FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Ola Portugal!

It was mostly a travel day today and fortunately all went well. The transfer from Bratislava to Vienna airport took around 45 minutes where we farewelled Wayne and Luan. Austrian Air had self service luggage tag print stations as well as bag drop off counters. The whole process was quite smooth and efficient. They included the other Star Alliance partners which encompassed TAP, the airline that we were flying. It seemed reviews of TAP online were variable but we thought they were fine. Our 3 hour economy flight was unremarkable. There was enough legroom, the plane was clean, the staff were friendly and we were given a snack. The highlight of the plane trip was the Lara-induced, plane-wide, super-enthusiastic post-landing applause ...the joy of embarassing your big brother! I hope the crew didn't take this as a lack of respect for the pilot.

TAP. So far so good. Nothing to rave about. Nothing to complain about. Did what we needed it to do at the right price point.

Children were happy to be on a plane again after traveling over land for weeks

Didn't make it out of the airport before we got portuguese tarts. Sheesh!

We had booked our transfers from the airport to our apartments via Rideways which then in turn directed us to Mozio. It was good value as the price included tip and a meet & greet service. What we expected was a van that would take all 9 of us. What we got was 2 vehicles. It was somewhat irritating but I suppose they did wait for each other and we got there in the end. Our home for the next 4 nights will be at Lisbon Serviced Apartments at Baixa Chiado. Apartment rentals come with inherent risks and it is always a relief when they are actually available, they are clean and they look as advertised. One of the three apartments has a broken washing machine (ours!!), but apart from that they are quite nice and seem to be in a good location.

Two things hit us immediately upon arrival at Lisbon. The first was that 12 degrees celsius felt positively glorious, even bordering on boiling, after temperatureshoverering at or below 0. The second was that we we felt we had finally reached civilisation...foodie civilisation. No offence to Eastern Europe...As we wandered through the Chiado area towards Time Out Markets, enjoying the last day of the Christmas lights, there was a palpable sense of happiness. It turned out to be our stomaches rejoicing! Time Our Markets is pretty much a big funky food court, and our senses were initally overwhelmed by choices. It didn't take us long to get our mojo back and the children were delighted to go and buy their dinner themselves.

As we walked back towards our apartments, we did miss our guides. There was no no one to tell us about the church that we walked past or relay an interesting story about the inhabitant or educate us on relevant history. The rest of the evening was the necessary evil of laundry and groceries so I'll sign out here.