I couldn’t resist with the title, but don’t let it make you think this is a negative review of an entire (albeit tiny) country. As per usual I’ll be a bit snarky and pessimistic about things, but there were good times to be had as well. Portugal ended up not being my favorite place in the world, but we knew that going in, I prefer nature to cities (for travel), so that should not be a surprise to anyone. However, I do appreciate that I have the ability to travel to these places and experience these things, which many in the world do not.

That said, my wife admitted before our trip that she had an ulterior motive for suggesting this destination. We’ve both been stressed more than normal at work the last year and a half. You can deduce why given the timing and the fact that I work in Medicaid (which the orange team thought would be great to cut funding for) and she works in international shipping (for a country that Fat Fanta changes the tariffs for almost daily – depending on who’s bribed him to manipulate the market the night before, as any President with SCOTUS affirmed immunity is wont to do!). I’ve always understood the arrangement, though; I work for money. Money that lets me to do the things I need to do and the things I want to do. Nobody wants to pay me for the output of activities I enjoy, so I must continue to do work I do not enjoy so that I may deliver my creative output to a singular customer base that only pays in fulfillment (although part of creative fulfillment is an acknowledgement that others understand what’s going on in your head, which I am currently failing to get through any medium, but this isn’t a post about any of that).

My wife on the other hand, played the game of life correctly (until the Orange-idiotang sold the game board and leased the hotels to FIFA officials) and actually managed to employ herself doing something she enjoys. That is, until everything in all our lives was “made great again.” A year of 12 hour days reacting to the whims (and inner circle bribes) of a mad king changes things. It makes you wonder if you can sell your house and retire somewhere cheaper. Portugal was a place the internet suggested as that somewhere. But it’s not just us, my uncles visited Portugal recently for the same reason.

I’ll cut to the third act: All four of us came to the same “this isn’t it” conclusion about Portugal for different reasons. For the two of us it was multitudes of things, but something that stood out dramatically in person was the omnipresent cigarette smoke. We both had to take allergy pills after a day or two and I’m not convinced it’s pollen related. Portugal, like almost every other country on Earth, has of course eliminated indoor smoking in public places. However, unlike most places (especially southern California), there is zero public stigma and their society adjusts to just allowing everyone to smoke in the streets. Young people smoke cigarettes in Portugal like young people in California sip from water bottles (remember the Stanley trend?). Not to put on a red hat or anything, but we did wonder if all these folks would be so freely partaking in a well known cause of cancer if their later treatments wouldn’t be free. (cheap socialized medical care is one of several reasons Portugal has enticed many older Americans to make the switch) Several times we’d go to a business where we wanted to go inside, often restaurants, and we decided not to because a waiter or a cook or just some dude would be standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette. This sort of nonsense would put you out of business in Santa Monica. In Portugal there’s a smoking employee outside almost every business in town, it’s like hell’s version of the BBQ place that pushes the BBQ smell out to lure you in. Although if EVERYTHING smells like BBQ I suppose you’d no longer notice it.

There were other issues more mundane than the smoke; driving in the major cities is an almost Bangkokian level of insanity, everything everywhere in the cities seems to be dirty, the food is basically just steak and Olive Garden dishes at twice the price or baked cod with mayonnaise on top. Can you eat that for the rest of your life? Maybe someone in Norman Oklahoma would consider it refreshing, but when you already live a few miles from the original Nobu… I don’t think so. Our first meal out when we got back to California was to a local Thai restaurant, which made Sam realize how important it is to have that available wherever we live. Considering Los Angeles has the highest quantity of Thai people outside of Thailand, I don’t think it’ll be easy finding that elsewhere. Indeed, trying Thai food in other cities like Reykjavik and Banff in the past only drove this point home, pun intended.

To be clear, this dig at the food was not unique. As I’ll talk about in a bit, we met up with four friends in Lisbon and they said the same thing, unprompted. They already gave up and started going to Thai restaurants, Korean BBQ, etc. However, as you’ll read later, when we tried this trick it didn’t quite work out. The quality of non-Portuguese food seems to be even lower. And why not, there’s not much competition. The sushi place we went to with amazing reviews in the trendy part of Lisbon turned out to be owned and operated by a Chinese family with pre-refrigerated rolls (from Sysco or something), whose (reviewing) clientele clearly don’t have access to great Japanese food.

Okay, so that’s why we wouldn’t live there, which is not really why you should or shouldn’t vacation somewhere. For vacationing purposes Portugal fares much better. It’s kind of a second-tier (behind say Paris or Machu Picchu) destination, but it performs well in certain aspects. I was pleasantly surprised by some things I thought would be boring (the wine region), and had to change my opinion about a few destinations. We both agreed after the trip we had the same “favorite” place, and it wasn’t what we thought it would be a month ago.

Customary disclosure: Yes, we did almost everything outdoors, and wore masks indoors. One thing that Portugal, maybe all of Europe (even London in the dead of winter, as we found out in 2023), does well is al fresco dining. At least in terms of availability. We didn’t have to search long to find something suitable, and every hotel that offered breakfast had an outdoor area to eat it in. That said “suitable” often meant second hand smoking a pack of cigarettes.

Friday, May 15th

After locking up the house we ubered to LAX for our 5pm flight to Heathrow, which was uneventful except for the abnormal amount of turbulence that kept us both from getting even the slightest bit of pretend sleep. We were told with confidence at LAX that our checked bags would transfer over at London and we wouldn’t have to recheck them. I can’t remember what we did at Heathrow to verify this, but we must have. If you’ll recall last year New Zealand Air told us that at LAX and then DIDN’T transfer them. However, that was a transfer to a domestic flight; our stint in Heathrow was continuing on through the international terminal to a different country altogether. We had plenty of time to look it up though because…

Saturday, May 16th

At Heathrow our afternoon flight to Faro was delayed, then delayed again. The pilot later said the towing machine had broken down while towing the plane back from maintenance.

On the three hour flight to Faro we flew along the Portuguese coast and then over what other passengers said was the “Dragon River.” I saw something dragon-like and took photos, but later learned they were seeing something much more obvious on the east side, and I was sitting at the western window, so I guess I just got the wormy river or the snakey river or something:

Those folks missed out when we made our final approach though as I had a great view of the coastline and they got…open water:

Despite the exciting views it was dragging into a long day, but for whatever reason I didn’t get the headaches on the plane that plagued me on flights to Canada, Hawaii, and other places the last few years. But by the time we got to Faro I was definitely feeling jetlag and glad we still had the agreement in place that if Sam gets any sleep on the plane she should drive the rental that first day, not sleepy me.

Because of the delays we didn’t get the keys to our rental car until almost 8pm, and our hotel was an hours drive away, but we needed to eat something first. And Sam was getting a migraine. Every time I’m in this situation in the moment I think “this isn’t worth it, I’m not traveling again!”

Eating in a foreign place with our outdoor only covid restrictions can be difficult, but in a hurry in a little port town it is much harder. We settled on an Indian restaurant with outdoor seating and got going. However, on the way we spotted a grocery store that was going for a Whole Foods vibe. Inside they did have fresh made food, but the buffet looked languid by 8pm so we were stuck scanning the microwavable packages created earlier that day. And I mean scanning the ingredients with Google translate, since everything is in Portuguese.

