Our (John’s and my) first 24 hours involved an overnight flight from Toronto to Heathrow on Thanksgiving Sunday (3-4 hours of sleep – yahoo!) and a connecting flight to Lisbon at 8 a.m., putting us at 11:00 a.m. on Monday into an airport that is stretched well beyond its capacity. Picture a field of planes parked on a massive tarmac, serviced by jetways and passenger buses, huge lineups for immigration and the exit line out of baggage. Yet, staff are patient, friendly and kind, weary passengers know that this will be the drill, and the whole experience is stress free.
Until.
Until the only piece of luggage you checked – and you only checked because it was oversized (replacement visibility flags for the trikes) – has disappeared. It’s not in the Oversized Baggage collection area. It’s not in Lost and Found. Happily, after an hour delay and thanks also to John’s gentle persistence, the tube containing the flags was found.
Exit stage right, jump into another line for cabs, endure a hairy, rapid drive to the Kuboo storage facility, and we are reunited with our ICE Trikes. It takes us a while to remember how to set them up, add air to tires, check battery levels, install new flags and discard what we no longer need. Then we start the super easy, mostly downhill ride into the Belem neighbourhood in Lisbon. Ride with GPS – our route planning App – only leads us to a dead end once.
We find our ridiculously gorgeous hotel (built in the former home of the governor of Belem on 1st to 2nd Century Roman ruins, overlooking the iconic Torre de Belem), stow the bikes in their secure, underground garage – a luxury, because we don’t have to take them apart – shower and have a #timednap. And now, while John tweaks a brake cable that gave him some anxiety on the mostly downhill 8 km ride here through Lisbon – ! – I am drinking Portuguese white wine, and looking at trains and palm trees and the Tagas River.
The forecast for tomorrow is rain. A lot of it. But we’ll start the day with a tour of the Jeronimo Monasterio, and end it with a dinner with “Marta” who lives in Setubal, our next destination.
Hotel: Palacio do Governador. Excellent restaurant. Beautiful spa (sadly we are not spa-ish). Great Belem location, walking distance to Torre de Belem, Jeronimo Monastery, Pasteis de Belem (famous Portuguese Custard Tarts since 1837) and the Tagus riverfront.
