Tour of Lisbon

TSH and Diva were given orange tags to indicate which bus they were to travel on. They assumed that the bus would be marked as ‘orange’. But no. Miguel announced that orange tags meant bus C, giving the guests something else to remember and causing one woman to board the wrong bus after a stop and spend several minutes searching for the hat she had left on her seat. Not sure whether the people who open carried the colour tags at all times managed to make the translation to the alphabet. And then there was the guest who complained to the guide that her audio system was not working – easily rectified by plugging the earpiece into the receiver.The tour took in the monastery, Belem tower and the monument to the explorers, all of which were blogged here last year. Lunch was taken in the peace and quiet of the hotel bar, before a walk into the city in the (relative) cool of the late afternoon.

Three lots of luck at Manchester Airport

1.      1. Sausage butties for breakfast.

2. 2.      When Diva knocked the milk (which neither wanted) across the table and nearby floor, it missed both clothes and shoes.

3.      3. The flight left before two RAF jets escorted a passenger jet into the airport (bomb hoax), causing delayed and diverted flights for some time.

The Viking transfer to the Lisbon Tivoli went smoothly and the hotel room is smart and comfortable. Diva was not impressed at the ‘briefing’ when Miguel announced that the trip to the tile museum was cancelled because of too few bookings. TSH and Diva had agreed to book this but had not been given any opportunity to organise it. However, the following day, one guest was heard to announce that ‘it was the best briefing he had attended for some time’. Surely ironic. But everybody got a glass of sherry. Lots of nice friendly fellow travellers, including two from Cuddington met on the plane.

The shared pizza was so large that Diva just ate the topping from part of it and TSH left a slice of his share. Surely a first!!

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