2. Traveling with Kids? Portugal Gets It

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is the true story of one family who sold their house, packed up their life and decided to live nowhere on purpose. [00:00:10] Speaker B: What absolute abnormal people would even conceive of something this ridiculous? Two kids, two parents, six months, no fixed address. [00:00:30] Speaker A: There are some people who are like, oh, that's so nice for you. And probably secretly in their head going, what the fuck? Find out what happens when you stop watching the travel influencers who make it all look perfect and start living their nomadic life with kids for real. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Did we name this podcast? [00:00:55] Speaker A: We called it Trips and Giggles. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Oh, that's right, because I was gonna say welcome back to Trips and Giggle. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Okay, so we're back for episode two. [00:01:07] Speaker B: I was hoping you would start with El Peng. [00:01:12] Speaker A: I haven't heard her yet tonight, so it's coming. [00:01:16] Speaker B: If we hear her, can we just stop and like, try to see if. [00:01:19] Speaker A: We can get the audio? [00:01:20] Speaker B: Get the audio. [00:01:21] Speaker A: You know, in the first episode you could actually hear it a little bit in the background. So if people didn't hear that, you'd have to go back and listen carefully. [00:01:28] Speaker B: Well, this time we're gonna stop and they'll just be dead space of nothing happening. And as you turn it off, that's what will happen. [00:01:38] Speaker A: So we said during our first conversation that there was a bunch of stuff we were going to come back to and we figured that talking about Portugal might be a good place. We haven't even been a week in Mexico yet, so I think we're going to give it a week and then we'll come back with some stories from Mexico later. But we'll talk about Portugal first. [00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, because I mean, part of this system here, which I don't think we kind of give a why, but is we're cataloging this six months we spend in eight countries and what that's like and the experience from two different perspectives. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:20] Speaker B: So. But yeah, Portugal being the. At least for me, it was the longest I've ever lived abroad. But for you, that's not true. [00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I studied abroad in college, but this was a different experience for sure. [00:02:34] Speaker B: Now, you weren't drunk swimming in a fountain this time. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Accurate. That only happened once. [00:02:45] Speaker B: I'm jealous. That's pure jealousy that I never. I can't say to my credits. In life when people are like, tell me a story. When your craziest time. Yeah, I don't have something as good as that. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Well, I will say we. When I was studying abroad in England, we did. We had a three week spring break, which is wild and awesome, but we did a backpacking trip Me and two other girls did a backtracking trip around Europe, and maybe we'll talk about that another time. [00:03:10] Speaker B: I think that's not a bad thing to talk about because it has. It has somewhat shaped the way you travel now. [00:03:16] Speaker A: Yes. Yes, that's accurate. Yeah. Um, but I will. The reason I'm bringing this up is that Portugal was never on that list. Like, there were a bunch of places we didn't visit. We visited quite a few places, and so I had no idea what to expect. [00:03:34] Speaker B: Actually, that's a great point. You and I have gone back and forth many times, which is like, where do you want to go? What is your top five list of places that you want to go? [00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:45] Speaker B: And I'm pretty sure that was on neither one of our lists. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Neither list. I actually was like, I'm not sure if I'm going to like this. Actually, I kind of was concerned because on that backpacking trip, we went to Spain, and I know people are going to come for me on this. I didn't love it. I didn't love Spain, and so I. [00:04:07] Speaker B: People are going to come for me. The three fans that found the show are going to come after you and say, what, girl? You hate Spain? [00:04:15] Speaker A: Spain? [00:04:16] Speaker B: Well, I hate you, Mer. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Well, I didn't say I hated it. It just. There were other places that I liked better, and so I was kind of like, oh, is this going to be a ho hum experience? [00:04:26] Speaker B: We also didn't. We didn't love Barcelona. Again, same three fans are coming after you. We didn't love Barcelona. Madrid was great. We can talk about that another time. But I think we both were kind of like, ho hum in Barcelona. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Accurate. Yeah. So I think we will talk about Portugal over several episodes because there's. We were there for three months. There's lots to talk about. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:47] Speaker A: The one thing I think that struck me, I think both of us is how insanely kid friendly it was. I mean, I don't know. Do you agree with me? [00:05:01] Speaker B: No, I do, because I think of. And I wish I had, like, a great story for this, but we're kind of riffing this as much as we do. But the juxtaposition is the amount of time where people have given us dirty looks in restaurants. You know what I mean? Like, our kids losing their shit. You know, rolling around the floor, being kids. They're being, you know, totally age appropriate, angry. They didn't get a sugar or they want a toy or they're throwing sugar packets or whatever it is between restaurant staff or other adults who apparently either don't have children or forgot what it's like to have children just staring our asses down. Like, what's wrong with you parents? You clearly can't control your children like we did in 1968. