Could be anywhere!

---

Europe. United Kingdom. England. Greater London. Heathrow Terminal 4. Holiday Inn Express. Undoubtedly comfortable and surprisingly well equipped room here but it has that ubiquitous familiarity that hotel room near airports have. It’s sort of cheap and will provide all services we require but it’s soulless and really the antithesis of so many of the pubs and BnB’s I’ve seen and stayed in recently.

Drove from Newton Abbot to Heathrow today and with Lee as navigator the process was seamless and easy. Not having strict time constraints makes everything easier and the little stops we had were fine (except for the food which reminded us of the ’bad old days’ of English cuisine. The pub made zero concessions environmentally, serving several components of our meal in sealed plastic containers despite us eating at the table and to make things worse it was difficult to taste a difference between the contents and the containers themselves!) Big surprise to us as we have been singing the praises of the food here for quite a while lately. Cider remains good though.

I’ve heard that people have been a bit disappointed with Stonehenge. Now I see why!

Returned the car today and found Hertz excellent throughout the entire process. Pick-up, delivery and then the free shuttle service to our hotel went super smoothly and the staff were helpful and friendly so I’m giving them a big pat on the back. Disclosure-I’m not a paid ambassador or influencer for Hertz (I am open to any form of corruption though!).

Sort of sensible time for our flight tomorrow but we need to check out just after 8 o’clock. This means sensible time arriving in Lisbon and sensible time for our Airbnb place. It’s near the river and the castle so we should be in a terrific location. Very much looking forward to a couple of days in Lisbon then 4 nights in Porto and then our cruise.

Until Lisbon, it’s caio for now.

---