Jumped from From Sunny Southern Spain to Cooler Showery Lisbon

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We were up before the sun after a too, too short a stay in Jerez. The weather was absolutely perfect last evening as we ate dinner on the street about 2 blocks from our hotel. Nothing fancy, just beers and tapas of spicy potatoes, and something called Teta's Meatloaf that turned our to be mostly potato with little bits of ham. That wasn't enough but the weather and street scene was so great to just watch, we ordered a second beer and split a mini-hamburger, which was ridiculously small that I halved it with a fork. LC wanted to walk and stretch our his back and I went back to the hotel to pack us up for a 7:30 AM Private Transfer to the Seville Airport.

Antonio was our driver. We had about a 1:15 ride to the Airport. We started in the dark and got to see the sun come up over the wide fertile valley that surrounds Seville. Antonio was in his late 20's and his wife was about to have their first child in about a month. We had a great conversation about Old Spain and Modern Spain. Jerez has about 35% unemployment, down from 42% 5 years ago. There is no manufacturing and tourism is the primary industry. Since the 2008 Great Recession tourism is slowly coming back to Southern Spain.

We talked frankly with Antonio about terrorism and he explained what we already knew, that Spain was relatively safe because Northern Europe was the target of ISIS. He said that people coming from Africa or Arabia to Spain pass through but don't stay. I got the feeling he felt quite optimistic to bring a child into the world, that he had a positive outlook. Maybe it was the sunshine, but it was so good to speak with a young Spanish man who seemed very happy to be alive.

The TAP Portugal Airline flight was on a 40 seat plane, a 1 hour flight from the little Sevilla Airport to the giant Lisbon International Airport. (Compare Des Moines and Newark.) Lisbon is 1,900,000 people, Sevilla is 700,000. Lots of connections from Lisbon to North and South America. The taxi in was a little expensive at 19 Euro. We are staying at a central Lisbon hotel with a 10th floor view down to the wide river and are about 7 subway stops from the oldest part of town.

We found a great little place for lunch 2 blocks from the hotel and walked for an hour to get acclimated to the Alameda neighborhood. We headed back to the hotel and stopped for a coffee and by then the weather had turned to light rain. We'll probably stay close tonight.

Glad to finally get to Portugal; and EVERYBODY SPEAKS ENGLISH, who knew...

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