The Portuguese have a standard dish of dried pork and rice. Both things edible for me, but too dry. So we bought the smallest bottle of olive oil we could find and went to the car to eat. They did have tables outside but they were all taken by smokers.

The decision to buy olive oil would prove ironic, since EVERY restaurant in Portugal trots out (or already displays at every table) an olive oil and white wine vinegar combo. This is their equivalent of ketchup and mustard bottles at the table and I gotta say I prefer this. Combine that with the smoking and you can see why they’re all thinner on average than we are.

After a tense drive in the dark we made it to Jardim Du Vao. Our hotel featured “apartments” which have a full kitchen and everything…well, not everything; we found ourselves without soap for washing dishes and without coffee for the coffee machine. Maybe that’s a local thing? The hotel had billed itself as a four star “resort” with a bunch of awards behind the check-in desk and everything, but our room was not fancy at all and this was the only place on this trip where I saw some insects in the room.

The hotel is situated along the main road and the windows are not well insulated, so all night we got to hear the quaint sounds of all the other tourists arriving after late flights, twice! Why twice? It’s on the “wrong” side of a long divided street, so to get there you must drive past once, go all the way to the end, cruise all the way round the roundabout (god, I hate roundabouts – at least with two lanes, I think the insurance companies must have sponsored those!) and head back down the street. So we heard all the other guests “coming and going” if you will, and (mom, close your eyes!) because of our thin walls the other puns also apply.

By the time we got to bed it was probably around midnight local time, which means a total bed-to-bed stretch of roughly 34 hours if I calculated that right. So it was similar to “pulling an all-nighter” in college. But we’re not in college anymore, and by the time we got to bed our heads were pounding.

Side note: as a test after we returned I went without coffee for one day and discovered that I get withdrawal headaches in the afternoon. This may be, in part, what has given me headaches during flights because I’ll often go without coffee in order to avoid having to urinate frequently. It never works, the anxiety of flying (and an enlarged prostate, diagnosed last year) makes me go every five minutes anyway.

Sunday, May 17th

After a long night we awoke mid-morning to discover the hotel room had a balcony, technically with a little sliver of an ocean view. And then, rested, no longer with a pounding headache, but listening to seagulls and waves (although, technically I could easily listen to these sounds back home!) I thought “okay, I will still travel, it’ll be nice not to worry about work for two weeks, let’s see what Portugal is all about!”

On our first real day in Portugal we tried to find a weekend market Sam had heard about, but when we got to the location it was just a bus stop. So we just kind of drove aimlessly up the road until we got to the first restaurant we saw. Their English was not great, but good enough to explain the meats and avoid any allergens. Sam had local grilled octopus and I had the lamb. Then we had some desert which was pretty good – the pears are soaked in sugar and port wine.

Originally we’d planned to hike the seven hanging valleys trail today, but Sam didn’t sleep well so we decided to take it a little easier and visit some of the “park and walk” type spots we originally scheduled for Tuesday, starting in Lagos.

No, not THAT Lagos, the one that’s pronounced La-Gauche. Hell, maybe they’re both pronounced that way, I wouldn’t know, I’ve not been to Africa….yet…(check back in about that around this time next year)

After getting some gelato in the port area of town we walked up the hill to the dramatic cliff walk along the coast.

We’d later learn that basically everything in Algarve is a hike along the cliffs.

A little farther along the coast we came to sprawling coastline hike that reminded us a lot of Malibu, moreso than what we’d seen of the cliffs so far because this place was set apart from the city, with fancy restaurants dotting the cliffs and wide gently sloping wooden boardwalks instead of sandy trails.

But there wasn’t much to see from the boardwalks, you’d have to climb down/through the handrails (which we saw many folks doing) and then take risky little sandy switchbacks down through all the cliff openings. Since this was very similar to what we’d already seen we decided not to do this.

We hopped back in the car and drove just a bit more westward, to what is the penultimate southwestern edge of Europe. I say penultimate because from where we were we could see the lighthouse that’s actually on the southernwesternmost point, but it would have been a long walk through the dunes and we just decided not to in favor of getting dinner.

Here’s the view looking back east from the penultimate southwestern edge of Europe! Sorry, mom, I didn’t get a picture of the lighthouse.

We were also motivated to wrap up today’s activities a little earlier than planned by a text we received from the tour operator we’d booked for the next day, which I’ll copy and paste verbatim… how would YOU interpret this?

We decided we would just go along with the earlier tour because if we moved it to Tuesday and that got cancelled we wouldn’t get to go at all. Since we now needed to get up earlier than planned we skipped the peninsula with the lighthouse next door and went eat dinner at a steakhouse called Mada, where I asked (as I do everywhere) if the food we ordered had wheat, buckwheat, barley, or nuts. They said no and proceeded to sell us on these unique to Portugal fizzy fruit drinks.

After taking a sip of mine I felt funny and looked at the ingredients. Of course: Barley. In a carbonated soda water with fruit juice. FOR WHAT REASON?! The one they brought Sam had no barley in it so we switched glasses. Sigh. This was the hardest part of the trip. For those that don’t know, the Portuguese speak Portuguese, not spanish. Their english is often not good enough to parse the difference between wheat, gluten, and buckwheat – and all the AI translation in the world can’t make exact sense of Portuguese food labels. I had to give up on eating a lot of things because there was just no way to be sure what was in it. And here, again, the “gluten-free” trend was not helping. Lots of stuff was helpfully labelled “gluten free” but a third of the time would substitute barley or just use deglutinized wheat flour (which doesn’t help if you’re actually allergic to the flour and don’t have celiacs disease!).

After this we went to the grocery store to get breakfast to eat in the hotel room (yogurt, sausages, eggs, bananas).

Monday, May 18th

Bright and early we got up and gulped down our breakfast before the 40 minute drive across town (roundabouts don’t always move as fast as Yes would have you believe!) to the marina de Albufeira.

Once there we went to the check in and the lady said “oh! But you didn’t respond to our text, we thought you weren’t coming, I don’t know if we have space left.”

She kept saying “we texted you” over and over to establish if we couldn’t take the tour it was our fault, anticipating this was going to get ugly with cocky American entitled tourists (and in my head I’m wondering what I’m going to do if they try to keep our money and make us get up early to give us no tour) and I tried to interject that “yes you did text and you asked to confirm if we wanted to move it to a different day…which we didn’t, so we left it at the new time you told us the tour was happening,” but before fisticuffs began she said “oh! you’re in luck, we can still fit you in.”

There was plenty of space on that boat. It became obvious the reason for the change of schedule wasn’t anything to do with the “sea conditions” from their text- we’d watch the same boats jet up and down the coast the rest of the day from land – instead we figured out they had under booked at our time and overbooked a boat for that morning a group so large they wouldn’t all fit in one boat, so they needed to split the large booked morning party across two boats in the morning, condensing the small booking for the afternoon into the overflow boat so they wouldn’t waste gas, which is now very expensive (thanks again, Donald!). Whatever, we made it, we were going on the tour.

