Madrid to Lisbon

city view

We had a bit of a leisurely morning, basically sleeping in and grabbing some churros y chocolate before heading to the airport.  We took the metro, but when we got to the airport station, we were one of the dumb ones trying to figure out why we couldn’t get through the turnstiles (you need to buy a supplementary ticket when you get to the airport station—you can’t use a T-10 pass).  After making fools of ourselves, Jessica and I began the long walk to our gate.

Our flight on EasyJet left a bit late, but was otherwise unremarkable.  As soon as I turned on my phone after the flight I realized I had voicemails from my friend with whom we were supposed to be staying for the weekend.  When I finally got a hold of him, I found out he was waiting for us at his place and had to get back to work.

Castle of São Jorge in distance

We get to his place and he gives us the quick tour and tells us that if we go out we needed to be back between 6-9pm so he could let us in.  This wasn’t exactly the warm welcome I had expected or the tour guide he had promised to be.  And then when we went to put our things in the spare bedroom, we found a double bed (I had asked him several times if it would be enough room for 3 people as Jill would be joining us tomorrow).  So rather than inconvenience my friend any longer, we decided to hop on priceline.com and see if we could get a room for the weekend.

hilltop view of Lisbon

Now, seeing as neither of us spoke Portuguese, we could not call a cab.  We didn’t have a map of the bus or metro lines.  We were in a residential area, so flagging down a cab probably wasn’t an option.  We finally decided that we were probably about a mile from an area with some hotels so we would just walk down there and get a cab.  As we all know, most street maps do not show hills, so it was only as we got outside and started walking that we realized we were going to have to pull our luggage across the bumpy Portuguese pavement for that mile, and that whole trip would be uphill.  Jessica was not happy with me.  A stop for lunch helped raise our spirits a bit, and even brought us the luck to flag a cab directly outside the restaurant we stopped at.

We decided a little relaxation by the pool was in order.  Turns out the weather had changed a bit and it was now about 70˚F and very windy.  I literally laid on the beach chair under my towel until we finally called it quits and opted for a nap instead.

Dinner was based on the suggestion of the concierge, who told us about a place about 2 blocks away.  The place was small (about 6 tables) and very cute, but we got the impression that we were almost intruding.  The staff was pleasant, though the odd thing was that they kept locking the door after each new patron entered.  The area we were in seemed safe enough and it was relatively early (10:30), so we couldn’t really come up with an explanation.