We left Seattle at 1:35 ish and arrived in London at 6:30 am. Neither of us slept on the plane very well and we had 4 hours to kill in London.
Coffee was a must. We found, big surprise, a Starbucks and we were all set.
Heathrow is interesting because they don’t give you your gate until about 40 minutes before your flight. So we said in this huge area with a ton of other travelers and we people watched for 2 hours. Always entertaining.
We finally were ready to board. at our was A17- go off we went. We started boarding and our tickets were declined by the reader. We tried twice and nothing. Uh Oh. So we walked over to the ticket agent who scanned them and very snobby like said, “You’re going to Lisbon! This is plane is going to blah blah blah.” (She didn’t really say blah blah blah, I just can’t remember where.) She got all huffy when I said, but the reader board said A17. She basically kicked us out of the entire area and said, “Go read the board again.”
Now I’m SURE it said A17. I checked it twice. Something happened between me checking it and us walking to the gate.
We found the right gate and booked it over to that gate. Thankfully we had time, but man, talk about stressful.
Landed in Lisbon, got our bags, got cash from the cash machine and went in search of then Globus rep who’d take us to our hotel. Found them pretty quickly and off we went.
We stayed in Hotel Mundial which is smack in downtown Lisbon. It’s a nice hotel and did seem close to a bunch of things. We never had time to even walk out the front doors to go explore on our own.
The first night there’s a Welcome dinner. It gives the tour guide a chance to tell us the plan for the next 9 days, cover some rules (which no one listens to) and we all introduce ourselves. As we walked into the restaurant, I noticed there were seats for at least 40 people. Interesting since Janet and I signed up (and paid for) a small group tour. Nope! We have 40 people on this tour.
And while it’ll be fine, I was really looking forward to it being a small group of people instead of a large group. Too many personalities to deal with in large groups.
No matter, here we are and it’ll be great. We have to get up at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow (6:15) so we can shower and get to breakfast by 7 so we can leave by 8. I had forgotten that you really don’t get much rest on these Globus Tours.
Tomorrow is all about Lisbon. We’ll be meeting a local guide and going to see the Belem Tower, The Monument of the Discoveries and the Jeronimos Monastery. That will take us to about noon, then we head off to an extra excursion to Cascais. Then we signed up to do a foodie tour that night. I have a feeling I’m going to be hot, full and so very exhausted.
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