That’s the other boat with the original morning tour group that spilled over into our rescheduled tour. Jerks.

They sat us on the right side of the boat, which turned fortuitous because we went west along the coast so people on the left side (just like on the plane final descent) didn’t have much to look at but the endless Atlantic. (it’s not really endless, if the Earth was flat you would see Casablanca way off in the distance)

Maybe to sanitize it a bit for a family tour they told us that phallic stone structure looked like a periscope on a submarine and The Beatles wrote Yellow Submarine after visiting the Algarve. Although The Beatles (and in particular Paul) did spend some time in the region and came up with melodies (which, honestly they were doing everywhere they went), there’s no evidence anyone outside of tour guides ever connected this rock with a yellow submarine.

We stopped briefly at a few of the caves, waiting for our turn at the famous cave with the hole that’s now only accessible by tourboat.

Then we went out into the Atlantic for a while looking for dolphins after the guide stressed that we’d be “really really really lucky if we see some.” I wrote we were “looking” for a while, but it was really just speeding in one direction for maybe 25 minutes and then miraculously, whaddayaknow, there were a bunch of tour boats watching a pod of bottlenose dolphins following a fishing boat leaking a free meal.

Back at the marina we decided to go to the “old town” Albufeira area for lunch. Unfortunately, a lot of the restaurant options are extremely touristy; think Hard Rock Cafe and steakhouses with carnival barkers in front of each place trying to lure people in, lots of competing bass blasting rap, every other place is a “sports bar” with pitcher deals, and lots of smoking (although that’s the whole country)…so basically Myrtle Beach in 1999 (and maybe 2026 too, I haven’t been back). Given the similarity to every other tourist trap we’ve traveled to going after cheap tourists with overpriced bad food, we were pretty turned off by this experience. After too much meat and a twist in the road we discovered a more visually appetizing part of town with the little winding cobblestone alleyways Portugal is known for and we’d see a great deal of later, but this was the first blush on this trip. We shopped for souvenirs (folks if you got a cork postcard or souvenir from us it’s from Old Town Albufeira) and then walked onto the beach for a bit, noting the un-California-like ratio of cigarette butts to sand.

I need to upgrade to an A9 with a zoom lens so you see the cigarette butts!

Next we drove up the coast to Algar Seco, one of the places our boat had lingered at in the water and we’d read about online before taking the trip. It’s a cool spot, the main attraction being a staircase that zigzags down a cliff to a pool fed by the Atlantic crashing through a sea cave.

On the other side of the cliff from the staircase is a more leisurely coastal cliffs boardwalk with occasional stone steps down to tide pools and ocean spray (the salty kind, not the fruity kind).

There was also a restaurant there with a cave walkway (the little hole in the rocks you can see in the photo below) to an open cave “window” of the ocean (the photo above), but the menu was pretty boring and too expensive for us so we didn’t eat there.

So after walking up and down the stairs and checking out many caves we went to a grocery store for some quick nutrition (yogurt and juice) before going back to the hotel. Our hotel has a beach cliff walk of its own, which we followed out to the Ponta Joao de Arens, but the sun was already setting back behind the cliffs, so we agreed to come back in the morning with more time and energy and explore it more in depth…or…rather at height.

I bet you wish YOU had a self-cleaning outhouse! (as Bill O’Reilly says: “the tide goes in, the tide goes out, you can’t explain that, but it sure will take your ass out to sea!”)

Seriously though, we have no idea what this thing was. I’m afraid to ask AI, but the wildly incorrect hallucinations might be fun.

Tuesday, May 19th

We deliberately slept in late and then went for brunch at Jacaranda Restaurant next to the hotel where we were the only customers of the seafood restaurant owned by a British expat. He cooked the fish in butter which definitely makes a difference when consuming bream. Also he understood the importance of tartar sauce, an English adaptation I’d miss for the rest of the trip.

We walked out to the point and past where we had gone last night. During which we discovered a nude beach, unless they’re all nude beaches and most people just don’t bother. If the thought makes you excited to visit the Algarve, your enjoyment of this in the future may be tempered by something else we learned about Portugal that now might be a good time to mention: It’s full of geriatrics. Not so much the cities up north (which are full of South Koreans, which is another story), but the Algarve is almost exclusively haunted by 70 year old working class Brits. So yes, I looked over a cliff, saw an 80 year old’s bell end (I only recently learned what that really means, I always thought it meant the left side of an IQ distribution, boy was a I wrong!) and nearly stumbled off the other side of the cliff in shock. I’m being dramatic, nobody above that man would have ever seen a thing since he never met a fish and chips he didn’t eat and he’s putting the local sunscreen shop owners kids through college.

So here’s a disclaimer: Some of the photos below might have naked people, I don’t know… (that comma is doing the lord’s work, since I did mention we ran into friends, didn’t I!)

After freshening up at the hotel we drove to downtown Portimau to visit the post office to exchange currency and buy stamps (why do no souvenir shops that sell postcards sell stamps?). We took a ticket and waited for over an hour. I’d say it’s the “everything is slower in Europe” deal but American post offices are slow too (in a deliberate enshittification by Louis DeJoy at the behest of the Trump Corporation to make mail-in voting worse now and set up the case for a privatization effort later to company that’s bought TrumpCoin or whatever bribe is available by then). After waiting and finally going up to the window we were told they don’t exchange cash, you have to go to the bank, but the bank just closed….while we were waiting, of course. She also said you can only buy stamps with a “Portugal card” or cash. No idea what a “Portugal card” is but the machine refused my international visa. So….an hour for nothing. (after some research I think the lady meant their citizen card – a kind of national ID card – that we obviously wouldn’t have had anyway)

On the plus side, we now know where our lord and savior gets his car washed:

Before you think we’re dumb for sitting at the post office keep in mind we did currency exchanges this way in France, Belgium, England, and Switzerland in the past after being ripped off in Italy at a private currency exchange booth before we knew post offices typically offer this service in Europe. Except for Portugal, apparently.

So, dejected and alone in a foreign country, the laughingstock of the villagers, we wandered up the cobblestone alleys until we found an Indian restaurant for dinner. Technically we tried to go to a sardines restaurant I’d spotted nearby earlier in the day, but it was still closed at 6 on a Tuesday. (one thing that’s frustrating and true about Portugal unless you’re a rock star or college student is they tend to close restaurants from 3-8pm) The food was pretty good and we were the only customers (at first) so the waiter just stood there and talked to us for a while. Not that different from our brunch, except we got out of eating fish for a meal.

Then it was gas and groceries to rest up for the long day of driving on Wednesday.

Wednesday, May 20th

After going through many toll roads we got to Obidos around 2pm and walked the walled Roman ruins city for an hour, partaking of the cheesy potatoes but not the cherry liquor (as we still had an hour drive to Coimbra).

In Obidos we tried the famous cheese ball things for the first time (of many) on the trip. This location actually gave more cheese in the “extra cheese” version than any of the others I’d order.

