Dealing with cars
Most people who come to Portugal for the first time do NOT want to drive. I suppose it is the lack of familiarity with the system; don't want to drive a manual transmission; all of the roundabouts or the very high cost of renting since Covid.
Europe does drive on the right as we do in Canada but it is also true that the roads are generally narrow (not the freeways) and full of roundabouts. Wherever we have a traffic light or an intersection they have a roundabout. The Algarve is also very hilly and a stick shift (manual transmission) is far more efficient in dealing with them and uses far less gas. North America was once that way but unlike North America the demand here is for manual cars; not automatics.
Tale of Woe
Yesterday we met an Ottawa couple on the boardwalk in Carvoeiro. We spent some time talking to them and it turns out that they are staying at Vila Nova just behind Monte Santo. I asked if they came with JM or Merit or one of the other travel companies and they said they do everything on their own including renting a car. We also do all our own arrangements.
However they hadn't been to Europe for 15 years. So they rented the car in Lisbon but found upon traveling over the Vasco de Gama bridge they were low on fuel. The rental company had not filled it. So they pulled into a gas station and filled it. Unfortunately he selected gasoLEO (diesel) instead of gasoLINA (gas). Gasoline engines don't run on diesel so you can imagine the rest and I felt very sorry for them. In Canada you can't stick the larger diesel spout into a gasoline car but they don't do that here.
No comments:
Post a Comment