Lisbon Portugal

Sunday, June 15^th, 2025- Madrid, Spain

          We were up early and started packing. That’s easy enough. There  are no decisions to make. You just toss everything you have in a bag. Coffee and chocolate croissants were again our starter.

            After checking out, we hailed a cab on Avenue Atocha for the run to Madrid International. We were flying Iberia Air. The plane started boarding and took forever to get ready to leave. The older plane was much more comfortable and roomier than many of the newer planes. We were sitting in the cheap seats, but didn’t mind. It was a one hour and twenty-minute hop to Lisbon. The flight was quick and easy.

         Making our way through the terminal proved more difficult. We finally hooked up with our luggage. There was no required customs check. One door said “something to declare,” the other said “all the rest of you deceptive weasels.” Getting through that door was like being in a   scrum during a rugby game. About five hundred rascals pushed into lines and mobbed their way through the gate. God bless the British for their sense of order. I wish they were running this place.

          Fortunately for us, a Gate #1 representative was waiting for six of us as we emerged from the scrum. She took us all in hand, in the awful heat, and led us to a bus that would ferry us to the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Lisbon. We were just happy to have things go so easily. Good job Gateway.

          The Sheraton Hotel was a step up in class for us. It is luxurious. We checked in with no effort and made our way to our comfortable room on the eleventh floor. It was very nice. We unpacked, for our two-night stay and caught a major cat nap that lasted well into the late afternoon.

          Cleaning up, we made it to the basement meeting room for a six P.M. one-hour briefing and “meet and greet” with other tour members of our group. Free glasses, of a decent dry red wine, loosened up tongues. We met our guide for the next ten days. “Carmen” is one of those wonderful and capable tour guides that could handle anything. We were to much appreciate her skills over the next week. She briefed us on any number of cultural tips, security alerts and ways to do things. She had a sense of humor that made you feel at ease. Though born in Madrid, she had married and settled in Portugal north of here. She suggested that we use English to speak to merchants. Apparently the Portuguese are all well-schooled in English from an early age. 

             After the meeting, we settled into the first-floor dining area, adjacent to the bar, with several couples in our group. Mary and I had Caesar salads, with some decent cabernet and great bread and oil for dinner. ($40 Euros.) It was a good opportunity for us to chat with several new friends from Spring Run, who were on the trip with us. We much enjoyed the brief repast. We would all be taking a tour of Lisbon tomorrow and looked forward to it. Mary and I had taken this tour, on a previous visit, but still looked forward to “seeing it all again.”

           As the evening hours asserted their claim, we made our way to our eleventh-floor aerie and settled in to read and crash. We always use the Italian term for tired, “Stanke Morte,” (dead tired.)

                                                      -30-

                                                ( 582 words)

                                            Joseph Xavier Martin