Old Lisbonite

Because our flight was crazily early, the taxi arrived outside at 5.30, which meant we'd only had a couple of hours sleep. Being this early we naively thought things would be quiet at the airport. How wrong can you be! Madness outside Departures with taxi and other motor traffic was a a warning of things to come, amplified all too ridiculously inside the ugliest and least efficient airport in Europe. Only one desk was manned in our checking area, and the queue moved far too slowly considering that all we needed to do was drop and tag our luggage. Other people in the queue were panicking because checking for their flight to Paris was close to closing. An airport (or maybe Aer Lingus) guy came round telling Paris travelers to move to a different area, and he came back shortly after to tell us to do the same thing. What a crazy system! What a dreadful airport!!

Naturally, we had to make our way to the new Pier D, which involves a long. long. long walk, and when we got there and went to the departure gate which was showing on the screens for our flight it was to find a Ryanair flight to Birmingham rather our Aer Lingus flight to Lisbon. Talk about confusing! When we pointed out the discrepancy to a passing person in uniform he said it was the fault of the Dublin Airport Authority, and that the gate info was supposed to change automatically. Grrrrrrr !! Stupid Dublin Airport.

So, on to the plane, and the crew do their head count. But still we stood there, and late-comers (with Northern accents, most of them) came on in dribs and drabs. The door closed, and then the captain comes over the intercom to say we're fully loaded and ready to move ... but ... there's a problem with air traffic control and we can't get a takeoff slot until 7.45, so we'll need to sit on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes. All in all, not a good start to the trip.

The flight itself was fine, breakfast and hot chocolate and a few Bacardi and Cokes were fine too, and we finally got to Lisbon. The airport is much better than Dublin, bright and welcoming, but passport control and baggage reclaim were slow. We phoned ahead to let the apartment people know we were there, and went to the airport information desk to get a taxi voucher. What a place we're staying in! The apartment is nothing short of magnificent. Our meeter-and-greeter was friendly and helpful and talked us through lots of things to do and places to see, so much so that our street map ended up with lots of areas circled and arrows and notes and names of restaurants and bars and so on.

A couple of beers at a buzzing street café nearby got us to the stage where it was time for a refreshing siesta, then suddenly it was 7.30 and even more suddenly 9.15, and time to find our way to one of the recommended restaurants. I have to admit that it took us a while to find our bearings, and we started off in the wrong direction totally, but we eventually found the street the restaurant is on and went looking for it. I'm sure we passed it by, but we certainly didn't find it. We settled for a likely looking place, went in, had an okay meal, and came straight back home. It's now after midnight, and time for sleeeeeeeeeeeep.

The blip? That was taken after our couple of beers, on the way back to our fab apartment. Just a little old man, near the square our place is on. That's it for now. Enough (far too much, perhaps!) said.