Luxury hotel links golfers to their passion, but links the rest of us to golfers
Written: Feb 23 '01 (Updated Feb 26 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: for rich golfers, many
Cons: for poor non-golfers, the presence of many rich golfers
The Bottom Line: The hotel is very nice and the staff are even nicer. Its golf course is good enough to draw golfers from around the world.
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| eplovejoy's Full Review: Caesar Park Penha Longa Golf Resort |
Mark Twain* observed that golf is a good walk spoiled.
Rubbish. Golf is a religion. If you believe, it can be everything. If you don't, you respect the golfers' beliefs but wish they'd set their sights elsewhere when they proselytize. At least with Jehovah's Witnesses, you can pretend you're not home.
This realization about golf sunk in during a week-long stay at the Caesar Park Penha Longa in November 1999. I'd won a week's lodging at the hotel, which I couldn't have afforded otherwise. It's an exceptionally nice hotel nestled in a valley rather far to the west of Lisbon with an extraordinarily helpful and courteous staff. It caters mostly to golfers. It's a luxury hotel so it caters to golfers with money and lots of time to jet around the world playing golf. If you're wondering why they can't just golf at home, you're with me. I don't golf and I'm not rich so I was the odd man out in a round of the Sesame Street song "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." But if you feel the desire to spend your time in Portugal on a golf course that doesn't seem to reflect anything essentially Portuguese, you belong at the Penha Longa.
If you're not a golfer, having someone describe a golf course in loving detail is like being a carnivore and listening to a vegetarian rhapsodize about tofu. You might acknowledge the enthusiasm, but it's difficult to feel it. Apparently the Penha Longa's golf course is world-class. I know this because I was told repeatedly by strangers who have keener senses of what makes an exceptional golf course than of what makes an interesting conversation. My numerous advisers compared the Penha Longa's course favorably to the one in St. Andrews in Scotland, which evidently is as close as one can get to Xanadu without reading poetry or listening to Rush.
The first time someone told me at length about the glories of the course it really wasn't my fault. I'd gone for a walk on the grounds, which was thrilling because I'm not used to staying at places swanky enough to have grounds, except in the coffee makers. I had deliberately turned left, away from the golf course and toward the ancient Roman ruins that are immediately behind the hotel. Apparently it was the site of either a temple or a brothel. (Archaeology is sometimes not an exact science.) The ruins haven't been preserved as a tourist site but have simply been left alone in a way that reflects a casualness about history that strikes me as distinctly European. They have so much of the stuff they take it for granted. Europeans have history the way we in the United States have Starbucks.
So I'm all alone and minding my own business while trying to shed some light on that temple/brothel mystery when this guy comes up to me. He's from Cleveland, which is disappointing because I meet plenty of people from Cleveland in Buffalo, where I live. I had hoped that on my first day in a foreign land I would meet exotic strangers whose only commonality with me would be a passing familiarity with English.
So this guy starts going on and on about golf balls (apparently they're not all alike) and tees (different kinds of them as well, it seems) and clubs (variety more infinite than that among the General Assembly of the United Nations and Baskin Robbins combined). And he's talking about how it was too bad we'd both gotten lost on our way to the golf course. (The ruins and the course are within sight of each other so I'm not clear on why he thought we were each stupid.)
As this guy's talking, I'm developing a deep appreciation for all the Clevelanders who come to Buffalo to brag that their city has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I blame my parents that it took me more than twenty minutes (which seemed much longer) to extricate myself from his monologue. They thought they were teaching me manners but they were really imposing a life sentence.
The second time a golf zealot trapped me was my fault entirely. I'd had plenty of time to observe that golfers (at least those at the Penha Longa) spend all their time either golfing or standing around the lobby's bar talking about golf. But there I was standing in the lobby waiting for a cab. Just a few feet farther and I'd have been safe outside in the parking lot, which is about as far from the course as possible and far enough from the bar to be safe. At least I learned. From then I always waited for the cab outside. You don't have to hit me over the head with a golf club. Well, not twice anyway.
[Usually there are several cabs in the parking lot and you don't have to wait. The Penha Longa is set back rather far from everything except the golf course. If you don't rent a car, it takes a cab ride to get to a train station to go anywhere. The hotel is roughly halfway between Cascais to the south and Sintra to the north, and it takes a $25-35 cab ride plus tip to go in either direction. (The currency of Portugal is the escudo and it takes either several hundred or several thousand of them to make a dollar. The people of Portugal use an American dollar sign so that 300 escudos are expressed 300$, although this really isn't the convenience to Americans it might seem. At least it wasn't to me.)]
