Blogs from Lisboa, Portugal, Europe - page 15

Greetings again as this time I'm writing from the Algarve Coast! This will be another short entry with a longer more thought out posting soon to follow. I arrived in Lisbon after leaving Morocco & stayed one night in a lovely B&B in the center of town. I basically slept the whole time as I was still fighting a bug (and it appears I still continue to be). Then I headed over to the hotel where I met my second travel group with which I'll be traveling this last leg of my trip. This group is a bit larger than my Morocco group and consists mainly of Australians and Canadians with two other Americans and an Irishman sprinkled in. We've had a lot of down time for exploring and so, as I do best, I've ventured ... read more

English Lisboa: 6/16/2014 We exit the plane with unrivaled excitement. The fact that we just traveled on the world’s shittiest airline with literally no space for 8 hours did not hinder us. We were ready and willing to take on challenge. The first image we see as we exit the plane: “EU and Portugal welcomes you”. Hmmm yes, this is real. Immigration awaited after the turn of a corner, the dreaded fear creeps back after our countless problems with immigration services the past year; however, we enter with no question. Our bags arrive on time and we jet off to places unknown. First problem is transportation from airport to hostel. In all of our preparation we failed to research this tiny and yet vitally important detail. Luckily, thanks to Fernanda, Fer, and Nilei, Lau was able ... read more

Another day, more Lisbon. We took off on our .5 mile walk to the subway station and headed down to the port. We hoped to find the place to buy tickets for an afternoon boat ride on the river. The sky was beautiful and it looked like it was going to be a great day. We get of the subway and walk up the stairs and there is the place to buy the boat tickets. Cool. After that Nicky had found online a place that makes the handmade tiles that are so popular here in Portugal. We've seen lots of touristy shops that had the tiles but this was not in the tourist area and they were unique. We hiked thru old town until we got to the store. It was great and we all made ... read more

Slept good and wake up to rain, but the weather looks like it will improve during the day. We let Nicky sleep in and Susan and I work on what we are going to do today. We decided to start with the Hop on Hop off bus and go down to get info on it. Once N&T get up, we tell them our plan. First find a light breakfast, then get on the bus and head to some of the must see sights. We buy the tickets from the hotel, then walk .5 mile to the next stop on the route. It's by the zoo. The hotel said it would be a large sign. We get to the zoo and there are tons of buses but no large signs with the picture of our open air ... read more

To celebrate Russ's birthday we took a trip over to Lisbon. For two people who have travelled quite widely, it came as a surprise to many of our friends that neither of us had been to Portugal before. We are so pleased we put that right. Over the last few years we have become increasingly confident at travelling hand-luggage only. We have 30 litre rucksacks which, even when stuffed to bursting, fit into an overhead locker. The DSLR is a bit of a pain but once you've crossed that line from a compact camera, there's no going back, so other sacrifices have to be made! No laptops this time though, as we have both made the transition to tablets for this type of trip. Our flight with TAP had us up at a ridiculous hour in ... read more