It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sitting in front of the computer in mid-September, watching the price of direct flights to Lisbon spiral upward as I searched, I saw that flying Austrian Air with a layover in Vienna offered a considerable saving. After the airline had assured me that Vienna is a small airport, and a 50-minute layover left plenty of time to board our ongoing flight, I booked it.

It seemed like a less good idea as we landed in Vienna 20 minutes late and sprinted to the gate (without, of course, knowing where we were going). We actually made it with 5 minutes to spare, although since take-off was delayed 90 minutes, this was of purely academic interest. Bernice had all along told me we were getting too old for layovers, and we should be flying direct even if it did cost more; to her eternal credit, she did not remind me of this as we slumped panting onto the departure gate bench. We are, however, both agreed that we will fly direct from now on.

So, by the time we landed and collected our luggage and our rental car, it was about 12:30 at night. Portugal as a country favours manual-drive cars, and the cost differential between hiring manual and automatic is prohibitively steep. Of course, I had opted for the cheaper option, hoping to persuade them at the desk to give us a free upgrade to automatic. They did give us an upgrade, but laughed when I suggested an automatic. Still, Bernice and I both learnt on manuals, and drove them for many years before switching. Surely it’s like riding a bicycle, I thought.

Have you seen a modern bicycle!? I climbed into the cockpit of our Fiat 500, to discover that, in the intervening 20 years, someone had removed the handbrake and exchanged it for two additional forward gears. I also found myself completely disoriented with regard to the location of the pedals, so that I tried to change gears by depressing the brake, and then, close to panic, tried to stop by depressing the accelerator pedal. A rental car parking lot after midnight is not the best practice track for the learning curve I had to negotiate, but we somehow made it.

I had selected a cheap air bnb quite close to the airport, in what we discovered as we drove was a fairly seedy part of town. We eventually found a parking space, and then the building, and then the lockbox with the house key, and then, after several minutes of rising apprehension, we worked out how to access the keypad for the lockbox. By 2:30 we were in a very comfortable bed and very ready for sleep.

The next day was planned like a military operation. Reveille, drive into Central Lisbon in the morning rush hour, to arrive at the kosher food store at 10, when it opened. We were actually in the shop by 10:15, which we thought was a considerable achievement. The shop, however, was a disappointment. If you are staying in Lisbon in a hotel or airbnb , especially if you are staying over shabbat, then the store – Portuel – is well worth a visit, but it didn’t quite serve our very specific needs. Several of the goodies offered online, including the takeaway tuna rolls we had ordered, were not available. So, we bought what we could, and, nourished by the nuts and raisins and fruit we had brought from home, drove on to IKEA.

We had spent the previous month ordering bulkier household goods on Amazon to be delivered to the house in Portugal. Although we had bought the house fully furnished, we obviously needed to fully equip the kitchen. We had also decided that certain goods (such as crockery, glassware, bed linens) were cheaper in IKEA. Since the nearest IKEA store to Penamacor is in Lisbon, two-and-a-half hours’ drive away, it made sense to shop there before we drove to the house. Our only limitation was that they all had to be fairly small items, since we needed to fit them into a car that already carried all our luggage and groceries.

So, armed with our shopping list of 56 items, grouped according to location in IKEA (how fortunate that all IKEA stores are the same worldwide), we hit the store running. Two hours later, with a trolley containing 53 of the 56 items on our list, plus a couple of extras (but no cuddly toys….and no cabbage), we refuelled with a cup of tea and a banana each, packed the car, and drove to our new home.

The drive from Lisbon to Penamacor is very simple – 120-kph motorway for the first 220 km, and basically one one-lane country road for the last 50 km. Since almost all the motorway traffic travels at exactly 120 kph and observes lane discipline, the drive was not stressful. We arrived as twilight descended, so that Bernice got a first idyllic view of Penamacor’s red-tile roofs hugging the hillside, and we were able to drive through the town before night fell.

The only uncomfortable part of the drive for me was the fear, which had been growing since June, that Bernice would stand on the doorstep of the house, look around, say “What on earth induced you to buy this?!” and march straight back to the car. Not a very rational fear, but nevertheless…. In the event, and to my great relief, she instantly fell in love with our two-up, two-down terraced house, whose style and quaintness and quirks remind her of Wales. (Have you seen How Green Was My Valley?)

So, here we finally were, on the doorstep of our new home in Penamacor. In my next post, I’ll invite you to step through the door with us.