Coimbra was a tightly woven set of streets surrounding a small flat top containing a university and some churches. We almost got in an accident at a roundabout and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a guy cutting all the way across in front of the car to my left, which was larger and blocked my view but still going forward so I assumed I could match him entering the roundabout. The hotel had parking, but only in an extremely tight parking garage down in the basement of a building across the street. It was difficult getting the car into the spot, but the next day it would be even harder to pop up and out of the little garage as there was only a small sidewalk bustling with people before a busy street. Sam actually had to hop out and direct traffic for me because at the extreme angle of the ramp I couldn’t really see anything from the exit of the garage other than maybe an adult’s head bobbing up as it walked in front, children would have been as invisible as they are in America in front of an F150! Unlike in ‘Murica I didn’t want to run over any kids to prove my manliness. Keep in mind we’re driving a Nissan Juke. A subcompact only 5 feet high.

Despite the charm of the city (we experienced the college kids walking the streets singing and shouting for the first time here) there was a distinct smell of dog doo in the air, not from dogs, but from overall sewage management? We ate dinner at a small family restaurant down a back alley and walked to the panorama point while eating gelato.

Sam would later describe this as her favorite meal of the whole trip since the fish was cooked perfectly. I made the mistake of ordering the “traditional” dish which was essentially hashbrowns on top of a fried codfish. Did I mention that the Portuguese are either really terrible at filleting fish or they are scared to death of those fake Chinese cardboard fish because they never remove all the bones? That might be a confusing way to say “perhaps they leave some bones in the filet to prove it’s a real fish.”

Back at the hotel we were thirsty so we sat outside the bar and drank some overpriced non-alcoholic (I had to drive the next morning) drinks. We debated about whether they’d charge us the full price for a virgin cocktail. Since the alcohol is the expensive part it should be a lower price, right? Nope.

Thursday, May 21st 

After breakfast on that same balcony (yogurt in Europe is much better than yogurt in America) we set out for the Buçaco Forest to see the famous waterfall steps.

We tried to find the waterfall “naturally” by following the signs for the trilhos de agua…which brought us to many little fountains but not the big one. We didn’t realize until we were there that there were a ton of smaller waterfalls in the park. On Google maps EVERY fountain was tagged with a photo of the big one because people would upload all their photos of the whole place. Eventually we gave up and asked another couple who said “you’re in the wrong side of the park, it’s on the other side of the castle”

Turns out it wasn’t just on the other side, which is where we parked, it was a mile down the road too!

Before getting there I found a manmade pond with a bunch of salamanders that presented a unique photography challenge!

I didn’t even realize until we got home that there were two salamanders in that shot.

We drove to Aveiro for an early dinner. It was supposed to look like Venice, but having been to the real Venice this is somewhere between the real one, the Los Angeles one, and the Las Vegas version, highly commercialized (a shopping mall along the water instead of old buildings) and roping people into canal rides that don’t seem to offer much. Or maybe they do, we didn’t go, we just found the nearest steakhouse and ate.

We ordered the surf and turf, which in Portugal often means steak and octopus instead of lobster. I don’t think I’d ever eaten large octopus arms before (plenty of calamari). It wasn’t bad, but still wouldn’t be my first choice of meat. Also I feel weirdly unethical eating something that is supposedly smart.

Our next stop was a few hours away in the hills of Douro Valley. Our hotel was actually a winery operation built on the top of a hill halfway up the steep mountain laced with vines. It was just on the other side of the mountain from the famous bend in the river, which we went to take pictures of just before sunset.

The video below is the one-way little driveway that goes down to our hotel (more of a bed and breakfast, I guess?).

After checking in we went to the famous viewpoint.

The only way I can describe this place is that it looks like what you see in your head when you hear people talk about the wine regions in Italy, but maybe more mountainous. It’s a little bit like if my German ancestors in the Appalachian foothills tried to make wine instead of sour grapes. (dad, are you reading these anymore? that one was for you)

To get here we drove along the river and over that little bridge and then through that little town to the right and then up up up up the hill.

Driving back to the hotel, which was only ten minutes away, we discovered a pretty good place to watch the sunset.

I have two versions of this shot: one with the car down there and one without. Although the car distracts from the beauty of the landscape, I don’t feel like you’d get the depth of the cliff she’s on if that car wasn’t there.

And these next few were actually back behind the hotel before and after we left for the viewpoint/s.

Friday, May 22nd

After a nice breakfast on the balcony overlooking the grape vines (the hosts made us custom scrambled eggs with extra cheese) we set out for the other famous viewpoint in the region, the Sao Leonardo de Galafura Viewpoint, but getting there would be more than we bargained for. After taking the switchback little road to the bottom of the mountain we crossed the valley and went back up the other side, but the way up was on a steep set of one-car-wide cobblestones that were often either sunken or broken away to reveal the sand underneath. We were driving on less of a road and more of a vineyard pruning trail.

As you may imagine it was a very shaky drive and with so many switchbacks and increasing elevation, a slow one too, especially considering anyone coming down to meet us may not be able to stop and there were often stone walls on one or both sides.

We paused for a bit at the bottom, considering turning around, but Google StreetView did it so why couldn’t we?

The bad road seemed to only be 4km, it was bright daylight, and we had half a tank of gas, so we forged upward very slowly. Cell phone coverage here was spotty but not non-existent, and every now and then we’d see locals, sometimes carefully navigating around them on the very road that climbed who knows how many jiggly meters into the sky through grapevines to the quant town at the top. So this wasn’t the kind of risky maneuvering we’d done the past like driving out on a snow covered road a peninsula in the sparsely populated northern region of Iceland in a blizzard until we got to a literal “road closed” sign and realized nobody was out there and then getting stuck trying to turn around as the sun went down. (spoiler if you don’t remember: we peed our way out of that situation since there was no shovel in the rental)

From the to top of the hill it was “easy” driving (at least in comparison) to the outlook.

After the outlook we drove to Porto, where we’d stay the next three days. The plan had been to go to the LongChamps store near the hotel first (since we were too early to check in), but the tight one way traffic, angry drivers (including me), underground underpasses, and unknown parking situation, diluted my patience for that after the first couple of misses, so we went to the hotel.

Originally we’d planned to drop Sam off to check-in while I returned the car a few blocks away, but it became clear from our driveby there was nowhere (legally) to park the car in front of the hotel to check in. The hotel is located on a busy small street going down the hill into the main riverfront. When we passed it by Sam spotted a parking garage on the same street and said we should just pay to park since we’d only be there a few minutes.

I should back up and note that for this trip (and many future trips) we’d upgraded our luggage to the larger no-longer-carry-on-eligible size. We made this decision after realizing that A) cramming clothes and things for a week in Kona into the carry-ons was near impossible and B) we were always having to check our bags anyway for various reasons (one of which is that we usually buy the cheapest economy ticket, which boards last and then they demand you check your bags at the gate because they keep reducing the carry on sizes and agents are now getting bonuses fine you for it). So making a conscious choice to check bags and use a slightly larger size of luggage solved a few problems at once. However, it does present issues when imagining dragging luggage around in a city or trying to fit into a tiny european car. Cities famously made of cobblestone streets don’t make this situation better for those little wheels straining under 40 pounds of clothes and camera equipment.

