My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

also because of its history. The manager knew me because of the
business my travel agency had given her for many years. Before
we left for that trip, my good friends Roswell and Marcia
Bosworth, publishers of Rhode Island East Bay Newspapers, who
went on the same trip with us decided, as usual, to do some
homework before leaving and learned that illustrious figures,
including Catherine of Bragança, who married King Charles II of
England, once stayed at the Convent. The manager reserved the
same room, where the Queen had spent her last days, for my wife
and me. It was an enormous room with a large outside patio facing
miles and miles of land full of olive trees typical of the Alentejo
province. What an experience…
After leaving the Hotel Convento de São Paulo, I drove to a city on
the border between Portugal and Spain named Elvas, so that our
friends Ros and Marcia Bosworth could see Spain from the other
side. As I entered the city, I did not see a very small red light at
the corner of an intersection, so I drove through it. Suddenly, a
Portuguese Police officer, on a motorcycle, came after me and
made me stop. He asked for my driver’s license and registration.
He could see that I was driving a rented car and I showed him my
U.S. driver’s license. He started accusing me, in Portuguese that I
had gone through a red light and he said, “This is not America…
Here you have to obey the Portuguese laws!” I immediately
thought he was going to give me a fine, so I improvised and
pretended that I did not speak Portuguese, looking to my wife
seated next to me and the Bosworths on the back of the car and I
said in English, “What is he saying?” The policeman continued
talking to me in Portuguese and then in Spanish saying, “Next time
I will give you a ticket. Don’t do that again!” The officer left on
his motorcycle, my wife and our friends, starting laughing. They
all cried laughing at my reaction toward the officer and the fact
that I had told him that I didn’t speak or understand Portuguese!
After returning home, I was attending our Rotary meeting at
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