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Not just that. Remember that I told you the other day I was in like a grocery store and our almost two year old had a complete meltdown in the store because I took a piece of chocolate away from her that she had ripped off of one of the shelves and then threw herself on the floor screaming. And there was some woman who came over and was like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I thought something was wrong. And I was like, no, I'm just not allowing my child to steal chocolate from the aisles. [00:06:16] Speaker B: Didn't she. What did she say, though? Didn't she say, I thought she got hurt and you weren't doing something about it. Like, she totally called you out of, like, you're clearly a bad parent because your child had a tantrum. You know, and, yeah, I mean, generally, and we'll go into this specifically, but like, I think the Portuguese had nothing but like compassion and empathy. Empathy, right. Being like, oh, I've been there. It's tough to have kids and it's okay. And most of them came to comfort your children. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Right. Like straight up comfort your children. [00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I mean, we were in a restaurant. I know there's other stories that we're going to tell, but I, I think we were in a restaurant, a tiny restaurant, which was a relatively nice place. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Are you gonna jump forward there? Okay. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Should I. Yeah, go for it, Go for it. This is great. [00:07:06] Speaker A: And I was a little bit concerned about bringing the two year old, almost two year old into the restaurant. [00:07:11] Speaker B: We had wanted to go to this place. Sorry to cut you up. We had like, wanted to go to this place. It was really nice. We had passed it multiple times into our apartment in Portugal. We were staying for Boundless. And I've gone by it and said to Meghan, oh, I'd love to go there, but it was clearly like white typo cloths, beautiful wine glasses, people, beautiful silverware. It was. I had never seen a child in this place or near this place. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So we came in, we were like, well, if it's really bad, we'll just get the food to go and we'll go across the street and finish eating in our apartment. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Because we only had our. We only had nuggie. We only had our 18 months old. The other one was on a play date. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So the worker or the waiter came over and he handed us a whole pack of washable markers. [00:08:00] Speaker B: Yes. And stuff to write on. [00:08:02] Speaker A: And stuff to write on. [00:08:03] Speaker B: And a white leather chair to use as a writing base. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Right. And I was, I go, this is a really bad idea. She's not going to keep it on the, on the paper. And he goes, no, it's okay, they're washable. And I was having a mini panic attack because I'm going, no, no, you don't understand. Like she's just going to start scribbling on the floor and the furniture and the wall. It was like. And he came over, he like drew on the floor and then sprayed it, right. With. With like, what do you call it? Washing fluid. Spray fluid. [00:08:40] Speaker B: He had this bottle and it said washing fluid on it, like big bold letters. But it was Portuguese and we're clearly fluent. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Whatever, you know what I'm saying. And. And wiped it up and goes, it's washable, don't worry about it. [00:08:52] Speaker B: Yes. He literally shows us and then says it's okay. Yeah, I will say. Well again, that does sound kid friendly. But I will say, like, my recollection is you were still having like severe anxiety about it. So let's go backwards drop in. Ten years prior, we had two dogs. We had a dachshund and a corgi named Finney and Willow. And we were living in Seattle between 2012 and 2015. And Seattle was super cool. And I won't go too far into this cause we're talking about kid friendly things, but I'm just talking about Megan feeling anxious about people and not upsetting them or imposing on their. Being judged by them. And by the way, I'm not saying that's a detriment, it's just how you feel. Yeah, I have anxiety too severe about other shit. Anyway, so some of the restaurants were dog friendly restaurants. And I was like, this is fucking awesome. So we bring the dogs into Kings. It's a burger joint in Ballard. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:48] Speaker B: And. [00:09:51] Speaker A: So bad. [00:09:51] Speaker B: The dogs sit under the table. And our corgi has almost as severe anxiety as we do. [00:09:58] Speaker A: And she just was farting. [00:10:00] Speaker B: She was just farting non stop. I mean, you could just loud. You would, you would hear a sound and then you'd sit and then you just waft up to the table as we're trying to eat a burger. [00:10:11] Speaker A: Important to note that this is sort of like a German beer hall. They're like, yeah, they were like. They were like picnic tables. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it was picnic tables, but it wasn't really A German beer? [00:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of. Not. But it was picnic table style. So, like, there were other people around. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They were super close. I mean, the place was busy. It was very busy. [00:10:29] Speaker A: And it was really smelly. [00:10:31] Speaker B: Oh, no. It was horrific. But I was like, I'm not ruining this moment. I was like, everyone smell my dog's farts because we want to have our dogs out. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So no, I. [00:10:38] Speaker B: She couldn't even eat. Literally left the restaurant. [00:10:40] Speaker A: I took the dog out and I just walked until everybody was done eating. I couldn't just sit there and have the dog fart on the table. [00:10:48] Speaker B: So even though this guy was super kid friendly, it was still very hard. But yes, Portugal was incredibly kid friendly. That was a great example of one of them. But I think the. The start in the beginning was we you more. And so Megan is more like the travel guru. So since I'm the one saying, no, I don't want to do this, and then she coaxes me into it or bribes me into it, one or the other. She took over for kind of all the planning in the sense of this travel. So, I mean, how did you find Martinol? Was it just a search process? Like, how did you find it? [00:11:22] Speaker A: I was spending way too much time scrolling on TikTok. [00:11:28] Speaker B: My phone says I spent about three hours a day on TikTok, but that's not true. [00:11:34] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, I was looking on TikTok or YouTube or something for kid friendly hotels in Lisbon. And this one popped up numerous times. It was like the room had a special, like special kid beds. It had a washing machine. We'll talk about the washing machines, though. [00:11:56] Speaker B: It was a pull out bed. So like it was like the wall. Like bunk beds that are on the wall so you could push them up into a shelving unit almost and then they would slide down into these bunk beds that came. [00:12:06] Speaker A: Almost like a Murphy bed. