Lisbon, Portugal

Friday, May 10, 2013

What?  You thought we were going to Morocco?  Well, so did we!  We may have had a bit of "drama" along the way.....

Thursday's flight from Toronto to London went smoothly.  Over 7 hours, so it was very long.  Landed and got a quick taxi to our hotel at 9:30 pm, but really did not sleep well because our room faced some very loud traffic all night long.  Before we knew it, the maid had knocked on our door and actually come into the room while we were still in bed.  What time is it?  Yikes!  It's 11:20 am, our flight leaves in 2 hours!!!!  In our defense, it was only 6:20 am back home....  Forget the shower, forget breakfast, scoot to the airport as fast as we can.  The hotel had a "car" for us (not a taxi).  Okay, he gets the rest of our British pounds.

We needn't have rushed.  We had time for breakfast at the airport and time to shop around and find Jammie Dodgers (Doctor Who's favourite cookies).  At Heathrow you wait in a large shopping area and they only announce your gate half an hour before your flight.  Well, they only announced our gate when the plane should have been leaving. That did not bode well.  Our flight to Casablanca via Lisbon left 45 minutes late, and since we only had a 45 minute connection in Lisbon, we were toast.  Our plane landed just as our connection took off.  Sigh.

Right away a TAP rep took us in hand.  There was one other girl Katie who also missed the connection to Casablanca, so we adopted her.  Or did she adopt us?  The airline put us up in a very nice hotel for the night and paid for the taxi there and back.  It was the Roma Hotel and a sign said it was 200 euros per night.  Oh, and a fancy dinner was included too.

When we arrived at the hotel, Anton spent time trying to contact our tour company while Katie and Frankie explored the back alleys trying to find basic supplies because our luggage was somewhere back at the airport. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, that will do.  Luckily for us, we packed an extra set of clothing in our carry on, and PJs.  After a very nice dinner, the 3 of us hopped into a taxi to go downtown.  Luis the taxi driver was very friendly.  When he found out we were Canadian, he said he was from Canada too.  Yeah right.  We've heard that alot.  Then he started talking about living on Dufferin St in Toronto, and did an excellent imitation of several of our past prime ministers.  Okay, he did live in Toronto.  He said he left after 22 years because he couldn't take the weather anymore.  After he dropped us off, we walked around and explored.  The buildings are old, have iron balconies, and many have tiles decorating the outside.

We couldn't figure out what the sidewalks were made from.  They looked like some sort of ceramic done in a mosaic, but the pieces were irregular.

We found our way to the beach at the river

and then found a large cathedral.  We went inside but couldn't see much, there was some sort of service going on.  Hmmm, the people were all dressed in black, time to leave.

We made our way back to the main square, Lisbon has lots of squares and statues.

There was some sort of music festival going on, the band had a fiddler and a bagpiper. We found a taxi to take us back to the hotel, this driver didn't speak a stitch of english.  All he could communicate was that he didn't like Americans because boom boom.  Something to do with war, we think.

For plans not going our way, we sure did enjoy our time in Lisbon!

It took a LONG time to get to sleep.  Did you know that in Lisbon, garbage is collected in the middle of the night?  It makes sense, since the roads are busy and the garbage trucks are so large.  We met Katie at 5 am and made it back to the airport.  We skipped check in since we already had our boarding passes.  We found a Harrods cafe for breakfast, and then were shuttled off to a small plane that was mostly empty, so we claimed the emergency row seats.  It was a short flight, they said landing at 7 am.  We still haven't figured out if that means another time change?  Lo and behold, our lugguge was actually there waiting for us, and our driver was also waiting for us holding a sign with our names.  We are now completely in his hands.