Filthy little devils

August 13, 2015

Gordon: It’s 3 am and we are sitting in the lobby of a hotel that I can no longer recommend.  Ruth was complaining about bug bites all day yesterday, but we managed to convince ourselves they were caused by fleas, spiders, space aliens, anything but bedbugs.  Sadly, we learned their true source when we examined our beds an hour ago.  Filthy little devils, as Humphrey Bogart described leeches in The African Queen.  I killed a dozen of them, mostly in Ruth’s bed.  The rough edge of a sheet of particle board under the mattress appears to provide excellent habitat for these disgusting creatures.  There is no possibility of returning to sleep in our room, so we have retreated to the lobby.

Just a few days ago we were discussing the fact that we had not seen any evidence of bedbugs in Portugal.  I optimistically suggested that perhaps the warm, dry climate is not to their taste.  However, we seem to have an encounter with bedbugs once on each journey in Europe and this trip was apparently not fated to be an exception.  We will make our best efforts not to carry any on to future hotels.  And should anyone be in the vicinity of our home on the evening of August 30, they will have the opportunity to see a couple of scrawny cyclists stripped naked and dropping their clothing outside on the porch.