Return to the Grand

The Grand House in Vila Real de Santo António is an old school, fantastic, carefully restored belle epoch hotel overlooking the banks of the Guadiana River and across at Spain. Vila Real is in the far southeast corner of Portugal. We came here to begin our cross-Algarve journey four years ago.

That night, in early December, we weren’t the only guests, but it felt that way. The hotel is part of the Relais and Chateaux chain and the service was impeccable. The hotel is sleekly decorated, and it feels as though you’ve walked back in time, into the 1920s, when the Grand was first opened as the Hotel Guadiana. While we weren’t the only hotel guests, we were the only restaurant patrons where we sat at the bar with well-made martinis as our tuxedoed barman gave us tips for visiting the Algarve and then went on to serve us a fantastic dinner at a table for two overlooking the river.

We were so excited to return.

We booked the Grand for a night on our way back from Seville at New Year’s. I had reached out to the hotel to see if they had any kind of New Year’s celebrations and was presented with two options: a multi-course “Casablanca night” price fixe dinner with wine pairing at the main hotel or a “Cuban themed” party at their beach club with fireworks. Not feeling like we wanted to shuttle back at 1am or later, we chose Casablanca Night. We couldn’t wait. We went clothes shopping to try to find something new to wear that was “smart casual” to match the dress code and watched Bogie and Ingrid Bergman on the silver screen of our television to bone up. It was not to be, we were taken down, hard, by the gripe (the flu) and fled back from Seville to the comfort of our apartment so as to not get anyone sick and to lick our wounded carcasses until we felt we could mingle amongst the living again. It was a tough bout and took us nine days to fully recover.

Before leaving Seville, on New Year’s Eve morning, I had reached out to the hotel and talked them into giving us a voucher we could use for our non-refundable hotel night. The prepaid non-refundable dinner was lost to karma and bad luck, but a hotel stay voucher was provided. After some difficulty securing a re-booking during the post New Year’s holiday period, we were locked in for our return.

We arrived at dusk. The hotel was charmingly lit with dimmed lights and candles. It was as we remembered. The service was fantastic. The staff had been advised of our situation and were pleased to greet us, albeit late, for our celebration with our New Year’s wishes intact and our memories being replayed. After some lounge time in the room, we headed for the small bar. It was full but we procured our welcome drink to sit in one of the common sitting rooms down the hall and, luckily, a spot opened in the bar to which we moved.

A “local” from South Africa was holding court. She talked constantly about herself and luxury trips she’d taken. She was loud and the chatter was nonstop. She told the barman, a proud native of Tavira, just up the road (which we visited just before Seville and loved) that she “liked a nearly perpetually closed pastry shop there and thought Tavira was cute, but that she didn’t care for it and that he knew why, right?” What’s that supposed to mean? Some secret that only the locals knew about Tavira which should turn us all off if revealed? He was a native, who’d lived abroad and wanted to return his whole life. So how would he know what she, in her infinite wisdom, found so off-putting? He gave us a look with a slight eye roll. We moved to the restaurant.

While slightly better from a chatterbox perspective (only slightly) we were excited for our dinner. We sat at the same table as we had four years ago. We took the waiter’s recommendations and suggestions and ordered the fish dish and the chicken. While trying to drown out the non-stop, high volume, boasting and bragging from the next room. The couvert was small. The main plates smaller. The chicken was tough and barely cutable. But the wine was good.

As we slipped past the South African up the stairs she was preparing to leave. Finally. Future patrons of the night (though at 9:30, I suspect they were slim or none in the off-season) would achieve the peaceful ambiance we’d desired and sought in which to soak with our memories. But perhaps that’s where this night belonged in the first place. The hotel still is grand. The service still is as well. But perhaps our disappointing dinner is just a lesson that recreating a golden memory isn’t meant to be and they ought to just be left there. We’ll chalk it up to a bad night for the chef and, of course, you can’t control or choose your patrons, so we will return should our travels take us through Vila Real. But we will return more wisely and not trying to recreate something from our past. A good lesson, the past is behind us, archived to be cherished lovingly but not to be recreated or attempted to be improved upon. And when we return (here or elsewhere, for that matter) we will try do it with the proper expectations that while it’s nice to reflect and remember the past times, we are here now to create new memories, always moving forward.