Day 2 - Sunday, October 20, 2024 - Travel to Lisbon

 Everything went smoothly until we approached Lisbon.

The Lisbon airport was fogged in and the plane couldn't land. We were diverted to Faro, Portugal about 30 minutes away so they could put more fuel in the plane. Eventually we took off back for Lisbon and were able to land there but no gates were available. We had to wait for buses to come out to the plane which took about an hour. Going through customs only took about 30 minutes but by the time we exited, it was about 4 hours after our scheduled arrival.

The rest of our group came on Delta about 45 minutes earlier and were able to land without difficulty before the airport shut down.

The real confusion came with trying to get a ride with Uber. We ordered the ride on the Uber app and the driver said he had arrived about 10 minutes later but we couldn't find him. He didn't seem to understand English enough to explain where he was. There was a big sign in the terminal saying to go to P2 to get Uber and we found a lot of people there. Eventually we got a message saying that our trip was complete and did we want to tip the driver! We ordered another ride and eventually found the car which was in a completely different area. He spoke little English but explained that where we were waiting was for "Uber/Bolt" but he was just "Uber" which is somehow different. Then he took us to the wrong place which was less than 10 minutes away. I managed to communicate to him the right address which was over 20 minutes away! When we finally arrived, he didn't ask for as much as I expected so I gave him a generous tip.

It was surprising that it is so warm, sunny and in the low 70s. I changed into shorts. sandals and a short-sleeve shirt.

We are at the Tivoli Avenida Libertad, a very luxurious hotel. Not the sort of place we would normally stay but maybe other people in the group expect to stay at 4 and 5 star hotels. 

It was very tempting to take a nap but we convinced ourselves to take a walk down the main street towards the waterfront which is a bit like 5th Avenue in NYC with lots of high-end shops and hotels. On Sunday, many vendors setup booths selling jewelry, crafts, magnets, etc - much the same as one finds in the US.

There are many interesting metal sculpture like the one below men constructing one of the mosaic patterns in the sidewalk. Then we came across a group of young people singing and dancing to traditional tunes. We stopped at a tapas bar for glasses of sangria and a mushroom Quesadilla. The bartender said they use vodka in the sangria which was quite potent.

It was getting late so we took the subway / metro back to the hotel for our orientation meeting and group dinner. I had tasty grilled octopus!

Singers and dancers









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