Lost and Found (1)

One day last week we drove into Lagos to try and find a pet shop that could supply Royal Canin dog food. We were driving towards one that we had been told about on the outskirts of the town but on the way through we spotted one with a Royal Canin sign outside. It was on a busy narrow street with nowhere to park so I dropped Julie off and said I'd find somewhere to park and then walk back to meet her.

Now Lagos is a very pleasant town with a large historic centre made up of narrow cobbled streets, most of them one-way as they were designed for the days of (slim) donkeys and (narrow) carts. Parking is at a premium. Those who know me well know that I have absolutely no sense of direction so I did my best to keep driving in a straight line so that I would be able to find my way back - but after half a dozen no entry signs had forced me to turn left or right I realised I was hopelessly lost. I finally managed to park next to a church at the top of a hill and started to try and re-trace the route back to the pet shop. Well, one windy narrow cobbled street looks very much like another and after about 20 minutes I realised I was unlikely to find it. Also, I realised that Julie would be getting very cross by now - a little worried as well maybe but mainly just very cross!

Then I had a brainwave - I knew where the Tourist Information office was - it was in the centre and well signposted - I'll go in there, explain the situation and ask them to show me on a map where the pet shop is. I manged to find it OK but they had just closed for lunch! I was starting to panic now - I normally carry my mobile phone with me but on this occasion I'd left it back at the caravan, but I was fairly sure Julie had her's with her so I set out to find a public telephone. I eventually found one - it took a good five minutes to work out how to use it, mainly by trial and error because of course all the instructions were in Portugese (how inconsiderate!). Julie's first words to me were "where on earth are you?" to which I could answer with some confidence - "in a phone box".

We agreed to meet in a cafe we had used before and sure enough 5 minutes later we were re-united. Now all we had to do was find the car - I had taken the precaution of remembering the name of the church I had parked near to so we opened the detailed map of Lagos which Julie had been carrying only to find that it didn't give the names of the churches. But as we left the cafe a stroke of fortune - Julie was attracted to a shop at the end of a side street (it was a handbag shop - Julie loves bags and Portugal is a major leather producer so moving through shopping centres can be very very slow). While Julie went in to have a look around the shop I looked up the hill and thought I recognised the building at the top - as we reached the top I could confirm that it was Sao Sebastian church and there next to it was our car. Phew!