Wed-Thurs April 24-25, 2024
Hi All! Yes, the Wandering Italian and his co-pilot Kathy are off on a new adventure. This one will have a little deja vu to it since almost exactly a year ago, we went on our first luxury cruise on the Seabourn Ovation and that’s the ship we’ll be on for this cruise.
But this one will be longer and a little more exotic than our last one. For this we pretty much sail from the coast of Africa up through northern Europe for 22 nights! We’ll visit Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Ireland, France and 5 of the 8 Canary Islands. Whew I get tired thinking about it.
But the fun part is many of the ports Kathy and I have never been to so that’s always exciting to visit new amazing places around the world.
Our trip started on Wed 4/24 when we flew overnight from Charlotte to Madrid. We didn’t fly directly to Lisbon since the flights were oversold so we went to Madrid and bought a cheap “puddle jumper” flight to Lisbon. Like I always say, standby travel is an adventure but you can’t beat the price!
The flight to Madrid was good. We didn’t get first class but got the bulk head row so we had lots of leg room and were able to sneak a little sleep in. We had a few hours layover in Madrid and then the flight to Lisbon was good as well.
We had scheduled a driver to meet us at the Lisbon airport and take us to our hotel. He was there waiting for us with a sign with our name on it. His name was Nuno Valente and he was a really cool guy. But it took forever to get to our hotel due to the throngs of people in the streets!
April 25th is a National holiday in Portugal, similar to our July 4th, so there was lots of festivities going on all around town. And on top of that it is the 50 year anniversary of their independence. They called it the Carnation Revolution so everyone had red carnations. Our poor driver Nuno had to drive in circles to avoid all the closed off streets and then we had to roll our luggage a couple blocks since he couldn’t stop right in front of our hotel. Thankfully he rolled the two big ones and they all had the 4 spinner wheels so it made it much easier!
The hotel is nice and is located right in the heart of the city. It was like an apartment with a separate kitchen, living room and bedroom. Very nice! It also had a roof top pool with killer views over the city.
We were scheduled to take a “Tuk Tuk” tour around the city but they cancelled it due to the parade and all the activities. A Tuk Tuk is like a golf cart and there are drivers that drive you all around the city and point out all the landmarks.
So instead we decided to “walk amongst the people”. We thought there was going to be a formal parade like we’d have in the states but it’s really various different groups of people marching and chanting for their causes. It actually was pretty cool to watch. And at one point the whole crowd sang their national anthem in unison. Loved seeing all the pride they have in their country!
Well that’s all for now. We are beat from being up so long! We board the ship tomorrow and we’ll let them pamper us for 22 days. Somebody’s gotta do it!
PS: Not sure how great the wifi is in this hotel so I’ll post the verbiage now and try the pictures later.
The Wandering Italian 