Lisbon 25 October 2023

Day 1 - Arrival

   Bom dia!  We have arrived safely in Portugal and are currently resting in our comfy hotel suite.  More on that fiasco later.
   The flight was amazing.  We flew out of Charleston, South Carolina, at 7:45pm and stopped over in Washington D.C. for 5 minutes.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  We had enough time to hustle from the far end of the D terminal to the opposite end of C terminal and literally walked straight onto the waiting plane to Lisbon.  The good news was it was half empty so Cindy and I had plenty of room to stretch.
   We landed in Lisbon around 10:30am local time and I was able to navigate the Metro like a pro, thanks to a week of experience from last year's visit.
   We found our hotel and tried to check in, only to find @Hotel.com screwed up and made our reservation for April!  Yeah, and they work with Expedia who screwed up my trip last year.  So after an hour of speaking with the very friendly and helpful staff, they found us a suite and cut us a nice deal.  Still not the 7 days for $400 that was promised by @hotel.com, but this trip is special since Cindy has never been out of the USA.  By the way, I spoke only Portuguese to the staff to explain everything that I knew about the booking problem.  I think that helped make things easier to resolve the problem as well as it did.
  Once the room was sorted out, we walked straight to Vodafone to put Portuguese SIM cards in our Samsung phones.  Now we have Portuguese phone numbers and much better data than if we roamed with Verizon.  Again, I spoke only in Portuguese which intrigued the employee.  She complimented my speaking a "difficult language" and made sure Cindy and I were satisfied with their service.
   Next stop was to get lunch.  I had sardinhas assadas and Cindy had a burger and fries.  She was tired, so I am not going to pick on her choice of cuisine.
   We continued to walk around Rossio and had a TukTuk driver peddle his services on us.  Again, using only Portuguese, I told him we literally just arrived in country but we have another six days to hire him.  His eyes got big as he said "You speak Portuguese!  Where are you from?"  I wanted to test him to see how "Americanized" I looked and his first guess was New Zealand, followed by the Unites States.  Our conversation continued on to where in the USA and how long I have been learning the language.  

Once we returned to the hotel our suite was ready, complete with washer/dryer, bread delivered to our door in the mornings, and a bottle of wine waiting in our room.  Our balcony looks up and down Rua da Prata, translated into "Silver Street".  We are just around the corner from Praça dos Restauradores, Elevadore de Santa Justa, and Praça do Comércio.
   Cindy is crashed in the bed as I write this, but I am sure you will hear more from her soon.