Lisboa

The last few days haven't been as smooth as the first few weeks. There have been some high's followed by some lows but that is traveling I guess.

We left New York in Style. We got to the airport early for our 9pm overnight flight to Lisbon as we had just about had enough of just wandering the city. A pleasant surprise awaited us. We had been upgraded to Business Class. Yippee! Now your talking. And it was good timing too. An overnight flight that lasted about 8 hours. No more weariness the next day. We were flying Iberia - the main Spanish airline. The staff were really nice.

We boarded and settled in the 1st row of the plane. I spent a good 5-10mins playing with all the different positions my seat could go. Back Lumber, footrest, lying position. All good. I put it back in the upright position and we took off. After taking off, I tried to put the seat back. I couldn't, I had stuffed it with all my playing. Bugger, my chair spent the whole night in the upright position while everbody else's were down almost flat. It wasn't the comfortable sleep I was envisioning. Krishni felt sorry for me and we swapped half way through. The rather nice hostess took my name so we will see if we get another upgrade from Spain to Italy.

On the upside, the food was really good up front. A 3 course meal that kept us eating till 3am in the morning. Didn't really need it as we had already some dinner in the lounge. But it was still good.

Lisbon was cool though. It was nice to be out of the concrete jungle and into one of those romantic style cities of Europe. Nice squares, cafes on sidewalks and lanes to wander through. This is the location of our first meal.

Including some portuguese tarts for desert. They were everywhere and we had a few in our short stay. These were the best though.

The architecture of the city was cool. Very Classic.

This part of the trip was the unplanned part. We had 1 night accommodation booked in Lisbon and then some in Madrid a few days latter. The plan was to hire a car and just stop off in the odd location on the way to Madrid. Krishni wasn't up for driving really so we went in search of train and bus departures. We spent the first night walking to the train station after not having much success on the net. There was only one train that was overnight and that was full. The first train with seats was on the night of the 17th but that was too late. We needed to be in Madrid on the 17th.

The next day we planned to head to the bus station but I managed to actually find a good website, after some searching and we booked a bus to go half way to Madrid on the 16th and then keep on going on the 17th. Now our journey to Madrid was all sorted, we relaxed into Lisbon and just wandered the streets. Nothing really planned, just wandered. We didn't wander far but enough to get a feel for the city. It was really nice. We came across some restaurants playing Fado that night, so we resolved to come back. Fado is a style of music that we had no idea what it was but it seemed to be pretty popular. It involves some guys playing guitars with someone singing. While heading to our restaurant we passed one that was getting a bit of a gathering outside. It was packed later on when we passed again.

The Fado at our place was quite funny. It started out with the guys playing guitar and a girl singing away. Then she disappeared but then the maitre-de just started singing. Then after a while, another guy from the audience(well it looked like it) just appeared and just singing as well. Then the hostess had a go. They were all excellent and got the mood going.

We were suckers. We bought the cd of the matrie-de. Here is us outside afterwards.

The next day we had a bus to catch at 10:30am. A reasonable time. We got there in good time and just hung around with the others waiting for the bus. Like a lot of places where bus travel is popular, the buses were really nice. Our bus finally came, we loaded our bags and started boarding. The bus driver asked for our passports for id. We looked at each other - Bugger! They were still in the safe at the hotel. We had previously always put a reminder in the phone to check but forgot this time. Things were unravelling as my mind raced through all the scenarios. Since the bus was leaving in approximately 1min we didn't have a chance to go back and get the passports. That means we would lose the accommodation we booked for that night plus the bus cost for the next day. The cost was mounting fast. Dumbfounded, I unloaded our bags. @#$^. I asked what the bus' next stop was to see if we could race back to the hotel, and then race to the next stop and re-join the bus. We jumped in the cab but the cab driver didn't know where the next stop was even though I tried in my best portuguese to say the name - there goes that plan.

We made it back to the hotel and got our passports. The concierge at the hotel helped us but ringing a few car companies to see if they had any cars. They had none but apparently they could get a driver for 600 euros. Bugger that. They suggested we go to the airport to check the car companies as it was a higher possibility of getting a car. We cab'ed it back and checked. Only Avis had a car but the cost to take a Spanish car back to spain was apparently 350 Euro. For one day. That's about a grand. For one day! For some reason we seemed disinterested and amazingly the price came down quickly to 250 and then to 150. It was still too much but it was an option. We had to get to Madrid by the 17th or else the cost of lost bookings would start to mount. We had booked a flamenco thing for my Birthday.

We went upstairs at the airport to use the internet. We found that the next bus out was at 9pm that night. It get us to our next stop by 2am which would still allow us to get the next bus at 8:45am the next morning. We didn't book but decided to head back to the bus station to see if there were any companies going earlier. We wandered around but being Sunday, most stalls were closed. Luckily our bus company had someone in there now but unluckily the seats that we thought we available for that night weren't there. Another bugger. Luckily though we managed to get a ticket with another bus company leaving that night.

It was now about 1:30pm. We were at a bus station with our bags with 7 or so hours to kill. We managed to eventually stow our baggage. Rather than head back into the city we just wondered around the shopping mall just next to the bus station. It was really quite convenient in the end because it was quite big, there was stuff to do and we managed to check out a few shops that had been closed the previous day due to a public holiday. I did a bit of retail therapy at Zara while Krishni searched the bargin bins.

We also checked out a movie, GI Joe, which passed another couple of hours. I was quite relaxed now. We knew the movie finished around 8:30 with our Bus leaving at 9. Plenty of time. Krishni was nervous though as prior that day we had seen someone have trouble getting there bags out of the lockers. When the movie finished at 8:32pm, I have never seen Krishni move so quick. She was half way out the theatre by the time the credits started rolling. We got back to the bags, and then to bus in less than 10mins.

The bus rolled into Merida, our stop just before 3am. We managed to get a cab to our hotel. A beautiful looking place right on the main square. It was also one of the best rooms we had stayed in.

Inside of the hotel was just as nice.

We got up again at 7am and wandered a little trying to find some breakfast but they just don't wake up this early.

It was the most expensive 4 hours ever but at least were back on track.