So in a split second decision we decided to park so we wouldn’t have to drag the luggage up and down cobblestone streets, well, I mean longer than the distance between the hotel and the garage down the street. Our hotel is the stone wall in the photo below. The parking garage would be a little further down if you panned your gaze to the left.

So we swerved into the garage. To get to the parking you have to go through a very narrow turn to go up a level. This required lots of palm sweat and inching forward and adjusting. We avoided scraping the little rental car by mere millimeters and then settled into the first spot we could find. Then we looked around and realized… there’s no way OUT from here. To get out later we’d have to go up, doing the dangerous little turn again. So how many storeys up is it? I was scared to find out.

Although we were driving a “subcompact” (a Nissan Juke) it was a heart pounding sweaty gambit getting that car around the first tight turn and all I could think about while we checked in and sorted our laundry and so on- was how in the hell we’d make it out of the parking garage without damaging the rental, ironically only minutes before we’d return it! And if you’re thinking “oh, they’ll never notice a little scrape, it’s a rental” you’re just revealing you haven’t rented a car in a while. Rental companies are now implementing whole-car scanning devices with AI to catch every little nick and bump. Because of this we always do a comprehensive video and photo review of the car when picking up and dropping off. This actually saved us a quite a bit of money in New Zealand, as the company there tried to open a damage claim after our return in Queenstown. They initially didn’t share their own photos from before we picked up the car in Christchurch (despite the agent assuring us he’d mail them to us). We got the email about damages before boarding our plane to Aukland. At the Aukland airport we were renting our car to drive around the north island from the same rental company, and the agent there was able to find the photos and email them to us. However, after checking into our Aukland hotel and opening them up on the wifi they were too blurry to discern whether the scrape on the bumper was there before or after us. But you know what did prove we didn’t do it? My photos from when we picked it up, so I sent those with edits circling the nonsense they were trying to bill us for. The next morning we got a notice that our case had been dropped and closed.

Anyway, back to the crazy eight-storey hillside parking garage in Porto next to the Dom Luis Bridge; at first we thought maybe we’re just dumb and there’s some other exit to this parking garage from hell. We asked the hotel staff while checking in and they literally laughed at our foolishness and said something in Portuguese to each other while shaking their heads. So it would be six more goosebump inducing sweaty palm turns to go.

I should clarify that, as always, the anxiety is within my head. Sam is always more confident in these situations, always sure we’ll be fine, and that chances are worth taking. She was confident she could make these turns and offered to drive. But, we’d already made one of them so obviously it was possible and I kept at the wheel when the time came.

After packing our laundry into a single suitcase and getting back down to the car it turned out the rest of the turns were still tight, but navigable, as if the opening turn was a test of meddle. It turned out there was a locked service exit on the first floor that someone could open in a pinch, but there were no humans around to do so while we were onsite. So up we went again and again as if we were leveling up in the world’s dumbest video game.

But we made it, and promptly drove the alley way right back down to the bottom of the hill beside the garage only to drive up and away again on the other side of the garage to the Enterprise (“Guerin” in Portugal) a kilometer up the street.

The clean and almost abandoned laundromat was only a block away from the rental car return, but had no AC in the sweltering heat of southern Europe’s worsening “heat dome.”

After returning our laundry to our room we walked down (literally, there’s a hill) to the riverfront and had dinner at one of the many al fresco restaurants lining the banks. 30 minutes later our traditional cod dishes came out. Sam was disappointed and convinced the prawns the waitress dissuaded her from ordering would have been more satisfying. Both our dishes still had bones intact, buried in the meat. I was satisfied with my meal since it had cheese and burnt mayo and lots of olive oil.

After dinner we strolled west and grabbed some not very good gelato. Italy and Los Angeles could teach the Portuguese a thing or two here; but I understand it’s just not their specialty.

Something we began to notice at the hotel and would see a lot more of over the next few days is a preponderance of Korean tourists. It turns out there was a K-Drama a few years ago shot in Portugal and it became popular so Korean Air started direct flights to Lisbon, which made it even more popular, so by the time you get to summer 2026 every third person walking around in Porto is (or I guess it’s racist to assume, but still…) Korean.

Ironically, we’d meet up with some Korean (ancestry) friends in Lisbon, but they were traveling to Porto next!

Something else I noticed while we were sitting there on the riverbank was… I’d seen this before! Not in my real life, and not on some K-drama, but something very different. I realized it looked just like a city in a Miyazaki film. Sam, being a big fan of those movies and owning all of them on blu-ray, started going through the list and I was noping them all until we got to Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Turns out, yes, the fictional city of Kukio was quite obviously inspired by Ribeira district. Some folks incorrectly say Lisbon exclusively (although I’m sure the film was inspired by many places), there’s a very obvious nod to Porto and the clock tower bit at the top is clearly scraped from Coimbra.

This is the ficitonal town of Kukio:

and this is the riverbank in Porto:

And remember Coimbra University with the clock tower?

We walked back up (literally up the hill) to our hotel and spent a long time at the outside area of the restaurant overlooking the river at night.

Saturday, May 23rd

We slept in and then set out for breakfast on the other side of the river (Ribeira District). We soon found out all the restaurants on that riverfront share the same menu (maybe even the same kitchen?), which isn’t kind to wheat allergies. So I ordered the flaming meat, which does flame itself out in front of you.

After that we walked through the Ribeira district for the rest of the day stopping for a souvenir here, a fried cheese potato with port wine there, McDonald’s chicken wings, a viewpoint here…two pineapple Pina coladas there…and so on, before stumbling over the top of the bridge with rum and port in our stomachs (okay, mostly my stomach) and watching the sunset from our hotel room.

There is a bit of an unintentional (?) Fibonacci sequence going on in this photo (above) leading your eyes to an accidental combination of shapes. I’m sure folks with Y chromosomes already noticed, but I didn’t take this photo, just want to stress that point.

The young woman that took this picture for us made a point of letting me know she had the same great Sony A7 camera at home. After we walked away we both (Sam and I) turned to each other said “wait… why did she leave it at home, then?” The world will never know.

Sunday, May 24th

On Sunday we booked livraria lello tickets for the early afternoon before leaving the hotel and then strolled down the river eating brunch at the first open restaurant we came to. I got the mayo gratin cod thing again and Sam got a tbone steak. 

After waiting in line over on the other side of the river for a while we were let into the bookstore, it was hard to tell which there were more of: Harry Potter books (in every language) or people.

Photography without the people would be impossible so I found a rare quiet space at the back and set up my tripod for a while.

When I tried the same trick in the front an employee told me that tripods aren’t allowed. I learned after our trip to the UK to just always try to use the tripod instead of asking if it’s okay, since some officials enforce rules and some don’t and you’re a sucker for giving them the right of first photo refusal. Plenty of employees had walked by and didn’t say anything as I stood dead at the back of the store and took long exposures for ten minutes.