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Yeah, similar to Murphy bed, but not like into the wall. It wasn't recessed. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:13] Speaker B: But I will say, like, our plan was. So our boundless life cohort, which is the company. We'll talk about that we did this Portugal trip with. We decided to go in early to get kind of get through the jet lag because Megan and I, I think we mentioned last episode, had traveled when our oldest was 18 months old. We went to Germany and Italy. And we know for about four days. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Brutal. [00:12:35] Speaker B: It's just a shit show, right? Kids are off by six hours. You can imagine what that feels like. It's. You're up in the middle of the night, you're falling asleep, you're angry. During the day, it's just. It's a mess. So anyway, Megan found this place and. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And so it was amazing. I mean, from the moment we got there, they had a kid friendly restaurant with a car that you could climb into and kid friendly food. [00:13:00] Speaker B: Yes. They had a specifically kid friendly menu. They also had dietary restriction. [00:13:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Menu points. Vegan stuff, gluten free stuff, which doesn't impact us. But I thought it was cool that you know this. Your introduction to a country is like, oh, this place caters to multiple diets, allergies. My recollection when we came in was like, the first thing was like Cordy, our oldest, like, going towards this kids club. Like, she saw it in the window and she's like, what is that? And so they walked us through and explained it to us. They did a tour of the place. They showed us how to sign up the process. And even though we were jet lagged, our oldest was like, I want to go right now. Like right now. [00:13:40] Speaker A: She immediately wanted to go. [00:13:41] Speaker B: Immediately. [00:13:42] Speaker A: Never wanted to leave. That was, that was the part about us like having. Taking her and being like, hey, spend time with us instead of in the kids club. No, she did, she didn't want to leave. [00:13:51] Speaker B: We couldn't get her out of that. Like, we wanted to take her around Lisbon, but she didn't want to do it. So it was like the second day, she did three sessions. They're like four hour sessions in a row and she did like three sessions. We did put our youngest 18 month old. We felt good about it because they have really specific people doing diaper spots with those kids. And we actually went on. Was it day two? We went to like a wine bar across the street. We went on a date. [00:14:15] Speaker A: We haven't been on a date in like forever. [00:14:17] Speaker B: We date. [00:14:18] Speaker A: Do we date in Portugal? [00:14:20] Speaker B: We date people with young kids. This is pretty normal stuff. You're just like, oh, gosh, who do I feel good about with my kids? You know, which is probably more our issue because we're more concerned and have expectations for how they should be treated or what should happen. But yeah, so she loved. And I'll be honest to me, when I saw this kids club at this specific one, I wasn't blown away. Like, it was a giant room. There was all different levels of stuff. There was video games, which is what she loved. There was like toys, there's books, there's tables, there's arts and crafts. They had specific events that they were doing. Like they had themed events, they had themed scavenger hunts they would do. They had dance party at night, movie nights. They had all these different themes. And she was in it like, she. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Was like, we should say here we are not getting paid. I mean this podcast hasn't even done anything yet. Like we're not getting paid by Martin. All that's true. [00:15:15] Speaker B: They. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Nobody has like, can you put that in the intro? [00:15:18] Speaker B: This, this, this, this episode was not sponsored by Martin. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it, it literally is that. We just absolutely loved it. There is. I still have not found anything like it. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Well, I heard the understanding is that Germany has like those kinder miner places in Germany and for those two fans that yelled at you, they're just like, oh, Spain actually has some. Because I looked at some of those barostar resorts. They do have kids clubs. Maybe it's different, but it's not like. [00:15:43] Speaker A: A resort or it's not like a hotel that you would find in the middle of a city, right? [00:15:47] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. This was in, in what they call the Chiado district. And we were like in it like within a couple of blocks. We could walk down to the water. We could walk into this main walking area which is this. It was a. The location of. That was my favorite location in the city, probably that I went to, I would say in Lisbon specifically. [00:16:06] Speaker A: So because we liked it so much. There are four marinals in Portugal and during the three months that we were there, we visited three out of four of them. [00:16:15] Speaker B: We probably would have gone to the fourth if the drive wasn't so far because it's in the Algarve, which is like the, the complete south of Portugal and it's just a long drive and driving with little kids, which we already did to go to the Martinal Sagres. But yes. So that's. We'll talk about the kid friendly nature. We can go into each one of our experiences. [00:16:33] Speaker A: So yeah. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Is there more that you have like you were going to talk about the Chiado one, you know, which is the first one we went to. Our room was awesome. That building had had like 14 foot ceilings. It must have been some special, I don't know, amazing building back in the day. I loved that one. It was like a giant room and then there was an off bedroom. It only had a single bathroom and the kids kind of slept in the living room to an extent. But I still thought that that kitchen was humongous and open, had beautiful windows. Yeah, it was just a nice place. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Just generally I would stay there again in an instant. Oh yeah, we were going back to. [00:17:07] Speaker B: The hundred percent, and. [00:17:09] Speaker A: Oh, the nice thing was you can use the Kids Club even if you're not a guest. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that because we talked about going back to Lisbon, and so it costs. I think it's like 15 bucks more. So it was like €30 for four hours instead of like €15 if you stay there. I'm gonna get that totally wrong. But my point is. Yes, you could actually use the Kids Club anytime you want to. [00:17:29] Speaker A: Right. We didn't end up doing that, but we talked about doing it. [00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Because last time, when we went back again with other friends for the program, we went back to Lisbon a couple times. We just kept the kids with us because coordinating that entire effort. And that's one thing which is, like, it's not a negative to them. You had to sign up in advance. You can't just show up and say, take my kids. Like, all of the places. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Even though Cordy wanted to go back. [00:17:51] Speaker B: Courtney wanted to go back. But there has to be a sign up in advance. We got away with it. We were staying there because we would just sign up for the next session each time. But. [00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think there were the other things that just generally, people were great around. They. They were very open and kind. [00:18:12] Speaker B: The buffet was a breakfast. The breakfast was a buffet. So that was really nice. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Almost every restaurant we went into, every hotel, people were lovely. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Well, we went. There was a. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry. Around the corner from the restaurant on the other side of the road, there was a little Italian place. And I don't think the food was the greatest food in the world. That was good. But, like, at some point, someone in the. One of the wait staff literally picked up our youngest and was just carrying her around the restaurant because she was restless. So they were, like, showing her the pizza area and showing her where the food comes from. And, like. [00:18:47] Speaker A: And then Cordy went back. They showed her how. [00:18:49] Speaker B: They showed Cordy how to make a pizza. Like, it was not a kid friendly. This wasn't on their website, didn't say on their menus. They let the kids happen. People just gave a shit. Saw the kids being, like, they were bored and just took them around and kept them interested. Now, granted, that probably wouldn't have happened if the place was packed, but still, they didn't need to do that. It seemed like people genuinely just liked children, which I feel like the US People just. Children are a bother. You know what I mean? [00:19:18] Speaker A: Well, even in museums, Right. Like we went into. You weren't there for this, but we went to. To one of the castles where we were living in Sintra and they had a kid friendly scavenger hunt. [00:19:32] Speaker B: That's right. [00:19:33] Speaker A: Where you get a prize at the end. Which kept our kids interested the entire time. Right. Like normally you go to a museum and they're like, I'm bored. It's so terrible. Right. I mean, there was something for them to do a scavenger hunt to keep them interested in looking around the room while I read a few signs. And even some of the workers. There was like a worker in each room would come up and would like help, you know, Cordy look for like whatever it was that was on the scavenger hunt for each room. So yeah, it was just, it was very cool. And to Bing, to your point of the restaurants since we visited three out of the four. Martin, also. Yeah, the thing that I loved, loved, loved about the one that was like a really. A resort style. [00:20:24] Speaker B: Oh, should we go into that one? Because we have to go. And that's the best part. [00:20:27] Speaker A: By far the best one. [00:20:28] Speaker B: This place, again, we're not being paid for this. It's in Sagres, so you're talking about the southwest corner. So it's really in a, like a pretty far off remote area in Portugal. So you're pretty far from an airport. But we had a break in the middle of the cohort. So sometime in. Where were we? Mid February. So they take a week off. So the kids don't have school anymore because they go to school when they're part of this boundless program. So I was doing research on kid friendly resorts and I looked at a bunch of different places and I was like, we know Martinol, it's good. I sent it out to other families and actually one other family decided to join us on this trip. And so we drove three and a half hours south of Sintra. From Sintra, we rented a car, went along the coast, which was beautiful, and went to Martin Al Sagres and this place. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Wow. I want to go back again. [00:21:23] Speaker B: I'm not saying anything negative about Portugal. I thought Portugal was. I really enjoyed it. Again, we're talking the kin. Friendly nature is off the charts. It wasn't my favorite place ever been to in Europe, but this resort, I would go just to have a week off. Like if we had a week and we'd fly in, I would just go to do this thing because it was. There were so many things about it. The beauty, the kid friendly nature, the Kids activities that they had throughout the place. It was just so well thought out in the sense of both thinking, what would adults enjoy and what would adults enjoy if they had young children? So both the children can feel fulfilled and the adults are like, wow, I can be an adult for seven seconds and maybe take a shower or change my clothes or pretend to look nice for an hour or have a conversation without being interrupted or having food thrown at me. Like, all the things that you really want that you miss as an adult. