Marriott Lisbon

We have now been 2 days in Lisbon after spending a night in Porto which is in northern Portugal. Today we did a tour of Lisbon in the morning and then did a tour of Estoril, Cascais and other towns near there. This is where I stayed when I came to DFK conference in Portugal about 3 years ago. It was good fun revisiting these places and showing Anne some of the places I visited then. Tonight we are going to a traditional Portuguese feast and show and tomorrow we are off to Seville - back into ...

It should be pretty easy to make it from the resort in Obidos to the Marriott in Lisboa....the key is, it should be. After almost burning up one rental car, the other rental car went on a 1 hour and 15 minute detour. Kent, Shannon and myself were in that car. Shannon and I went into the gas station to ask directions after getting a little lost. The store clerk intentionally, in perfect English, told us to follow the signs to Valle Gamas. This we did. This lead us onto a 12 KM bridge and anoth...

Hi everybody! Portugal is one of the few western European countries that we hadn't visited so far, but all that changed when we took a 10 day trip there at the end of May. We flew into Lisbon and spent three days in Lisbon before heading to the fishing villages and (cold and windy) beach north of there. We then crossed the country diagonally to the southeastern corner before driving the southern coastline to what used to be the end of the known world. Along the way we found incredibly warm an...

The flight down was beautiful as we came into Portugal and followed the coast down to Lisbon. Clear skies and beautiful countryside excited us. At least we prefer that to sleep deprivation. Once through immigration we made our way to the rental car agency and picked up our car. The Marriott was only 4 miles from the airport so we thought this would save us a bit of time the following day and allow us to get out of town sooner. Our downfall was uttering the words, "how tough can this be" regar...

A travel day today as we put nearly 300 km between us and Madrid. We passed near the Valley of the Fallen, climbed steadily through mountainous terrain before stopping at Segovia, a town famous for its Roman aqueduct. In the centre of town is a perfectly preserved aqueduct . 890m of the original 4 km is left, it has 90 arches each 28m high and use absolutely no mortar at all. That it remains in such condition after almost 2000 years leaves one marvelling at the skill of the builders or rather...

Whoops. Confession time. Last night I put Salamanca in to Portugal when it is actually in Spain and I don't want to start an international incident. We stayed at the Almeda Palace Hotel in Salamanca and crossed into Portugal the next morning, visiting the Fatima site that afternoon, Then we arrived at teh Lisbon Marriott Hotel. We had a good next day seeing the sights around Lisbon. A local guide took us around the city itself first then out to several nearby areas . As with the Madrid tour w...

Lots of colorful photos from around town. Wear comfortable shoes...you'll be doing a lot of walking and Lisbon has some serious hills to climb in the city! Taxis are plentiful and very inexpensive but I had some difficulty with English and proud Portuguese residents resent being spoken to in Spanish, so keep that in mind. Fish, fish, fish! Fish for breakfast, fish for lunch, and fish for dinner! That's Portugal, but be prepared to "de-bone" your own fish, which makes eating any meal painfully...

The bus to the airport was running late. Very late, in fact. Kelly and I were feeling bad because our friend Neill, whom we were going to pick up, was going to be standing around in the airport by himself after a 10 hour flight. Could we be any more rude? Eventually we caught a bus and made it to the passenger pick up. The board said that Neills flight was actually early. Now we were really feeling bad. We looked and looked for him with no luck. All of a sudden, like a mudslide, our good budd...

Waking up the next day was painful. There really isn't any other way to describe it. We got our stuff together and eventually made our way out of the city. Only after stopping to buy "Rising Cock" T-shirts, of course. Cutlip suggested that since they had an early flight the next day, that we pick a place not too far from Lisbon and just get on the road early the next day. We picked Evora, a medevil town about 100K's away. Driving across Portugal was absolutely stunning. It's kind of a shame t...