Lisboa

The Lufthansa flight was great, I'm impressed by the quad-lingual staffers on board... and they added it up to have the flight served in 5 languages. We helped clean our trash on the plane as the Portugese airport workers are currently striking.

Now that we're here, and compared to the ground to sky gray of Frankfurt, the afternoon sun makes Lisboa feel peachy. Lots of white apartment buildings, fresh spring feeling air, and people smoking in the airport. All bags arrived too, which always makes me happy!

Our historic place in Sintra is beautiful (Penseo Resedencial Sintra), and we put together our bikes, which seem to be working (comment on that later maybe? I have one extra part. Actually I had two, but found a place for one).

The first few hour take on Portugal - not hard to get by on english, and we're basing that on a little more than just tourist services. Roads are smooth, cars don't look old and beaten up, two indicators of a place being in order economically. I know this isn't the richest country in Europe, but it still is firmly European in terms of modernity. The old buildings are beautiful, people seem placid, friendly, happy, except on the roads or in the parkade where we got the rental car, where it seems everyone is a hobbyist race car driver. We have a Peugeot 307 wagon (5 speed naturally), which by north American standards is a small car (probably smaller than Audi A4 or Jetta), but here it feels like a boat at times - the old roads are tiny with really tight corners. The stone gate driveway to our place needs to be approached within 88-92 degrees of perfect perpendicular, and this leaves 2" on either side mirror and not a millimeter more. At least it feels like that. The rental agency kid had the car stereo tuned to some Euro dance station that had remixes of any top 100 song of the last 30 years in dance form, Pink Floyd to 80's one hit wonders. We made it from airport to hotel without a wrong turn, which I find surprsing, considering Tori's directions were fairly sparse and we don't have a map.

We got groceries at a 400 square foot grocery store, including 3 bottles of Portugese wine, which ranged in price from €2.05-2.65, quite a deal. If I recall the CDN/Euro exchange rate right that puts us at about $3-4. Fruits and nuts are fresh, I don't think I've tasted almonds as good before.

We passed three football stadiums, 3 track and field tracks, plus the normal array of Euro supermarkets and chain stores, as well as US ones. Seems the city is into athletics despite people smoking more prominently than home.

We read an article on the plane that tells national Christmas beliefs of a bunch of countries. Almost all focus on a northern Santa, except apparently for Dutch kids who believe he resides in Spain.

All's well, we're happy, and that's what Christmas is about. Hope everyone else is too!