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think I've said this story multiple times. My favorite part about that place was the restaurants because, oh my gosh, there were like, in one of them specifically. [00:22:28] Speaker B: Well, there's two restaurants on the property, right? Yes. Okay. [00:22:31] Speaker A: The one had a kid area, like a. There was puzzles and games and Legos. [00:22:37] Speaker B: It was a whole, think about it, like a 10 by 10 space in a corner they put together with just shelves of kids stuff to play with. [00:22:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there was a child minder, the kinderminder who like, imagine you go into a restaurant, if you have kids, you're eating that. You usually order their food first. At least we do. Just to like get them eating as fast as possible. [00:22:59] Speaker B: The moment the person comes to, desk chicken fingers. Chicken fingers and pasta with butter, but nothing else on it. And they just look at you like, oh, I'll bring that out first. Yes, bring it now. [00:23:09] Speaker A: But then by the time the kids are done eating, your food is like barely arrived. Then they're like climbing over you onto other people while you're trying to eat. [00:23:17] Speaker B: One of us shovels food into our face and the other one walks the kids around and it's just a. Yes, it's a mess. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So this place, you could literally just go, okay, go over there and play. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Go to the kids area. [00:23:29] Speaker A: And the childminder would play with them. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Play with your kids, Finish dinner. [00:23:34] Speaker A: It was amazing. [00:23:35] Speaker B: So it was a really nice place too. So you can get really nice wine, really nice food. It was all glass in the back. So you're overlooking oceanfront property, water, seeing the sunset. And so you're in this beautiful place, your kids are there and you could just sit there as long as you wanted to. [00:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I will say. And both restaurants were surrounded by outdoor playgrounds. [00:24:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So the other restaurant, which is like the main restaurant where the check in area is, is all glass. And we were there in the winter so the people weren't doing this as much. But like all the tables would line against the window and you could slide the Door open and your kids would come out and it was a full freaking giant playground. I mean, humongous bounce house, two trampolines, swing sets, I don't know, two story play places. I mean, it was nuts. And so again, you'd sit there. As long as your kids are old enough, you feel comfortable. And you're just eating food, watching your kids playing on a giant enclosed area. They're not going to run away, they're not going to go anywhere and they don't want to leave. [00:24:39] Speaker A: No. [00:24:39] Speaker B: So you might as well take your time at dinner. Plus, that place, the first restaurant also had, when you walk in the door, you sign up for the kids buffet. So your kids walk up with your kids and you get them pizza, pasta, fruit. They had all the kids things. So they're eating. You don't even have to talk to somebody immediately. So you know, they're gonna eat, they're gonna do whatever. You're gonna order your food, they're gonna go outside and play and everyone's happy. They're not ravenous. They're not ripping the walls down, they're not trying to grab your phone, you know, baby shark, baby shark. Finger, finger, yelling stuff at you. Let's look on TikTok. TikTok. [00:25:19] Speaker A: Oh, God. Because our youngest is very into the song, the very creepy song Finger Family. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Okay, let's talk about this. Okay, we need to talk about Finger Family. We could do a whole episode of Finger Family. First of all, where does this come from? And do people know? Like, I found this, the video the other day where just 45 minutes of make offs of Finger family. So ice cream Finger family. Dinosaur finger family. [00:25:43] Speaker A: But Louis, Finger family too. [00:25:45] Speaker B: The part when our oldest did this, the part that was pissing me off because this is Cocomelon. I'm ripping on you. Cocomelon. Your 480 million views. First of all, something about Finger family throws me off. Take that wherever you want to take it. But the one that was probably problem was like, you know, what do you do? Right? Mommy finger. Mommy finger. What do you do? Okay, so like daddy plays guitar, right? Mommy exercise. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:16] Speaker B: And then what was the son was like building or like science project? What was the daughter? [00:26:22] Speaker A: I don't remember. I don't remember what you. [00:26:24] Speaker B: But it was not, it seemed very sexist gendered. [00:26:29] Speaker A: So we used to change the words. [00:26:31] Speaker B: We would change the words every time we sang it. [00:26:33] Speaker A: She does research. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Yes. Solve science problems, found cures for Ms. Daddy finger, what do you do? Lay on the couch. Lay on the couch and cry. Really Hard Daddy cooks and daddy cleans. We're like, we are. We're not gonna bring our kids up in some kind of environment where they think, well, this is what they do. Mommy stays at home. To hell with that. [00:26:58] Speaker A: Exercises. [00:26:59] Speaker B: Oh, gosh. Okay. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Anyway, going back. [00:27:04] Speaker B: There'S a tangent. Now we return to your regular scheduled program. Oh, my God. With your host, Dr. Beyer. I hope that wasn't a commercial for Finger Family. [00:27:14] Speaker A: No, I hope not. [00:27:15] Speaker B: That's like when your mom texts you and she's like, I have this song in my head. [00:27:19] Speaker A: She's like, I hate that song. [00:27:20] Speaker B: I hate that finger song stuck in my head. [00:27:23] Speaker A: Listen, you and me both welcome. Welcome back to parenthood. [00:27:27] Speaker B: Oh my God. Okay, so words. Okay, so there's restaurants in Sagres, the buffet. So which solves the issue of us like freaking people out ordering chicken fingers right off the bat, that buffet situation, which actually the other restaurant we talked about that had the kinderminder section. I wish they had also had the buffet. Yeah, they did have a beautiful kids menu. It's humongous. Again, very kid friendly, specific situation. But I wish they had both had like the kids buffet. They did have a buffet at the Oceanfront Restaurant, but it's for breakfast. And because we got so used to Portuguese food prices, which we'll talk about in another episode of being so cheap paying €26 per person for a kid's buffet. I was like, no, that is way too expensive. That is out of my budget. Meanwhile, I think we came home and ordered like one dinner and it was like 140 bucks or something for four of us to eat. It wasn't even decent stuff. So that's not the point. So the Sagrish resort had a kids club. The difference being that