You’ve got to have a least one of those (travelling) days, don’t you? Well, today was ours. 

After a few days in Porto (a story for another time), we picked up our hire car from Europcar … and that’s where it all began to unravel.

The portable GPS they gave us (at €8 a day) was clearly set up at around the time of the Ark.*

Seriously, it didn’t even register the oldest streets (or the casino) at our destination three hours away in Estoril, near Cascais in Portugal.

Oh, but we did have a dodgy map to show us the way (also an archeological find I’m sure).

Eventually, we muddle our way to our destination.

Our travel agent has booked us into ‘apartment’ for eight days… inside someone’s house. It’s kind-of cutesy, but does a toaster oven count as self-contained? Hmmm

Eternally optimistic, we head off to find the Tourist Information Centre to get a map of the area. Except it closed 12 months ago.

At least we located a nice red.

Ah, First World problems. When it comes to travelling, attitude is everything.

And tomorrow’s another day.

* Here’s a tip for travellers: if you’re using a GPS, go to settings and select the country you’re travelling in (in our case, Portugal). Thanks to a tech-savvy Europcar lad in Cascais, our GPS was re-set and now gives us Portuguese streets instead of streets like Barcelona and Seville (go figure), and still gives directions in English. And we’re off!