The third time was mostly my fault. I'd left my wallet in a cab and had to wait in the lobby at night for the cab driver to return. (Cab drivers in Portugal are much more friendly and honest than many of the ones you're likely to encounter in, say, Manhattan. So are desk clerks, like the one who called the cab company for me and never once reproached me for ignoring Karl Malden and travelling with cash.)
I dreaded the uncertainty of not knowing whether my money would come back to me along with my credit card (this was the first time I was grateful for the financial irresponsibility that had led me to have only one credit card), phone cards, driver's license, library card, Blockbuster card, Kinko's card and all the other cards which define my dull existence. (I'm not what you could call a card.) I was feeling foolish. The only thing that would have made me any more pathetic is if I'd been drinking. Fortunately, college had taught me that I don't do that well enough to warrant making a habit of it.
So I'm sober and waiting just feet from a bar packed with golfers who aren't. They're indoors only because it is dark outside and golf balls with lights on them don't putt well. Of course, they're talking about golf. I'm not paying attention to them until they force me to. I mean that literally. Several of them came over and welcomed me into their ranks, apparently because they'd not learned that "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" lesson.
Now, here you need to know that I've been told I look like major league baseball manager Buck Showalter, although I of course prefer to think that Mr. Showalter looks like me. Well, apparently Buck and I have a doppelganger who golfs. A doppelganger who golfs at all the best courses, including St. Andrews and, to my lasting good fortune, the Penha Longa. At first, my new buddies took my word that I'm not this other guy. It didn't prevent them from assuming I'm a golf enthusiast, but at least it enabled them to differentiate me from this other guy, who I cannot stress too strongly is not at the bar or even at the hotel when this is happening.
My new pals are drinking and conversation quickly goes from topics that begin with "Are you sure you're not the guy..." to ones that start, "Remember when we ...?" It is only because the other guy has apparently not slept with any of their wives or, worse, refused to give them a mulligan that the whole situation remains unusual instead of turning unpleasant.
I was able to break loose only by excusing myself to the men's room. This is a need to which drunk golfers are very sensitive, although they express that sensitivity with boisterous euphemisms which apparently are hilarious to drunk golfers. Getting away from the group was worth having everyone in the lobby think I was going to take care of the "little putter."
It was especially worth it since the spirits had faded enough by the next morning that all I had to deal with as I walked to the cab were vaguely puzzled looks as I passed my erstwhile bar mates and they tried to place me but apparently could come no closer than to wonder, "Hey, isn't that Buck Showalter?"
THE HOTEL HAS SWIMMING POOLS, TOO.
There are some things about the Penha Longa that don't have to do with golf.
The rooms are comfortable and have views of either a pretty garden or impressive mountains. The bathrooms are spacious with separate showers and baths. The thermostats can be counted on to deliver up to about 110 degrees of heat quietly. (I know this because my travelling companion apparently can sleep only in saunas. I can't tell you how cool you can make your room.) And the food in the restaurant is quite good. Also:
The staff members are exceptionally helpful. Dozens of them seem to be everywhere waiting to provide assistance when asked and to offer it when not asked. Almost all of them are tall, trim and muscular and have olive skin, black hair and very white teeth. They're good-looking, but the uniformity is a little unsettling. Reason suggests they are the products of attractive parents and good nutrition. But it is understandable that one might suspect the Penha Longa creates its employees in a secret lab in which scientists mix the genetic material of George Clooney with that of Antonio Banderas and Tom Cruise.
It's good that the staff are courteous and friendly, because I'm not sure some of them would have been hired for the clarity of their thinking. A desk clerk told me he would like to live in Denver or Nairobi or "someplace like that." A bell hop confided that he and his girlfriend had been concerned because they didn't want to have children but her period was late. But they decided to relax because it had happened before. The previous month.
The Penha Longa is the kind of light pink that some people would say is coral and others would call salmon. It is a little lighter than the pink of the Tripler U.S. Army Hospital on Oahu in Hawaii, a reference I think would mean nothing to most of the Penha Longa's guests because the Army's Tripler Hospital has no golf course.
There is a building on the grounds of the hotel that is described as an old structure in which people long ago sought refuge from invading soldiers. It is open only in the summer and we were there in November so I can't say much about the interior. But the exterior is striking. Especially impressive is the foresight of its builders, who centuries ago used the same building materials that were used in the 20th century to create the hotel. More impressive is how they were able so long ago to pick grades of the materials that would resist aging so that today the historic structure looks as new as the contemporary one.