After the bookstore we tried and failed a few times to find a bathroom. We walked around in circles a few times (the Ribeira isn’t that big in two dimensions, just vertically) to get more souvenirs and gelato (and sampled the famous sardines, finally!) before making our way back down to the waterfront to pick up tickets for a 4:30 riverboat tour.

After the tour we decided to eat again, but this time we’d go back to the hotel and eat at the restaurant’s outdoor patio since we had a 12% off coupon and another coupon for “welcome to Portugal” free glasses of wine.

When we got there there was a group of maybe 20 rowdy old men. All balding pot bellied loud as hell shouting over each other in 10 different simultaneous conversations that always ended in some kind of sport team slogan while ordering more drinks to get more drunk expanding their already tightly stretched too small FC polos stained yellow from chain smoking. A few even ran around like children and stripped to their underwear to wrestle in and out of the small pool…in front of all the other guests just trying to enjoy dinner with a view NOT of old wet pigs in a blanket.

They should still be quarantining these guys (these were not our guys, but the one in the front could be a twin to our guys).

Some research suggests these guys were watching the Taça de Portugal Final that day, albeit not in person since that was taking place in Lisbon. We were up there around 6:30pm, which would have been shortly after the match concluded (starting at 4:15pm), so they must have gone up to the hotel for more drinks from one of the many bars along the riverfront that would have been showing the game.

Eventually, around 7pm our food came out and the football social club left and my blood pressure went down.

The dishes we ordered weren’t that large, though, so we decided to go back down to the riverfront. We’d wanted to visit the flagship potato store (Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau) and realized this was our last chance. Inside we ordered more potatoes, ate them outside, and then went back in just in time for the 20 minute pipe organ performance.

Afterwards I noticed there was another pineapple pina colada stand right there, so of course we ordered one (but not a refill today). Then we lingered about the riverfront slowly making our way back to the hotel checking out the sunset.

Monday, May 25th

We prebooked the buffet breakfast at the rooftop bar because we didn’t want to have to go out and wait at some slow restaurant (they’re all slow) and possibly miss our train to Lisbon.

We took our first Bolt ride to the train station in a little Renault Clio that somehow had enough trunk space for our two medium sized luggages.

The train ride was uneventful, but we still arrived half an hour late because despite being emulated in their anime, this was not Japan. That was a bit annoying since we’d started coordinating with folks we knew (from California) that where already in Lisbon. A few weeks before leaving for this trip I figured out that four of our friends would actually be there at the same time for a golfing trip. And furthermore it was my closest friend (of that bunch)’s birthday.

I used to see these four guys every week because we’d go hiking (often with even more people) up to the tables at the top of hogback trail in Griffith park and have beer and tapas at the top, then waddle back down in the dark. Eventually we connected later in the evening in Lisbon and at one of those restaurants where the pushy waiter tries to get you to buy the expensive lobster (none of the six of us fell for that) in that long carless street dedicated to Al Fresco dining that leads out to the plaza.

After dinner they walked north and we walked south to the plaza to take some pictures while eating gelato.

Then it was a quick ride on the Azul line back to our fancy hotel in Picoas.

Tuesday, May 26th

We slept in and then took the Azul line to the end (Santa Apalonia) and then walked up and down the little alleyways in the baking sun, the temperature was over 90 making it much hotter than back home, which was 63 and rainy.

Guess I’m part of the problem. Maybe. Google thinks this means “Tourists are worth more than children,” which, if true, makes me wonder what’s going on here. Maybe some local Lisbon tax going to tourist improvements to spur investment but leaving behind children’s healthcare? If so, I guess this is evidence that the terminal disease called MAHA is spreading. I’d have sympathy, but culturally these are a people that decided having your kids second hand smoke three packs a day in 2026 is super cool so…

Loud and clear on this one, and I agree! We stopped renting AirBnB’s maybe ten years ago after multiple bad experiences.

In places where there a lot of people taking the same picture, sometimes I think the people become more interesting than the thing.

So remember when I mentioned that K-drama? What do you want to bet the couple in trolly on the left there is from South Korea?

To be honest, the viewpoints weren’t as amazing as in Porto, though, and we decided to find food after a few hours near the castle/trolley area.

After that we waddled around looking for more souvenirs until we got to Baixa again and went to the gelato place from last night again. For all those that believe what you see on Fox, I can tell you there are homeless people far outside the borders of California. Even in Lisbon restaurant employees had to come out and say “beat it!” (however that’s said in Portuguese) when they tried to come up and beg for money while we were eating gelato in the sun.

Then more souvenir hunting on the long walk to the fashion district. Which included finally trying the cherry liqour we’d heard so much about (it’s good!).

Funny enough, the Korean word for disbelief is “Chinchia,” which sounds like it should be spelled “Jinja,” which sounds exactly like this drink (minus the extra syllable), and we have a friend (not the ones that joined us, and he’s not Korean, but his wife is) that loves to say it a lot with great emphasis, so we couldn’t help saying it like that at this place, which….nobody else understood. The fellow in the photo is probably rolling his eyes at the American weirdo because of that. Don’t worry, I asked if he was okay with me taking the picture, despite the expression.

Near the main jacaranda laced square we came upon a public concert by the police or military band playing…John Philip Sousa.

Just around the corner a cadre of dudes sold drugs. They were not being very sneaky about it and did a hilarious bit of sprinting away or staying and over-innocently head scratching and whistling if anyone in so much as a pilots uniform walked by. I had an opportunity to take lots of pictures from inside one of the souvenir shops as Sam negotiated, but was only able to get one (unfortunately blurry) pic of an unobstructed friendly “handshake.”

After going up to (and stopping in) the long boulevard of fashion stores (their version of Champs Elysees I suppose) we walked to the Parque neighborhood for a fancy dinner at a hotel (not ours) restaurant.

Then we got groceries at the Aldi next to our hotel so we could eat breakfast in the room before going to Sintra on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, May 27th

We took a Bolt (sorry, did I explain that’s their version of Uber, we didn’t take a Chevrolet Bolt EV) to Sintra’s national palace of Pena, which is a very popular place, but doesn’t have food or water (other than the gift shop outside the palace). We took the little tour, very reminiscent of other shuffle your feet and look at this old rich braggart accoutrements tours we’ve done …”only smaller.” 

Around 1pm we made our way over to the Moorish castle. The castle (as in a still standing place where humans would live) itself is long gone, but the castle walls on top of the hill are an interesting hike. However, it was hot, and we didn’t pack any food, and in typical European style the cafeteria was closed in the middle of the day for a private event (happening much later in the evening) and two stooges [reminiscent of the soccer hooligans] sat out front essentially telling all the hungry and thirsty tourists to fuck off and “drink da toilet water” (pointing at the bathrooms, which thankfully for me were still open)

In the above photo that’s the city of Sintra. That open area is the main square. We’d wind up under those trees to the left of the square in a couple hours.

We finished the hike and then followed the signs to hike down the hill to the village. It’s much longer than we thought, and there were opportunities to break off and go back to roads where tuk-tuks could take you to the village, but we’re frugal and still healthy enough (despite starving at this point), so we kept going down through the forest.

