Well we arrived and are tucked safely in our villa. Rough day. I didn’t sleep all night and we left for the airport at 5:30 am not that it mattered to me. The flight was on TAP which we flew on to Lisbon, it was a newer plane and very clean, this one while not dirty, I sure wouldn’t call it clean. They did offer a very cool morning snack however, sealed plates of cheese, walnuts, raisins and a chocolate chip granola like crisp cookie. We landed uneventfully a...

Day Three in Lisboa. My first question is why Lisboa? Historically it refers to the Barrios de Lisboa or the neighborhoods of Lisbon. Another explanation I found was that locals call their city Lisboa, which comes from the Phoenician term Alis Ubbo or calm port. Your choice, I guess. We walked all kinds of Barrios de Lisboa today. The Mason men like to walk, just ask my sister in law Mieke. We managed to get going at a decent hour today and jumped onto the Metro...

Day Two The 5 hour time change kicked our butts last night which led to a late start. We tried something new and asked concierge at the hotel for not only a map, but directions. I know, not our usual plan. We received great information and set off with castles and historical facts bouncing around our brains. With so much going on, I’m amazed we managed to find our station, but we did. Well honestly we thought we did and yes it did eventually get us to Sintra b...

Day One in Lisbon. We arrived in the wee hours of the morning. It took us about an hour to get through customs, pick up luggage etc. We found a cab right away and had a smooth ride to the Lisbon Marriott. The plan was to drop luggage and explore. Marriott was awesome and gave us a room after only waiting a few minutes. I’m thinking it’s payback from all those business trips Bill took while I shared KD with the kids back home. Wonderful. We had a wonderful br...

Bill and I have officially started our journey to Lisbon and beyond as of 5:15 am. Jocelyn drove us to the airport bright and early and we checked in. Our baggage was so far over the weight limit it was almost comical. There we were shoving things wherever possible. I dragged the offending suitcase back to the scale and low and behold 49.5 lbs. Sweet! We dropped the bags off and headed to security. Now remember this is Washington DC so we removed most of our loo...