Wednesday, April 12, 2023
We made it to Portugal! The first country on our European adventure! And we are very happy to be here although it has definitely had it’s challenges 🙂
Our flight wasn’t exactly uneventful but we made it. As I am sure many of you have experienced, we had a very angry toddler that screamed (not cried, but screamed) for the first three hours of the flight. I felt a little sorry for the toddler but mostly I felt bad for the mom who tried so desperately to quiet him down. The flight was 7 1/2 hours from Washington D.C. to Lisbon, Portugal and it was an overnighter. So everyone expected to sleep, surprise! That toddler was not having it! Once he finally settled down just long enough for everyone to fall asleep, he would wake up with one loud scream just to make sure nobody was sleeping too soundly 🙂 That’s when I realized that the couple Kevin was sitting with was sick, very sick. Coughing and sneezing and obviously very miserable. I get it! You plan a trip like this for a long time and are you going to let a little sickness cancel it for you? Probably not, but I wonder how many of the rest of us are going to be sick soon and ruin our vacations? Well we are keeping our fingers crossed in hopes that whatever it was, they didn’t share it with us.
Customs was a breeze and getting our rental car wasn’t too painful. We were renting a Peugeot which is quite small and I guess pretty powerless. When the attendant (the french attendant) asked us how far we were going with the car and I told him of the six countries, he literally laughed and pointed out to us that the car we rented probably would not make that distance. We realize he may have been scamming us, trying to make a better sale but it worked. We ended up upgrading to a Lexus SUV that actually fit our two bags and the two of us. But the really good news is that the steering wheel is on the left side, just like ours and Portugal drives on the right side of the road, just like us. So other than all the roundabouts, the driving experience has been fairly normal.
This morning, we had a Lisbon walking tour of the city. It was awesome!! I really enjoyed it! And when I say I, I mean just me. We were running a little late (I blame it on the jet lag) so Kevin dropped me off at the Rossio Square to meet up with the tour group while he found a parking spot. Well, that’s when it all started. It took him a while to find a place to park before he headed toward the Square where he dropped me off but soon realized he left his backpack in the car so he turned around to go back for it. By the time he headed our way, he was 30 minutes away and the tour guide couldn’t wait any longer. So I tried to communicate with him where we were but he he wasn’t feeling secure that he would be able to find the car again so he gave up on finding me and went back to the car. He drove around a bit and realized his gps didn’t work and he was totally lost. So I told him to stay put and I would try to find him since my gps was working. Once the tour was over, I got an address from him and caught an uber. Well, you know how some cities have the same addresses? Yea, unfortunately my uber took me 45 minutes away to an address with no Kevin. We figured out by letting my uber driver (who spoke no english) and a barber (that Kevin enlisted to help) talk to each other. By then, I was over it, so I had the uber driver take me back to our hotel and Kevin got the barber to call a taxi cab to come pick him up (sort of) so Kev could follow him back to our hotel. Whew!! What a first day in Portugal!
The up side to this fiasco of a day was that we found the portuguese people to be so caring and helpful. Everyone wanted to help in any way they could and they did. The uber driver would not leave me until I was safe and the barber that helped Kevin had customers waiting for his services, which he made wait until he was sure Kev was taken care of. We both have a sense of Portugal as being a country of beauty and loving people.
My tour was awesome! The tour guide was a Portuguese historian and she knew so much of the history of Portugal and was so passionate about it and so PROUD! She showed us the older traditional parts of Lisbon. The residences had tiled outer walls and everything was built on the sides of hills. So lots of steps everywhere. The roads are all cobblestone which was beautiful but I heard it gets very slippery when it rains.
I just loved walking around these narrow streets, cobblestone roads, with restaurant tables and chairs.
I brought my portuguese phrase book and studied it but soon learned that portuguese is also spoken in Brazil and my book was Brazilian Portuguese. And you will never guess, it is a totally different language than Portugal portuguese. Luckily most everyone speaks english. Very convenient but I was hoping to be somewhat challenged with communication. Of course, the only time we came across the true natives that did not speak any english was when we were separated and lost and desperately needed help.
Tomorrow we are heading to Porto, north of Lisbon. Hopefully, Kevin will be able to take more/better pictures for me to share with you. Until then ……. paz e amor!
And the story begins! Love it! Thx for sharing.
Thanks for joining our adventure!
Wow, what a first day! Reminds me of Sean and my first day in Rome – totally jet lagged, disoriented, trying to drive and park. I love reading about these kinds of unplanned adventures. They’re the best in my experience – what you’ll always remember and look back on with a good laugh! Keep ‘em coming’!! 👍🏻 🙂
Yep we are making memories!
Wow. What I memorable and challenging first day! I loved hearing how helpful and genuinely caring the Portuguese people are. I’m so glad you and Kevin found each other!
Yea kind of scary but it worked out.
What an adventure driving. I would have given up a lot sooner, hopefully the rest of the drive goes smoothly!!!
Yea me too! Lots of roundabouts!
What an adventure!! I’m so glad everyone was so helpful and caring!
We survived it!
Fumbling through it! I love it. Brings me back to our second European trip, thinking we had it made only to realize the GPS that came with our new Volvo didn’t come loaded with European maps! I didn’t bring any maps so we really struggled throught the first 10 days.
I’m enjoying reading about your adventures, sounds like the dream of a lifetime trip. Beautiful photos, and those pastries, OMG so glad my son brought me a whole cherry pie or else I would have been booking a trip to Europe 😂
Yea we are literally fumbling through it!
Just getting around to reading your travel blog. Really enjoyed your first post so far regardless of all the work around(a) you encountered. All that lent another level of knowing
about the people — sounds like a big win to me. Looking forward to reading on…xo
Yes Barb, we agree it did help us see what the people were like.