The hike starts off like an American national parks hike, hopping over big boulders and stone steps down switchbacks through the forest. Eventually it comes to a few little dirt roads and a big stone wall that runs vertically through the trees up the hill and then a cascade of steps that go straight down before coming to a “village” that’s a long section of switchbacks under grapevine trellises in front of a few old private homes with a manmade waterfall cascading down between it all with little koi ponds and everything you might expect in some movie about Italy.

At the bottom we learned the name of the trail and that we’d come down 980 meters. It looked so close from up on the castle walls!

That photo above is from the Sintra square looking back up at the castle.

By the time we got to the town square it was about 4pm so we ate the hotel restaurant next to the center of town. We ordered a pitcher of sparkling white wine sangria and…fish. Always fish here. And always bones.

After dinner we walked a bit to find snacks (the fish was small); pastry for Sam and gelato for me. 

An old Bolt car that struggled to stay in gear with a driver that struggled to follow the directions picked us up and brought us to Azenhas do Mar on the coast, which is simultaneously reminiscent of Malibu and Minas Tirith, but realistically it’s closer to Mont St. Michel if it wasn’t on an island.

We were jamming extra things into the hours of daylight we still had at this point, so we took a few pictures and then took another bolt to Cascais.

We visited these rocks at sunset (the famous hole in the rocks was closed off) and then started walking towards town. Sam revealed that she had an ulterior motive for spending more time in Cascais because folks online had recommended it for Californians to move to as it had a closer vibe to what we’d recognize than cities like Porto or Lisbon.

And it was true. The town had an upscale west coast beach town feeling to it, with houses and buildings that had been maintained and weren’t caving in.

You might say “what?” Yes, everywhere else we went, even in popular areas, like right next to the Dom Luis Bridge, there were old houses with roofs caving in that had clearly been abandoned. Go back up and look… I already put a few pictures where at the edges you can see roofs caving in. Okay, I’ll make it easy for you. Here’s a photo I didn’t include earlier from the observation area of our fancy hotel in Coimbra. That roof is just the building connected to the hotel which google says is a hearing aid store…guess they didn’t hear the roof coming down.

Anyway, back in Lisbon the sun went down and we had trouble finding anything quick and healthy to eat before Bolting back to the hotel so we bought bananas and apples at a place that was supposed to have drinks (not alcoholic drinks, bottled water and Monster kind of stuff). Did I mention yet that “cold” has a different definition in Portugal. Many times on trips like this I go without drinking water for a while and then get a hankering for a cold drink. Everywhere else there’s a convenience store that has something. In Portugal they still had stuff, but it was rarely cold. The fridges at the convenience stores are barely under room temperature. (we also bought some packaged food at a few and discovered it had expired a while ago, so that’s cool, but not actually cold, because they don’t do that here!)

Thursday, May 28th

On our last day in Lisbon (which meant our last day in Portugal, which meant our last day in Europe) we took the Azul line down to Baxia again and walked to the Time Out Market for breakfast (at Oven – a pretty good Nepalese restaurant) then took the tram to Belem district.

Honestly that was the best fish I had the whole trip and it was an appetizer, and not at a Portuguese restaurant.

In Belem we walked over the top of the MAAT and then back up and by Jeronimo’s church, more pastries for Sam, and then over to the big statue for gelato. This gelato place actually had some fun flavors like roasted corn (good!).

At the Monument of the Discoveries we got the pina colada again but this time it was … not great.

“He hates these compasses, stay away from the compasses!” What’s more shocking about this guy flipping off the Monument was that he was not doing this with a phone camera for social media. (okay, so this probably ended up on social media at some point)

I kid, but yeah, this is 100% because of colonialism. Portugal’s mastery of ship building contributed heavily to the slave trade in the Americas (and elsewhere).

Then we walked all the way down the riverbanks to the Belem tower, which you can see just to the left of the lighthouse to the left of the middle finger in the photo above.

Then we took another Bolt to LX market.

We decided to have the sushi there, but after sitting down and getting a menu we realized they didn’t have many rolls, so we walked up the street to Umi Sushi, which had great reviews on yelp.

Turns out they have a buffet for 20 euros per person. Turns out it’s cheap because the sushi is…not the best. After the first round we thought the rolls were old so we only ordered things after that that needed cooking (like unagi, which I like anyway) and then our stomachs felt pretty weird for a while.

Friday, May 29th

At the airport in Lisbon we discovered a peculiar lack of planning, at least for an international airport. We had no idea (remember, we flew into the country via Faro), but apparently it’s well known the Lisbon airport, even when asking the Portugeuse, is one of the worst in the entire world. The entrance to the airport features a roundabout with multiple lanes, but it essentially turns into a game of frogger for passengers to get to the airport.

Once inside and checked in there are actually a good selection of restaurants and shops. We thought we’d just have to walk over to our gate in the same terminal so we sat down to eat some (yes, fish again) at a leisurely pace. It was surprisingly good for an airport, I mean I had baked salmon (sigh, with extra bones).

We walked out towards our gate to discover it had its own additional security check with a long line. Lots of people around us were complaining about how they were about to miss their flight because of this and the security folks tried to see who deserved to cut in line and who didn’t. For some reason Sam got flagged for extra security checkdowns throughout the whole process and I didn’t. We never were told why, but we arrived with the standard three hours to go so we still had time to deal with whatever frustrations they’d throw at us, and it wouldn’t end once we got through the second security check.

After getting through the second security check we discovered a small (think Burbank airport) terminal with gates for international Airbuses but only a few seats to sit in. Now, Lisbon isn’t alone here, we’d been to many terminals for giant planes that don’t have enough seats, but I mean there were maybe a dozen seats in this little terminal and nowhere else to even go to stand. As such there was a sea of people at each gate just standing there waiting and long lines just winding through the entire terminal from end to end that we never figured out what for. Still, over all the buzz of frustrated people I heard our names over the PA and had to grab Sam from the gift shop.

Our airline was offering to let us pre-board in case we wanted to wipe down the seats due to my nut allergy. I’ve never experienced this in my entire flying life, so props to the Portuguese Delta staff. They said if we wanted to preboard we could just come back when boarding started. We discussed whether this was ethical for us to do and eventually decided “why not?”

But when the time came the gate was just a sea of people and even when we waved to the agent to preboard and she waved for us to come through… we couldn’t get through the throng of people crowded around the gate (mostly because they had no seats and nowhere else to stand!), so we gave up and boarded last, as usual because we’re always in the cheap seats.

But the adventure wasn’t over, not by a long shot! As they scanned our passports we were waived to a separate security area where a frizzy haired security lady grilled us in a conversational style about what we were doing in Portugal, and (without saying it) why we didn’t have return flights from the same city, why we were going to Boston and then Columbus if we’re from LA, who we were visiting, where we stayed, all of that.

Then she waived us through and we got to board….not! No, then we walked down a flight of stairs to see the same huddled masses that were at the top of the stairs a minute ago. And because we came through dead last (we were already one of the last couples boarding in the last group, but then had to do the extra security interview) we couldn’t even get to the bottom of the stairs, we had to stand on the stairs for a while until they herded half the cattle through some door out of view of us at the bottom around the corner.

