For day 3 we had arranged to meet Maria @ Remax in Castelo Branco about an hour away from the hotel but in the other direction this time. I say arranged! I use that work very loosely, as I said in an earlier blog posting we were determined to get away from the “instant gratification” of the UK, but this was extreme. It was so laid back it was ridiculous, I commented to Teresa, let’s just hope there is a Maria and a Remax, as it was all, “Well just call in about 9:30 and we will see what we can do! Don’t worry we will have what you want”. How did she know that? We hadn’t told her anything, well not really, only what we thought we might spend, but even that was vague.
We got up and the heavens had opened, the rain was pouring down, we had seen rain in the past few days but nothing like this. We knew it rains in Portugal, especially at this time of year, but this was just incredible. Anyway we are British, we know about rain, so after the usual breakfast we set of for Castelo Branco.
It took just over the hour to get to Castelo Branco on the Motorway (A23). It’s worth noting that at this time the motorways that we were using were still free, e.g. no tolls, the Portuguese government had installed some new fangled fully electronic toll system, but due to the elections had not switched anything on yet, well so we hoped. We found a place to park and 9:30 on the dot we entered the Remax office.
After a short wait we were introduced to Maria and a guy named Paulo who we were later to discover was Maria’s husband. We spent about an hour or so, outlining our thoughts, as rough as they were, but they certainly seemed to understand what we were on about and started thumbing though bulging level arch binders, full of details of varying plots / properties. A number were extracted for us to review. How many will we be able to see? Very much like a couple of days early 4 seemed to be a good number; you can cope with 4 or 5 in day. Much more than that and they might all mix in together when trying to recall the details. We selected 4 and set off at high speed in our car following and trying to keep up with Paulo and Maria in their well-used Citroën Saxo.