I flew across the Atlantic last night arriving in a cloudy (suprise, suprise) Dublin early in the morning. Walking through the familiar halls of Dublin's poorly organised airport I realised that today I had completed a first. Reaching Dublin from New York marks the first time I have ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean, thus the first time I've circumnavigated the world (albiet with a few years in between trips)!!!! I think this is cool even if no one else does.

I was sitting next to a nice couple on the flight from Dublin to Lisbon, Carlos (from Portugal) and his partner Anna-Marie (from Northern Ireland). They were off for a long weekend at their beach house to the south of Portugal. We got talking and they offered me a ride to my hostel in town - saving 15 euro on cabs (that's around 30 Aussie Pesos) sounded go to me so I accepted. Waiting in the terminal at Lisbon the hire car took a while to get so Carlos went off to get some drinks. He returned a few minutes later with three ice cold beers in glasses and he was upet about the price - in total they cost 5euros!!! Beer by the glass in Portugal is usually less than a euro! Show me any other airport in the world that you can buy beer that cheaply from and then lets you stand around in the terminal area drinking it! I'm going to like it here.....

I was hoping to get by in Portugal on my 'travel' Spanish, my assumption was that the two countries share a peninsular so how different can they be? Listening to a couple of conversations of Portugese on the plane I soon realised that the two are pretty much unrealated. To me Portugese sounds like a Slavic language or even Korean.......I asked Carlos about this and he said that the Portugese, who are generally very easy going, get annoyed when people try to use Spanish here because apparently all the American's do it! Note to self: don't break into Spanish. Despite the differences there are some commonalities in the please (por favor), yes (si), no (no) and hello (ola) and thankfully most people here speak english anyway.................Fala ingles?