Day 1 Travelling to Lisbon

Day 1-2 Melbourne > Dubai> Lisbon

After a great night’s sleep I woke at 4:30 and proceeded to accomplish the large number of last minute jobs. Mary and Brian picked me up slightly earlier than 3 pm and then we went to pick up Judy arriving at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Too early to check in, we had a cuppa and Mary’s son Greg joined us for a chat. Finally we checked-in. The new immigration/ customs check was much faster and we were very impressed, despite the three of us being “done” for a random drug search. We stopped for another drink at Brunetti’s before joining the crowd at our gate. Check-in was on time and all too soon we were in our seats, TV on and settling back for the long haul. The flight took off just before 9:30 pm. Despite medication, I managed only a few minutes of cat naps on the long 14 hour flight and 6 movies. We had lots of short bouts of turbulence, but they were both good flights on Emirates. 

We landed in Lisbon 14+2+8 hours after taking off. Despite two different tablets to help me sleep neither had any effect and the closest I came to having a sleep was destroyed by a hostess delivering my midnight snack! On the other hand Mary won for having the best sleep and Judy wasn’t that far behind.

We arrived on time in Lisbon. A very different set of buildings to Dubai’s excesses. The long queue to clear passport control moved quite quickly. Then off to pick up our luggage. Of course Mary and Judy’s arrived very quickly but mine took 20 minutes longer. Finally we were out the door and joined the rest of the travellers in the taxi queue.

We had a delightfully informative taxi driver. It was €24 from the airport to the hotel. The jacarandas were in full flower and there was only a light sprinkling of clouds. We drove past lots of apartment buildings that needed significant T.L.C. Consequently checking in about 2:30 pm to a nice clean room with en-suite. It’s only issue was the large number of steps we had to lug our cases up- basically two floors.  A basic shared kitchenette was just nearby. It is a centrally located hotel.

After a shower and washing our travelling clothes, we set off up mile after mile of steps to reach our destination of a walking tour of Lisbon at 4 pm.  Our guide was Gui. Born in Portugal. Excellent English and an amazing memory for all the information he shared with us about the history of Lisbon. The walking tour went for almost three hours and ended up down near the huge Targus River.  Ten we made our way back to our hotel, stopping for GF and LF supplies (yes they are available but not common in Portugal's restaurants apparently) at the local health food store and supermarket. Both of which were very close to our hotel. We tried to have a meal at one of the many nearby restaurants. However we had to wait for so long to be served that we were all falling asleep at the table and decided to just have whatever we could find for dinner back at our room.

Didn’t take long for sleep to overcome us. Mary and Judy were asleep quickly, while I kept falling asleep trying to type up today’s notes. 

10:30 now. A great start to this new adventure.