the one in Chiado and Lisbon, the kids club, the kids were all together, which our oldest cutely and beautifully loves being around her younger sister, like, likes the opportunity to be in the same space with her. Which I would think at this point she'd be like, no, I don't want this. This one that constantly usurps the attention from mommy for me. But she does. And so the kids club at, since Sagrich was much larger, was split. So there was a little kid one and an older kid one. And the part that was interesting, my recollection. You tell me. The difference is, is they both didn't like that as much. [00:29:06] Speaker A: They didn't like that. [00:29:07] Speaker B: So our youngest, I think it's because. [00:29:08] Speaker A: We were there when it was not very crowded because it was Winter, as Damon said. But I think in the summer it's, it's probably. There's tons of people there, so they have to split up the age groups. [00:29:19] Speaker B: I, I get that, I get that. Like, yeah, there. Because the one with that our youngest was in, I mean, there was only one other kid there and it was one of the other family that we went with for one day. [00:29:29] Speaker A: For one day there was one. I, I will say this. We were that family that got everybody in the cohort sick multiple times. So first. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Oh, you want to go into that one? Yeah, because we brought back the sickness. [00:29:40] Speaker A: There was like one other kid in this kids club. For one day. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah, he went in for one day. [00:29:50] Speaker A: And must have given us hand, foot and mouth. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Yes. Some other kid who was already there, not the family we went with. And. And so our youngest went in one day with this other kid. Must have pulled hand, foot and mouth from this kid. And. [00:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah, so, yeah, that spread the very last day, right? No, no, the day before our last day, she just broke out with this massively high fever. [00:30:14] Speaker B: Yes. [00:30:14] Speaker A: And now we're like in the middle of nowhere, Portugal. There's no hospitals around, there's no clinics around. And I'm like. [00:30:22] Speaker B: And we're driving, driving. [00:30:24] Speaker A: I'm having a panic attack. [00:30:25] Speaker B: She's screaming her brains out. Megan's having a panic attack. [00:30:28] Speaker A: I'm like, what? [00:30:29] Speaker B: You know, I'm exhausted and I want to go home. Wait, this is a whole other story because we went straight to the hospital at the end of our trip. [00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah, this, I mean, I will say this was an amazing thing about Boundless. And we'll talk about Boundless more another time, which is we called one of the people from Boundless and was like, we are driving back from the Algarve. [00:30:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:30:49] Speaker A: We have a three and a half hour drive. Our kid has 103 fever. Can you get us into a like urgent appointment at any hospital in Lisbon or Sintra? [00:31:01] Speaker B: As we've already mentioned, our Portuguese was terrible. And also by that point we had tried to get into another clinic and had a really difficult time more because of a language situation. Remember the first place you tried to get to? And so we had a hard time with that because we should have just done a walk in, but we tried. [00:31:14] Speaker A: To get scared and they, they did, they got us an appointment while we were driving back so that we could immediately drive to the hospital and get her taken care of. [00:31:23] Speaker B: It's true, so very true. [00:31:25] Speaker A: We should talk about the medical care at some point. [00:31:26] Speaker B: We should go into that you know what, we'll do that I can't understand. We'll keep track of this and we'll talk about medical care because we extensively studied the Portuguese medicals. Yeah. When you bring your young kids, which by the way, a lot of other families have similar stories about the same thing, including the point where Megan had to go back 15 physically to a hospital, pay the bill because we couldn't pay it online. We even got messages months later about bills we didn't pay. But we'll get into that later. That's, that's not necessarily their fault. But anyway, so going back to the resort, we're going beforehand, foot and mouth. So this place, when we booked it, or I think I booked this one, I don't know. I wanted something nice. I don't think I, I feel like this wasn't, this is relative when I say this. So I want to tell people this situation because I think it's not fair to say something's expensive or not expensive. [00:32:16] Speaker A: Markel number three. [00:32:17] Speaker B: No, I'm talking the Sagres. [00:32:19] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [00:32:19] Speaker B: Because I still want to talk about. Because there's some things I want to talk about there that were kid friendly that I think are helpful to say that we enjoyed. So I'm saying from my perspective, when I picked the place, I wanted to see the ocean. [00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Like I wanted a nicer place. So the cost of the place I spent at the time for off season it was €300 a night. So just give people an idea what it costs. Which, you know, that's not a cheap hotel. But considering the accommodations and what we received, I felt like it was great because our place was a, it was a two story townhome connected to other units. The bottom floor had two bathrooms and two bedrooms. So a kid's bedroom with two beds and then a owner's suite bedroom which had a walk out into a path patio. And then the upstairs was a giant open space and the entire wall was a 10 foot high ceiling with a glass door that you could push all the way open completely wall to wall. And you walk out on this deck and you can look at the ocean and watch the sunset. And it was breathtaking. And I was like, this place is 10 times nicer than the apartment we're in a boundless. And I said, said to Megan, I was like, so I'm just letting you know I'm not going back to Sintra. I'm staying here. [00:33:33] Speaker A: I'm staying here. And the amenities in there were better. [00:33:37] Speaker B: Than B. Oh yeah. [00:33:38] Speaker A: The stairs had a Already built. [00:33:41] Speaker B: They had built in child. Child crew gates on the bottom and the top of the stairs that were beautiful and like really easy to use. [00:33:48] Speaker A: They had kids snacks that were put there. [00:33:50] Speaker