June 22-24. LGW-IST-KUL-ADL

Traveling again. But our flight wasn't until nearly 6pm, do hurry up and wait. We mostly sat around all morning. Well, I did, while Lynn finished packing. Then early afternoon we were driven to Gatwick, went through the various queues, then sat around for a few hours. Then more queues into the gate and onto the plane. 

Fortunately the first flight was relatively brief,around three and a half hours. Though when we landed we were taxiing for at least 20 minutes. Istanbul is a seriously big airport, but apparently not big enough: the plane stopped in the middle of nowhere and we were bussed to a terminal.

More plane seatbelts now have a sash strap that you pull down and clip on for takeoff and landing. I'm torn - I appreciate it cars they make seatbelts much safer, but in planes they're very annoying and I don't remember to ever put them on until told. I assume smart people have decided they make a difference, though it's hard to imagine in (and I prefer not to imagine it while sitting on a plane).

The leg from Istanbul to KL was the longest of the trip, around 10 hours. But we slept for maybe half of it (it's hard to keep track of the time) and it was pretty comfortable. As Dad predicted, it wove a path below Ukraine and above Iraq.

You might need to compare that with a map to make sense of it, the borders in that region are pretty complicated.

So I'll finish here, sitting in KL airport waiting for our final flight home.

May 20. OPO-LGW

Another transit day. Travel involves a lot of this inefficient use of time, waits punctuated by brief bursts of activity. 

Fortunately, we had access to the boat for much of the day. Even though we and our bags had to be out of our cabin by 9am, there were several groups who had transfers and flights arranged by Riviera who could stay on board, so the staff didn't mind us doing the same. We thought of going to see more attractions, but the only one I could think of was the Stock Exchange Palace and that felt like a palace too far. So after hanging around a while we walked down to the Atlantic Ocean and back. 

After some lunch I then walked up river as far as I could in the time available, then mid afternoon we took a taxi to the airport. And that was more waiting in a series of places... the duty free queue, the lounge, the gate, and sitting on the plane for a period before it went anywhere.

But really that all went pretty smoothly and uneventfully, and the flight was a bit over two hours, then an hour and a half or so back to Herne Bay.

May 6. LGW-LIS

 We chose Gatwick for most of our flights this trip (just not our initial arrival) because it's a bit closer to Kent. Though still an hour and a half away, rather than two and a half hours. It's not very exciting though; we were up fairly early for the short walk to the terminal and had a quick look around the shops, which were pretty boring. There was essentially no passport control or emigration checks.Then we went to the lounge, which was crowded to the point of being unpleasant. Particularly because we wanted breakfast and a crowded buffet is never appetising. But we survived, and sat and read to pass the time. Travel involves a lot of doing nothing.

The flight to Lisbon is nearly three hours but it went quickly enough. The only holdup was the long queue to get through passport control before we got our bags. Fortunately someone from the tour met us and got us to our hotel smoothly.

The Moon and Sun Hotel is a nice, contemporary looking place in the heart of the city. It's footprint is very small though and the rooms are correspondingly cramped, with almost no storage space. This is more of a problem because the two suitcases we brought are the modern clamshell design, rather than top-loading, so you need space to open them right up, which is awkward.

Anyway, we survived these hardships and had a short rest and regroup, then had time to walk around the local area. This means there are some photos today. The area is squeezed between hills to the west and east, and the Tagus to the south. It's all narrow streets with tall apartment buildings in bright colours. Some are covered in coloured tiles.

The streets are lined with cafes and tourist shops selling tiles, sardines and tarts.

Sardine Shop

Portugese Tarts

Praca do Comercio

In the evening there was a meeting of the group we're with - a dozen people, about half Australasian and half North American. This covered organisational stuff then, after a short break, we all went out to dinner. Luckily they seem like a decent group of people. Lynn and I ate cod cataplana, which is a kind of stew or bouillabaise. On the way back we left the group and went up the Elevador de Santa Justa, an elaborate lift used to get part way up the hillside which is now a tourist attraction.

           

May 5. Gatwick

 Short post as there's not much to say about today and I haven't been able to come up with an interesting picture.

We had a quiet morning, finished packing and this afternoon were driven to Gatwick, where we're staying the night at the Garden Hilton. This means we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow as the hotel is only about a hundred metres from the south terminal. We'll shortly go downstairs for a meal.