Yeah I know … it’s a bit early.

We’re not leaving until tomorrow but I’m not exactly a ‘seasoned traveller’ – the sort of person who can toss a few things into a bag and be out the door in half an hour. In fact, going to Barcelona earlier this year – and now Lisbon – is a personal record (even with them being short trips of 3-4 nights away). So it takes me awhile to get organised so I don’t get all panicky at the last minute.

Anyhow, the five-day weather forecast looks promising, though it looks like the temperatures are going to drop quite a bit on Friday. So not sure about clothes. But most of the other stuff has been laid out on the spare room table so we won’t get to the airport and realise the passports are still at home.

One of the girls next door (who happens to be from Lisbon) will be looking after the cats, which is a relief. I’ve given her Maria the vet’s phone number in case of any emergency, but really all Paula has to do is freshen their water bowls once a day and scoop the turds out of the litter boxes. Well, and make sure Sunny doesn’t escape from the living room. They don’t tend to eat much when we’re not around – I reckon they enjoy being fed and fussed over more than actually eating

With all the finger business going on there hasn’t been much ‘build up’ – it’s kind of crept up on us. Even Nog (aka Mr Map) hasn’t got routes planned out for us and lists of places to go. But I think this trip is going to be a lot more relaxed than Barcelona and having an apartment rather than a hotel room will make a big difference. This will be a kind of recharging holiday as when we get back we’ll have quite a lot of ‘big time stuff’ to deal with, so it will be nice to just disconnect for a few days and be in a whole other setting.

Meanwhile, I totally forgot about learning a bit of Portuguese so I’m hoping that Plan B (speaking Spanish as if I were Sean Connery) will do the trick.

Oooh, I’m getting so excited! 🙂

At least that’s the plan.

Nog and I had been planning to go to London for an h2g2 meet at the end of April, with the proceeds from our big translation project, but we just finished it last weekend and don’t know when we’ll be paid – there might still be a few revisions to do first. So we’ve decided to go to Lisbon instead (another of my dream cities).

We originally thought about going June 7-10 because the 7th is Corpus Cristi here and a local public holiday. So as we’d have that day off anyhow it made sense to go then and take a ‘puente’ (bridge) extra long weekend. But it turns out that there are no direct flights to Lisbon that Thursday, so we’re now thinking of going Wednesday afternoon and staying for four nights. What the heck.

So just wondering if anyone has ever been to Lisbon and can recommend places to see, good restaurants, day trips, etc.