that, rather than staying with the kids and Tao in the house, we would stay in Penamacor’s only hotel. It is still not clear to us why there is a hotel in a one-horse town like Penamacor, and, having now stayed there twice, it isn’t clear to me how the hotel stays in business, because, for most of my stay last June (when I came over alone to look at property), there seemed to be only 20% occupancy, and, when Bernice and I stayed in November, we never saw more than two other families on any one day. I am beginning to suspect that the entire hotel is just an elaborate front for Portuguese mafia money laundering.

Having said that, it is a very pleasant hotel: the staff are very friendly and helpful, all the rooms have balconies with lovely open views of the surrounding country and the distant hills, and not only does the breakfast that our rules of kashrut prevent us eating look very good, but the buffet table also boasts a good selection of quality fresh fruit, as well as plain yoghurts and a selection of Kellogg’s cereals, both of which are on the kosher list issued by the Lisbon Jewish community. The trend of the last 30 or so years, of hotels offering a more healthy, non-cooked, breakfast alternative, has proved a boon to the observant Jewish guest in a non-kosher hotel.

After a couple of days here, we feel, on the whole, much more at home than during our previous trip, even though the entire experience still seems (and, I suspect, always will) very much ‘other’. We have no dramatic plans for this visit. People keep suggesting that we visit Lisbon, or Porto, or the Algarve, or Madrid, or Gibraltar, but, for the moment, spending an evening sitting and schmoozing with the family, and agreeing to babysit Tao while the four kids spend a half-day hiking in the nearby national park is all we need, or would ask for. Promise not to tell the kids, who think we are bring remarkably selfless, but enjoying a few hours with Tao is, as I suggested at the start, the reason for this entire venture. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some rather pressing business involving some increasingly complex shapes and a posting box.

Don’t forget that you can learn more about Micha’el and Tslil’s plans, and how they are progressing, by following, subscribing to, liking and otherwise spreading the word about their youtube channel.