When we got down there we saw that we all had to wait again for several busses to come (not all at once, mind you) and take us the very very long way to board the plane in a place that honestly felt like the repair area next to the freeway you see when you drive up to an airport elsewhere. I tried to measure it on google maps manually later and it was almost a two mile standing shaking bus ride from the terminal where the bus picked us up to where the plane was parked. At least this bus, unlike in Italy and China years ago, had air conditioning!

Then we walked up the stairs to board the plane. I gotta wonder how they treated the first class people (who, since we boarded at the back and deplaned after them, we’d never see) in this scenario? A fleet of Porsche Macans driving them the same two mile route to the plane?

A lot of you may think I’m making another joke. I am not. Delta shuttles first class customers in Porsches now, further evidence of the widening gap between the classes.

Now, understand that we messed up on this trip. I guess because of all the flights and connections and everything something slipped past us until it was too late. We always try to book flights that have a 2+?+2 configuration so we can sit together without having to share the row. Many giant international planes still have a few rows of 2 across at the back because the plane narrows at the back. This has been our trick for probably ten years now. We deliberately booked this flight from Lisbon to Boston because it was a plane that had the 2+4+2 in the back six or seven rows.

But we forgot to select our seats! By the time we realized this those few 2 across selections were all gone. Our strategy after that was to pick the last two seats at the end of a 4 seat row in which the seat at the other end was already selected, but the seat next to us was unselected. I checked that seat map every couple of days and that seat remained empty. It was still empty the day before our flight. That’s not hyperbole. Here’s a screenshot of my text to Sam that morning with the seat map from the Delta app! It’s hard to see but the green and yellow are our seats and that blue square next to the green means the seat is unoccupied. So far so good, but … since I’m talking about it so much you surely know where this is going next.

When we sat down there was a big dude sniffling and sneezing in that “empty” seat. Miraculously our masks held up and we never got what he was suffering with, but it made for an anxious 7+ hour ride. I also had a return of my headaches and nausea for the last couple of hours. AI thinks it’s because this route and plane fly higher than others and the specific plane keeps a higher air pressure for whatever reason. Back on the ground in Boston it went away and we ate an enormously expensive (welcome back to America!) airport meal before getting on our flight to Columbus.

Well wait, actually we had to claim and recheck our luggage for our domestic flight even though it was booked as one ticket through the same airline. At least we were prepared for it this time. The check-in lady in Lisbon had told us, the pilot on our flight announced this, and several big signs at the airport itself made it very clear…unlike some other airlines (looking at you New Zealand Air!), they wanted you to absolutely know your luggage would not be automatically transferred at Logan!

Because of our little snafu with picking out our seats on the international flight, I obviously had no photos from the window. But on the way into Columbus we flew over some interesting terrain.

If you see power plants and factories next to a river – you’re going to Ohio! I almost did a double take thinking we were flying over my hometown, but then I realized we’d be coming in from the north or middle of the Ohio River, and the entirety of the river looks like this.

Saturday, May 30th

On Saturday my brother picked us up from our hotel and we met up with his wife and our niece and nephew at Cosi. We’d deliberately planned this as a test run for a new formula – maybe we’d take a vacation to Europe every couple of years and stop off in Columbus to see our niece and nephew so they don’t totally forget we exist while they grow up. Although the time change worked (the travel day from Europe just felt like a really long day and we were able to wake up well rested and adjusted the next day), the combination of flights and airports and sitting around and everything wasn’t optimal. In the days that followed we’d agree we should probably just take separate trips to Ohio only instead of tacking it onto something else. Though, how that will work out with covid precautions I can’t figure out yet.

and then American Airlines announced later this year they’re cancelling the direct flight between LAX and CMH because of our “very big brain” President starting a war to make money on fossil fuel stocks.

After that we went to eat at a sort of sports club slash bar slash restaurant thing that was attached to a new townhome development, then sat by the pool at the hotel while our nephew went swimming.

Sunday, May 31st

Mom picked us up at our hotel after checkout and we went to an outdoor restaurant for lunch with the same family members from yesterday. We had hoped to see an aunt or two, but they were unreachable that morning. It was the same restaurant we ate at five years ago when we visited with them.

After lunch we still had an hour left before needing to get dropped at CMH so we went to Blacklick Woods, which now has a tree canopy walk – something I never thought I’d see in Columbus.

The flight home had some interesting photo opportunities as usual, experiencing the majority of the continental US in one 5 hour slideshow that changes from green hills to gridded farmland to parched deserts and then the mediterranian rockies before the final urban density of Los Angeles.

We were racing this other plane over most of the flyover states.

Usually we fly over all this stuff at night and I can’t tell where we are, almost looks like we’re over water and then you realize it’s actually just a lack of lights in the mountains. But in the daylight I could tell this was Rose Hills Memorial Park (yes, Mom and Dad, you went there once).

One week before hosting the world cup.

Monday, June 1st

Ah, but our story doesn’t end there! A few weeks before we left for this trip I got my jury duty summons in the mail. After registering they said my first day to call in for potential duty would be June 1st. The way jury duty works in Los Angeles is you register and then each consecutive day you call in to see if you need to go in. Once you go in you don’t need to call anymore, you either get assigned to a case or you’re done for a year (or more), but until you get told to report you keep calling (or checking the website) for five consecutive days. The information is available starting at 6pm the business day before you report. So for Mondays your reporting status is available on Fridays.

On Friday we got to Columbus and looked at my calendar reminder to check to see if I would have jury duty the first morning we’d be back (yuck!) and…. I forgot to make a copy or take a photo of the letter with my juror pin number. Ironically if I’d realized this in Boston while we were waiting for our connecting flight I could have called the court number and just asked, but since it was a Friday nobody would be there in Los Angeles at 7pm on a Friday. So, at 10pm when we finally got home on Sunday night I checked it and….did not have to report, phew!

But I did have to report on Thursday. And was the next man up for being on a case, before the attorneys decided at 4:30pm after two days of selection (I was brought in on second day) and dismissing 29 potential jurors… they were satisfied and I could go home (and not come back for a year).

I was pleasantly surprised to find more people wearing masks in the jury pool than I see in normal society. Especially in Portugal. When we went to Costco the following weekend it felt like everyone was wearing masks, but I realized it was (other than Los Angeles County Courthouse) the first time I’d gone anywhere in public in the USA in three weeks and folks here are more worried about their health than elsewhere. I tell you, the weird looks we get with masks on when traveling sometimes… you can imagine how the drunk soccer hooligans in Porto felt about it (we took masks on and off when going in/out of the restaurant to order and go to the bathroom, etc.).

At the beginning I promised there was something that surprised us. I mentioned most of it already, but the one other thing we agreed on that changed after we’d taken the trip was that we should have spent less time in Lisbon compared to Porto. Porto was clearly the star of the show, which nobody expected given Lisbon’s notoriety and exposure in television and social media.