I woke early (ish) about 8:00 and drank lots of coffee, enjoying our Christmas tree house and our friendly terrace…. Jolien enjoyed her comfy bed a while longer. Check out was 11:00 and the place was so good we were not leaving before.

We eventually got on the road, heading back in to town to pick up our Historical Way markings, the red and white stripes. Jolien thought maybe we could shortcut our way on to them and I willingly agreed. It did not go to plan. 2 or 3 km out of town and google maps had us on a track to Odemira, but not the track. We discovered this is not a track to take if you (that’s actually me in this case) are a bit scared of unchained barking dogs. We retreated, slowly, as confidently as we could, back to the highway. Hmmmmm….. We had already walked a while and the journey back to find our markers seemed dull. Okay, what to do? We would hitch our way to Odemira and then form a plan, maybe we could walk somewhere from there. 

Car number 8 stopped for us and off we went with a pleasant Dutch speaking Portuguese local. He dropped us on the trail on the outskirts of the small town of Odemira and we had a beer. The rain started and we decided to right off the day and seek refuge. Odemira had just a couple of hostel / hotels and they all wanted about 40 euros…. Not ideal. The we saw a sign on an old town house offering rooms. We rang the bell and Ursula, an older German ish lady answered. ‘How much for a night?’ we asked. ‘Ten bucks’ was the reply. Done deal. She had taken over the place with plans of doing up the lodgings upstairs and opening a veggy restaurant / chill-out place downstairs. She was friendly, at first, but wow could she talk, and after a while, as the stories became more repetitive and slightly venomous, particularly focused on slandering every nationality going with a heap of stereotyping nonsense we were ready for a break. We headed off to the supermarket, a shopping list from Ursula with us, and took a long stroll around the town and over the river, browsing the Chinese shop for one euro treasures (I am proudly wearing my plastic flower hair-clip as I type.) We returned to the hostel. We had a cute room with 3 beds and a balcony, and a heater for an extra 5 euros. Ursula pounced on hearing us enter and we retreated to our room as best we could (it took a while to shake her.) We made some cous cous for tomorrow, unfortunately with most of the contents of a jar of peppercorns with a loose fitting lid, and Jolene got in big trouble with the scary Ursula beast who accused her of being like ‘that bitch before’ who had used a metal spoon near a Tefal! 🙂 *Disclaimer – Jolene did not use a metal spoon on the Tefal. 

It didn’t take long for the Ursula to gain entry to our room and continue to share her tales and venomous ‘facts.’ At one point I had to laugh when she got in the door and rambled on whilst Jolene was standing in a t-shirt and pants, having just showered, waiting till she could continue to get changed. Wow, this woman doesn’t take a hint. I popped out for a bottle of wine and we had a few glasses, hiding out with the door firmly closed.

A nice little hostel for the money but Ursula is a big price to pay! This song really sums up everything I wish to say. I think it was possibly written about Ursula but I can’t be certain….