Our Rental Car

We had a lovely last morning with Vanessa in Ericeira. We did some shopping and had lunch at our favorite beach cafe. We enjoyed fresh fruit juice and I had really good curry.

It was so fun to get to hang out with Vanessa again! It had been about four years and hopefully we don’t have to go that long before our next visit.

After dropping Vanessa off at the airport we went north to look for waves. Our car started making a weird noise and Syd said it felt like the gears weren’t shifting while he was driving. We made it to the beach and then called the rental car place. They said that they would have to tow it to the airport. The check engine light hadn’t come on, so we decided to try to drive back for the airport ourselves…

About 10 min down the road, the car wouldn’t go faster than 25 miles per hour, the no oil light came on, and the check engine light started flashing. It went down hill fast!! We pulled over in the middle of nowhere and called the rental car back. 

Here is our car in the middle of the Portuguese countryside, not working. Once we parked we couldn’t get it to go back into gear without smoke coming out the engine. 

We waited 2 hours for the taxi to come and then another 30min after that for the tow truck to arrive. We have the worse luck with rental cars!!!

We finally got the car on to the tow truck and then took the cab back to the airport. The easiest part of the day was switching out the car there! That only took 20 min!

So, after all that, we have the exact same new car, just in white and no smoke coming out of it! We left the house at 11am and got back at 8pm, after two trips to the airport. Ahhh!! Can’t wait to have a low key day tomorrow. We miss Vanessa already too!