B: The kitchen was like beautifully set out. They had snacks, tea, coffee. They put stuff in the fridge. They had the high chair set out. Like they had special. They had these beautiful little notes in multiple languages explaining to you how to use the appliances, which if you've ever gone to another country where you don't speak the language, which again, I know is on us. So I'm not saying it's their fault. And you want to try to work a washing machine or a. Or a range or a dishwasher, good fucking luck figuring that out as you're rolling through YouTube videos to try to figure out how to use a tekka, which, by the way, I'm calling you out. Tekka. Your stuff is shit. It's shit. I know. It's all over Europe. I know. It's everywhere. It's shit. If water droplets fall out of a pot and turn heat down on your range while you're using it, That's a bad design. [00:34:44] Speaker A: Well, I don't cook or do laundry, so you would know. [00:34:47] Speaker B: Water droplets. My wife. Water droplets. Well, yeah, because when you did do laundry, you put in the towels with the clothes and you turned all the towels blue. The one time you're like, oh, I'm gonna do some laundry. I can take care of this. I'm such a Suzy homemaker. And then you threw your jeans with the. You wrecked all the towels in our boundless apartment, which they didn't charge us for. So that was really nice. Okay, so the. This sagrish Martinal place was just large, airy, absolutely gorgeous. And each day I just, I had coffee, I opened the doors up and I mean, it was not warm, but it was, it was still beautiful. You know what I mean? Like, it wasn't hot. [00:35:30] Speaker A: No. [00:35:30] Speaker B: But just this view of the ocean there, I can still see it in my head. Like, I'm not pulling pictures up. So other kid friendly stuff about the. This place was our oldest. Loved the fairy scavenger hunt. So they put these little fairies with their names on it on secret places throughout the entire resort. And so you would go around trying to find them all and check them off a list. And Cordy loved it. I mean, we spent a whole hours walking around the resort there was. [00:36:03] Speaker A: Which also helps them, like, not complain while they're walking from one part of the resort to the other because they're looking for ferries Genius. [00:36:10] Speaker B: Genius. They had indoor and outdoor pools, a gym. They had tennis courts which we didn't use. Their kids club would have been outside. They have a whole outside kids club, which she did one day and really liked walking around outside. We did a mini golf together. We didn't even do any of the water stuff. I mean, there was like surfing and. Because a lot of stuff wasn't even open. They have multiple other like restaurants and bars. But when we were there, they only had two open because it just wasn't really popular. Which even downtown Sagrish, I thought was fun and had cool places and restaurants and. [00:36:47] Speaker A: Anyway, yeah, it's a cute little. [00:36:48] Speaker B: I could gush about surfing town. Yeah, I could gush about this place for forever. [00:36:53] Speaker A: So I will. I. I don't want to spend a ton of time on the third one because I don't think either of us were as impressed. It was very beautiful. It was brand new. It was more of like an apartment building with residences. It still had some, like, some great amenities that you don't usually find in another hotel. It still had a kids club, but I would say it was definitely more adult focused and didn't have the same kind of feel that the other ones did. [00:37:22] Speaker B: Well, six of the floors were like high end residences. And then the restroom restaurant was very high end. Even though they didn't have the buffet, which there was like a breakfast buffet. They had a giant room which was like a. A fam. They called it a family like club room. And so they had movie night every night at 5. They had a pool table, foosball, video games, puzzles, books. That room was cool. [00:37:44] Speaker A: Our oldest loved that room, which our oldest liked. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:47] Speaker A: And it was walkable to some of the things that, you know, I think train station. [00:37:52] Speaker B: Right. [00:37:52] Speaker A: But also the aquarium. [00:37:54] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. If you went south, the aquarium. Yeah, that's right. I forgot that whole walk down there. [00:37:59] Speaker A: But I think just generally we didn't love that area of Lisbon either. [00:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I think it was a little bit more financial industrial. Like, other than that walk, which had all this stuff near the science museum, it wasn't as great. But we didn't we end up there because we were going to the hospital for that appointment. Didn't we go straight from Sagres there? Am I forgetting? Am I messing that up? [00:38:21] Speaker A: I think we were like, oh, we want to experience another one of the Martin. Or maybe the other one didn't have openings. I think the other one didn't have. It was. [00:38:27] Speaker B: I thought. I thought we were. Remember, we Were heading back. We're going to screw this story up. When we went back for that appointment, we went back to Sintra. Right. Or I thought the appointment. [00:38:36] Speaker A: It was in Lisbon. [00:38:37] Speaker B: Was in Lisbon. [00:38:38] Speaker A: Straight to Lisbon. [00:38:39] Speaker B: So didn't we get the Orient? [00:38:40] Speaker A: We got the Orient early. Like we were not. We were going to go back to Sintra, but we decided to go to Lisbon and see. Stay for two days because we were going to the hospital. [00:38:49] Speaker B: It's also because your mom was coming. [00:38:50] Speaker A: And my mom was in town. [00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah, your mom was in town. So. [00:38:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Anyway, so we, I still, I would still say, like, I think the only reason we probably think less of that was because we had the experiences. The other two. