Storytime in Piódão, Portugal

In my latest post, I shared a travel diary in Coimbra, and at that time, I mentioned that it was the starting point of a road trip. The next stop on the road trip was the beautiful village of Piódão, in Portugal.

Piódão is famous for its narrow streets and houses built of schist, which is a stone found in large amounts in that area of the country. Schist is mostly used to build houses and make pavements. And it is a trademark for many villages in the region of Piódão.

But not the only one! There are many other villages with similar features and you can even do a “tour of the schist villages”. This is something I’d like to do one day!

Getting to Piódão

Piódão is a small village located in some deep part of Serra do Açor, in the center part of Portugal, meaning that the journey to Piódão not only is filled with breathtaking views but also offers some interesting, and somehow, challenging drive adventures.

When I think of it, I never really drove on mountain roads for as long as I have my license, and certainly not after I moved to the Netherlands; it goes without saying that it’s quite flat over here.

So, I was very curious to see how would it feel to drive in such circumstances; as a little disclaimer, I’m not a fan of narrow roads! haha, I always have the impression that my car won’t fit and the chances of ending down a valley may be quite high. Probably it’s my brain just playing tricks on me, but yeah…

But anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, the road to Piódão is quite challenging but I, we, were mesmerized by the beauty of driving through Serra do Açor, Portugal.

When it was time to leave Piódão, I did have a little scary moment on those narrow roads. At a certain time, there was another car, but the road could hardly fit the two of us. Unfortunately for me, our car was on the outside part of the road, meaning, that if I’d make the wrong calculation, we would end up out of the road and down a valley. So in all my good Portuguese, I told the other driver:

“I’m sorry, but I won’t move!”

Now when I think of it, it makes me laugh, because I remember people getting out of their cars, to help us, myself and the other driver, so that we could both continue our journeys.

Ahhh, never a dull moment!

Drive safe, friends! haha

Storytime

If you were thinking that the adventures in Piódão would resume to road adventures, well… They don’t!

Actually, I’ve got a very funny story about Piódão and probably the reason why I kept this village in my memory, ever since I visited it for the first time: I guess I was around 6 or 7 years old!

Yep, my connection to Piódão it’s quite old. So, here we go, it’s storytime!

Back in the day, when I was a child, I remember visiting Piódão together with my mother and her partner at the time. We used to do some road trips and in one of them, we went to Piódão.

My childhood memories of that trip tell me that something hilarious happened. For context, Piódão is a very small village and its main square is right in front of the church. Sort of a “village center” if you will.

So, we got to Piódão, and I guess it must have been during the summertime because the car had this window on the roof (more on this later!) that remained open. You know for ventilation…

I no longer remember how it came to be, but at a certain time, we realized we were missing the car keys. They were inside the car, but the car was locked. I know it sounds a bit weird, but remember this was somewhere late 80’s when you could manually lock your car by pushing a button on the door, without using the car keys.

Now, we needed to get in the car, the doors were locked, but the “roof window” was open. Do you see where this is heading?… After some debate, it seemed the best solution to let a small child, go through the “roof window” (quite narrow, but large enough!), to open the car doors from the inside.

I was the small child mentioned above! And that is exactly the memory I have: me going through the window to unlock the car! haha

Of course, this whole thing did not go unnoticed by locals, and soon enough, we became an attraction for them.

I hope this little storytime brought a smile to your face. It made me laugh just to remember all these memories from both times I’ve visited Piódão.

Have you been to Piódão, in Portugal?

Let me know in the comments if you have any funny memories from any of your trips!