THE POOLS
The Penha Longa has two pools. The outdoor one is not Olympic-sized but is long enough for swimming laps. Its uniform depth is five and a half feet and there is no diving board. The indoor one is only four feet deep and too small and curved for swimming laps, but it is heated. The indoor pool is in a room with a glass wall that allows guests to look out at the outdoor pool. The room is crowded with lounge chairs, the floor is covered with Astroturf and there is no bar or grotto. Otherwise it is the sort of place in which people might soak while they wait for their host, Hef, to make the scene.
The days in Portugal in November are usually sunny and dry and the temperatures are in the mid 70s. But at night it gets down to the low 40s. The first night there I decided to go swimming. There was one person sitting in a lounge chair near the heated indoor pool, but I had the outdoor pool to myself. If I were smarter, that would have told me something. I expected it would be brisk, but I'd been swimming several miles a week for three years and I was confident I could handle it. The only reason all that swimming hadn't made me look like Burt Lancaster on the beach in From Here to Eternity is that I didn't look like Burt Lancaster before I swam. Besides, all those portly people in the former Soviet Union look happy when they swim in iced-over water that has to be much colder than that in an outdoor pool in Portugal in late November. If they could do it, certainly so could I.
But apparently not without vodka. It seems that cold water makes one's lungs shrink to the size of a postage stamp. Both of them. One stamp. I thought that would clear up after a few laps when my body had gotten used to the cold. Instead, my lungs went on strike and the rest of my body refused to cross the picket line. I had to stop and get out. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong end of the pool when this happened and I had to run what would otherwise seem a short distance to my towel. This exertion on top of the frigid stress I'd foolishly subjected myself to made my breathing sound like I was trying to make an obscene phone call while helping a pregnant woman through her labor.
I ran inside and jumped into the heated pool. The woman who had previously had the area to herself was understandably concerned, but miraculously she was more concerned about the well-being of the panting madman who'd just dashed in on her than she was about her own safety. She came over to the pool and repeatedly asked me if there was anything she could do to help. I tried to assure her that there was not, but lack of air was making it even harder for me to make intelligible noises than it usually is. So she kept expressing her concern. Now, she looks like the detective in Murder, She Wrote but she sounds like the woman who coos sultry French at the end of Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night." I was getting enough oxygen to be dizzied further by the contradiction.
And then the man I believe to be her husband came in. He's apparently British because he looks like the former host of Masterpiece Theatre but he sounds -- I mean this to be accurate, not mean -- like a contestant in Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year Contest. He puts down his plush cotton robe and comes over to see if he can help the woman who seems to be his wife help the man who seems to be either deranged or dying.
He calls me "chap" and assures me I'll be okay because he's a doctor. Then he squats down so all his weight is balanced on his toes. I thought he was just going to look at my face or something, but instead he put his hand on my back and pressed as if his palm were a stethoscope. This is unfortunate because it means I can't back away without causing him to lose his balance and fall either into the pool or onto the concrete around it. But I really want to pull away because the posture he's assumed means his knees are near my ears and his tight swim trunks are very close to my face. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just makes catching one's breath even more difficult.
So I have the anxious attention of both the Angela Lansburyish seductress and Dr.-Alistair-Cooke-in-Speedos when the Clooney/Banderas/Cruise clone who is stationed between the pool and the weight room rushes in. Apparently he thinks I'm having a stroke because each time the woman in her very fragmented English says "sick" she points to my head. He reaches in and pulls me out of the pool with strength I assume was augmented by the adrenaline flow caused by his fear that Buck Showalter is going to die on his shift.
As I'm sprawled on the Astroturf with three strangers hovering over me, the doctor who has been brought to me by Mobil Corporation and by the generous support of viewers like you delivers the line that makes me realize life sometimes sounds like a movie. It's a line that almost makes up for the awkward embarrassment of everything that's happening. Almost.
He says, "Swimming doesn't agree with you, does it? Perhaps you should stick to golf."
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* Thanks to Sloucho for pointing out that it was Twain who said this. I thought it was one of those pieces of wisdom that sprung from some mysterious source and couldn't be attributed to an individual. Apparently, reports of my depth have been greatly exaggerated.
Recommended:
Yes
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eplovejoy
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Member: Peter William Warn
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