12/15 – 12/16 After months of planning, it was finally time to take to the skies and get ourselves to Portugal! As you all know, a couple weeks before we left, the Omicron variant of Covid reared its ugly head and we had some uncertainty about how new travel restrictions might affect us, but with a few minor adjustments, we were able to start our trip without too much trouble. The biggest headache was trying to get tested for Covid within the newly required 24 hours before our flights. I managed to get a little confused (go figure) about whether the negative test result needed to be within 24 hours of departure, or 24 hours of arriving at our destination. Because of this confusion, we each ended up taking 2 separate tests, but thankfully received our negative results in time for our flights!

After a couple hours layover at Heathrow, which may or may not have included a surprisingly yummy sausage roll, we were off on a 3 hour flight to Lisbon. It was around 6:45PM when we arrived (I think). It took a bit to get through customs and Covid documents check, and to get our luggage, but finally we grabbed a cab and headed to where we needed to check in by 8:00 to get the key to our VRBO. The cab driver spoke little English, but she was quite friendly as she gave us our first taste of Lisbon traffic. The traffic was a little disconcerting and I was glad we didn’t plan on driving while in the city.

Once checked in, we got an Uber to what would be our home for the next couple days. The apartment was in Old Town, but was updated, clean, and pretty spacious for a big city apartment. It was a little strange finding our way in, as we’d been told it was on the ground floor. When we unlocked the dark green door that was right on the busy sidewalk, we found that there was nowhere to go but up. Literally. There was a fairly steep, old wooden staircase that was our only option, so up we went. Oddly, the stairwell wasn’t lit, but when David made it to the top, a motion-sensor light came on to light the landing. No matter. We found, actually David found our door while I whined about not being able to see anything and we made it into the apartment. We were exhausted, but hungry and fortunately for us, the Portuguese tend to eat later than what we are used to in the U.S. There was an open restaurant a couple doors down from our apartment and we gave it a go. Neither of us was feeling culinarily adventurous at the time, and we each ordered chicken dishes. Our waiter, Hugo, asked if he could guess where we were from and he guessed correctly. He told us (in excellent English) that he could usually tell where people were from as soon as they walked in the door. He was a friendly sort, and it felt like a warm welcome to this country.

After getting a little food in our tummies, we were pretty sleepy, so we headed back up the dark stairs to our apartment. After guzzling a few glasses of water, washing up a little, and brushing our teeth, we fell asleep to the raucous sounds of the busy Lisbon street outside our window.