The countless eyes dotted in the night sky

 One of the driving factors of me visiting Portugal was the fact I'd been to a couple of places deeply influenced by it. Another driving factor is that I wanted to do a National Geographic tour with G Adventures and this was the one running during my birthday.

After a trying couple of days travelling and not a bad sleep, I was off to Lisbon at ass o clock in the morning. I knew that UK passports would have a lot more difficulty getting in to EU than a Canadian passport, so I entered on my Canadian passport. Pretty cool how that works.

I got into a Portuguese Uber and arrived at my hotel. The lobby of the hotel was very modern and spiffy. My room wasn't going to be available for a few hours but Lisbon is very walkable. The wonderful front desk person gave me a map and pointed out some really cool things and off I went. Portugal has a lot of really great food to offer but the first thing I wanted to do was have a McPlant. McDonalds here does not have McPlant so I made it a goal while in Europe to have one. They're really good! We should get them!

Walking around downtown Lisbon is a treat. It's a city on a hill. All of the sidewalks are made of limestone tiles. This isn't something limited to the tourist districts either - it is all over the country.

Sometimes the squares have building of historical importance (but no signage). In this case, the front of the building was mirrored in the tiles.

The tiles can also be entirely plain, but most times they will have a design in them.

                                                        If there's a compass, there's a tattoo.

Most of the buildings in the city are covered in beautiful tiles. The tiles are primarily blue and white, with occasional other colours.

Motifs on the tiles are generally floral or botanical and there will be more on them later. 

When I get back to the hotel, I notice I'm in a single room. This strikes me as a bit odd but not unusual; there are many reasons why I could be in a single room. It could be that's just how it worked out with the room block, or I'm the only single female on the trip, or maybe I got an upgrade because I was nice to the front desk. At any rate, it's the fanciest hotel room I've ever been in. It's all glass and mirrors and marble. All the lights are controlled both at the door and beside the bed. The window opens! It's a juliet sized balcony window and it's wonderful. The blackout shade and the curtain operate by push button! The blackout shade is also the tits. Probably the best blackout shade I've ever seen, given that it went from the ceiling to the floor.

Next: Sintra? I hardly knew ha!

You took the words right out of my mouth

This one is word heavy. More pictures in future entries.

Travel can be stressful. There are many things you can do to mitigate this. One of those things is planning in advance, and having a back up plan or three. Be adaptable. Breathe. Go with your gut. 

My plan was to fly to London, spend a day in London, then fly to Lisbon. If this didn't work, I would buy a drastically reduced, confirmed seat. If that didn't work, I would fly out to London the next day and have a stressful day in Heathrow getting to Lisbon.

Working for an airline, we have travel privileges. I won't get into the details of them but it's nice that we can get on a standby flight for a very, very low cost. The key word here is standby - as in, you may not get on the flight you want. As the day I was travelling approached, the likelihood of me boarding the first flight I wanted at a low low price was slipping away. I bought a ticket at a drastically reduced price and guaranteed myself a seat on the plane. This gave me a bit of sleep when I needed it and far less stress than the other plans. I did learn that the daytime people (like me) are way nicer than night time people at my work place. I can see why people don't like my airline.

When you're flying on travel privileges, there are certain expectations. There is a dress code (they can and have denied boarding for not meeting the standard) and behaviour rules. Don't dress like a slob and don't be an asshole. The biggest rule of travel privileges is Don't Talk About Travel Privileges. If you break any of these rules, you run the very real risk of losing your privileges or your job. When I fly on privileges, I have a nice shirt I always wear and if it's not summer I will wear Grown Up Jeans. This time I even threw in a blazer because I didn't think a multi-purpose scarf would pass muster and I get cold on planes.

There were people flying standby who were not going to get on the plane. They were well aware before arriving at the airport that this was a full flight (some jerk bought a ticket at the last minute, eliminating the possibility of anyone getting on standby). They were told again at the airport that it was a full flight. Most of the people waiting to fly accepted this. But there's always one. There was a couple who was so low on the priority list that even if there were seats available, they wouldn't have got on who chose this moment to blow the ever loving hell up. They have an infant. The infant needs to meet their great-grandmother before the great-grandmother dies. The airline should pull someone off the flight so they can get on with their infant. This went on for about five minutes before they looked to the other standby folks in the gate area for back up. These folks all ignored them. None of them were going to go out on a limb for these jerks. Me? I've got my phone filming them. Yes, I'm a narc and sent it in to the people in charge. If I'm going to wear less than comfortable jeans and look like a grown up and follow all the rules, you should too. You absolutely had he chance to buy a deeply discounted ticket like some blazer wearing jerk did at the last minute and you chose not to. Don't make that my problem or the problem of anyone else around you. This is a You Problem and you are breaking the rules. Enjoy not flying for cheap for the next year, I'm getting on this plane.

After arriving in London I faced another choice. I have a UK Passport by Double Descent. It's neat and really only useful for visiting the UK or visiting two countries that would raise flags to Canada Border Services Agency if you went in a short time span. In London, I saw the line for Canada/EU/other countries passports and it was damn long. The UK passport line? Almost empty. So I entered the UK on my UK passport. The plan from here was to take the hotel bus to my hotel, drop my stuff off, then take the express train to London and spend a day walking around. This did not happen. The hotel bus took about 45 minutes to find, another two hours to arrive, and half an hour to get to my hotel. The bus company was unbothered by the loads of people waiting for the bus - it was the driver's first day and he was lost. So....send another bus? Nope, not a possibility, you'll just have to wait. By the time I got to the hotel I was exhausted and just went to sleep.

Probably for the best as I had an early start to Lisbon. The airport bus to go back was on time thankfully (but I had a plan if it wasn't). I got to Heathrow and remembered why I love airports. They teem with life, with energy, with possibility. And in London at least, there's Pret A Manger. Pret isn't specific to London airports but this is where I find myself visiting them more often than not. Pret is a coffee shop/bakery/deli and it's really wonderful. Reasonably priced (even in an airport) and a great selection of food. 

I had a delicious airport breakfast of porridge and an oat milk latte. Both were very beige and felt appropriately British.

Next: Obrigada, obrigado, brah!