June 10 Monday Lagos to Lisbon
- Pack to bid Lagos a farewell
- Make picnic lunch
- Eat all other leftovers for breakfast - fruit salad, pasta, eggs, yogurt
- Everyone has job to do
- Mo gets dirty dish duty
- Shaina gets garbage duty - search for garbage cans down the street
- Finds them but can't figure out how to dispose of garbage
- How to go from one bag to blue, green or yellow
- Chooses a can and leaves the problem to someone else
- Load car and head to Salema
- About 20 minutes to a sleepy little fishing town
- Rick Steves says park in gravel lot
- We enter gravel lot
- And then next gravel lot and next and next then we find spot
- Pass very large green, yellow and blue garbage cans
- Must be for the whole town
- Hope no one is color blind
- Stop at first Café on the beach
- Order meia de leite but get Americano which is no milk
- Eventually get milk
- In Evora the saying goes Time is Time
- In Salema, even more so
- Ernie does the hand squiggle to get the bill
- Walk on beautiful beach, soft sand, no wind, no waves, stones not shells, cold water
- Walk around streets
- Lots of ups, legs getting strong
- Bases of houses have shells, stones, tiles, or marble
- Time to leave - head deep into gravel lot to extract car
- Drive to Sagres another 20 minutes
- Continue on to the most south-western point in mainland Europe - Cabo de Sao Vicente - The end of the world
- Pass the food truck for The last Hot Dog before America
- Enter the gated area where the St. Vincent Lighthouse is located.
- Used to be 6 mile oil lamp - now a 60 mile modern light
- Great views of wild ocean all around
- Be careful not to get blown out to sea
- Time to head to Lisbon - Shaina and Mo fly out in the morning
- Trip takes about an hour longer than planned due to many traffic jams on the highway
- Never saw why, traffic just stopped then eventually moved
- Arrive Tryp Hotel at Lisbon Airport
- Have to parallel park on street
- Ernie gets out to direct
- Cut hard, keep cutting, keep cutting, turn wheel right, no keep cutting.
- Ignore directions and park perfectly
- At check-in given pretty packaged cookies
- Mo quickly downs his then warns us not to do the same
- So we opt for the red tea with mint which is worth drinking
- Get 2 connecting rooms seventh floor
- Have to swipe room key for elevator to move
- Swipe room key, press seven
- Button turns red then nothing happens
- Try again
- Nothing happens
- Big discussion about being overweight
- Zero floor has green light
- Seventh floor has red light - do not enter, not accessible, ??
- What are we doing wrong
- Is red light bad or good?
- One more try until someone outside elevator tells us Ernie's pack is sticking out of elevator door
- He moves and so does elevator
- Enter room
- Tub is in bathroom but has curtain that opens so can look into bedroom
- Then opposite is toilet to left, shower to right with privacy glass doors
- When light on not so private.
- From bedroom see shadows thru glass so pee with light off
- Ernie says Just close the bathtub curtain
- Good thinking
- Leaving Shaina and Mo behind head to elevator
- Press 0, it turns red, no need to swipe
- Now we get it, green floor you are on, red floor it will go to
- Get directions from front desk to car rental return, go right, then left then airport.
- Ernie programs GPS just in case
- We go right then hit a circle.
- So do we go 270 and out to make the left?
- GPS says take 3rd exit which is U-turn
- We do U-turn
- Come to circle next to hotel, turn right and there's airport.
- Review car no dings just dirt
- Need to go inside if want receipt
- My trusty car rental guide says get receipt
- Long line inside and don't want to get deli counter ticket
- Line patrol lets us cut line
- We keep our eyes forward and don't look at all the waiting eyes
- Walk back to hotel dodging cars intent on hitting us
- Safe arrival
- Use elevator with no drama
- Dinner in the hotel
- Two veal burger patties with bacon in middle and cheese (no catchy tune to go with it)
- Smoked and baked salmon on terrible tasting onion which turns out to be fennel
- Funny fish tapas
- Cucumber watermelon gazpacho
- And for dessert - sleep