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:02] Speaker B: Like we hadn't had that. We would've been like, oh my God, there's a room for kids. There was also a working space at that one. They had like a whole area for working, which was nice. But the kids club, I think Cordy only went in one time. Cause it was a little bit. I mean there was nobody there. She was the only one there. And it wasn't really geared at her age level and it was much tinier. So it was a little bit more geared towards older kids who wanted to be in a communal space. [00:39:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:27] Speaker B: But yeah, I just don't think it was as walkable. I mean there's beautiful courtyards. They had a trampoline, but it wasn't open. So she was pretty sad about that. And I thought the room was comparatively. We paid the same price for basically all three. And I thought this room was the smallest and least nice of all the rooms. Right, right. We were just like cramped comparatively to living in a. I mean we were in a two story, beautiful townhouse for €300 and all of a sudden we're in a 10 by 10 hotel room for €300. Like I'm not feeling that like that was. It was not happening for me. [00:40:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So anyway, any final thoughts about other kid friendly things? [00:40:06] Speaker B: I think it's general. Like I wanted to, I think before this write down more experiences we had with people, but I feel like the number of people who either picked up our youngest or wanted to play with them or had things for them to do and draw and play in restaurants was wild. Like people were just, they were like happy to see children in restaurants. We didn't have to worry about it. We didn't have to think about where we had to go anymore. But I don't know. I don't have any more good examples. I think I just wanted to Gush about Martin all the whole time and not get paid for it. [00:40:42] Speaker A: Right. Well, I think that concludes episode two of the Kid Friendly Nature of Portugal. Yeah, we're gonna talk about Martin. [00:40:55] Speaker B: How you're gonna end that. That's what I'm. Well, it's just gonna be. Nope, that's the end. Kid Friendly. Gotcha. [00:41:02] Speaker A: There was several trips and some giggles in that episode. [00:41:07] Speaker B: Some of them. [00:41:12] Speaker A: Really. Okay, I want to talk about that. I wanted the title to be Ships and Giggles because it's more like where this came from. Shits and giggles. But. But we don't really go on ships because Damon is afraid of water. So. [00:41:23] Speaker B: So it's not just that I'm afraid of water. Cruise ships have no appeal to me. They don't. They don't have any appeal to me. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:32] Speaker B: You know, when the Beach Boys sang about Kokomo, they didn't say, you know, let's. Let's. Let's take it slow. Yeah, yeah. We want to get there fast and then take it slow. Not take it slow and then get there fast. Like, they. You know, I mean, like, I don't want to take two weeks to get to Scotland. [00:41:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:54] Speaker B: And then get off the boat with some, you know, E. Coli virus. And the fact that, you know, do you remember that boat where they. The sewage was, like, rolling through the situations or the number of times on high water that's happened? Plus, like, we studied and looked at things because Cordy was, like, really into this Disney cruise stuff. And so they show the influencers who get these, you know, shots at the place where there's nobody in it. It looks awesome. When you see the actual videos of people on cruise ships, they look so incredibly overpopulated. I don't like people. And the only thing I don't like more than people is a shitload of people in a space where you can't escape. Do you know the difference between a cruise ship and a prison? No, there isn't. You can't leave if you want to. You cannot leave if you want to. I want to get off this cruise ship. You can't until we get to our destination. [00:42:46] Speaker A: True. Yeah. [00:42:47] Speaker B: No. You pay them for that. That is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard of. [00:42:53] Speaker A: Well, there we go. So that's why we're not Ships and Giggles, because we're clearly not going on any ships. See, last time I told you there was stuff that we talked about that didn't happen, and we have not been on a cruise ship. [00:43:06] Speaker B: Okay. Yes. But it doesn't Mean, we won't go on a cruise ship. I think you just prioritize how you work me over. Like, I'm gonna work you over on the things that are on the highest priority list. And because a cruise doesn't strike you the same way as, like, traveling the world, you're like, oh, well, that's cool. I'll back burner this one. But if it never comes to, like, you know, the front point, I'll. I'll work it in. I'll find some way to, like, hook him, get him to come along. Fish, Hook that bastard, I guess. [00:43:36] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. [00:43:37] Speaker B: Anyway, you want to try to end the episode again. [00:43:42] Speaker A: Now at 42 minutes? [00:43:43] Speaker B: Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't care. It doesn't matter. This is our story. We're telling a story. This is for us. Other than the three people who complained about the fact that you didn't like Spain. This is for us. It doesn't matter if we meander. We talked about a story in Seattle of our dogs farting. I mean, that was the story we told. [00:44:04] Speaker A: It's very unlikely you're going to get lots of listens. [00:44:07] Speaker B: So at the end of the day, it's like, we're gonna tell this journal. We'll tell this story. If people like it and they align with it and they feel like their parents who are similar align with you or align with me, that's awesome. If they don't. You know what? You and I spent time together, and we told the story that we're probably gonna forget parts of that we already did forget parts of. [00:44:26] Speaker A: I know. [00:44:27] Speaker B: So that's what we're doing. [00:44:28] Speaker A: We've been wanting to do this. [00:44:29] Speaker B: We talked about this for a while, and we're gonna catalog the next six months in the journey. And I'm. And most likely, I think what people will get is hopefully both ends of the spectrum. The great. And then the day where I just. I'm in a mood and you're just gonna get a rant from me about cruise ships, you know, or something along the line that just drives me insane about it. Which, again, doesn't mean we shouldn't do this. But I think that this part is a nice way of us to. Neither one of us are going to journal or probably write a book anytime soon, although you should, because you would have great books. But at the end of the day, this is our way of telling a story, cataloging the story. And so then when our kids are embarrassed about it and their friends find it somehow in high school, through a Google search, there. We helped them go on their journey towards therapy. [00:45:26] Speaker A: I think that's a good way to end it right there. Okay. Until next time, Sa.