European Vacation - Day 1

Let the posting of vacation pictures begin! We ended our trip with 3,027 pictures and over 3 hours of video. After sorting through all the pictures and deleting the 579 that were duplicates or just plain bad, we ended up with 2,448 usable pictures. As you can imagine, it’s going to take me a while to get them sorted down to a number you can all stand to page through! I will take it one day and/or location at a time starting from the beginning (because that’s usually the best place to start). So…. here’s day one!

Lajes, Lisbon, and Barcelona:

We started our travels the tiny Lajes airport. From the moment we stepped into the airport, I was in love with the way European’s travel. There was no one trying to check in 17 oversized bags, the customer service people were friendly and polite (probable because no one was yelling at them), there was no charge for checking a bag, when a meal was served on the flight, no one complained because their sandwich included some ingredient they didn’t like, and everyone’s carry-on bag fit neatly into the overhead bin. In short, people were happy and cooperative, and in return the flight attendants were pleasant and helpful. It was wonderful. And, to top it off, they disembarked the planes from both the front and the back door. Talk about efficient!

We arrived in Lisbon after our 2-1/2 hour flight from Lajes and caught a bus downtown to try to pass the time during our six hour layover. We got off the bus and wondered through the city’s Baxia district toward the Paraca do Comercia. The Paraca do Comercia is one of two main squares in the city and is situated on the waterfront of the Tejo River.

Next, we walked east into the oldest part of the city which is home to the Se (cathedral), the oldest church in Lisbon, and the Castelo de Sao Jorge. The walk to these two sights was completely uphill - a very steep hill. We got to the top of the hill and to the Castelo de Sao Jorge only realize we didn’t really have time to go into the castle and should start heading back to the bus stop. We found a staircase in between two buildings to go down most of the hill rather than trying to walk down on the streets.

We stopped along the way and bought what smelled like a really delicious bag of roasted nuts from a street vendor. They were gross – tasted like sawdust! So, we settled for sandwiches from a small café along the main pedestrian street in the downtown area. We hopped back on the bus to the airport and onto our plane to Barcelona.

Upon arriving in Barcelona, we took the bus to the Palaca de Catalunya and walked the block from there to our hotel – The Hotel Continental Barcelona. We had been warned that the hotel had an interesting interior decorating scheme. That was an understatement. Our room was pink from top to bottom, walls, chair covers, bedding, ceiling, and air conditioning unit included. The view from our balcony was right down on to Las Ramblas (a description of this unique space will show up in tomorrow’s information), but it was freezing outside, so we didn’t spend much time admiring the view before we headed to bed.