Day 1 in Lisboa

UNEDITED: Honeymoon in Portugal, Day 1.

We arrived in Lisbon about three hours ago, and so far, things have gone well. Our flights over were relatively uneventful. We started the honeymoon off with appetizers and margaritas in the Chili's Too bar in O'Hare airport. Delicious. But turns out that $2 margarita special does not apply to the airport Chili's. They were $8 apiece! We were seated way back, in the 43rd row of the airplane, right in front of a screaming baby. Thank goodness the family realized that the 44th row was not equipped with bassinet seats, and they got the flight attendants to switch them to a different spot in the plane. The remainder of our flight was screaming baby free. We started the flight just reading, and then enjoyed dinner (chicken with kale, carrots and rice for me, beef with potatoes and pearl onions for Matt). Then we settled in for our "date," as Matt called it, with some complimentary red wine and the first episode of the first season of the O.C. on our new red DVD player. When that was over, we both attempted to sleep (missing the good flick Waitress while we did so). Only two hours later we were awakened with croissants, fruit and OJ. Matt decided he needed to drink more tea. We landed smoothly in Madrid, and went through long customs lines and just made our flight to Lisbon.

Once we arrived in Lisbon, Matt took over. He found the rental car place, and expertly drove the little diesel stick-shift Hyundai Matrix out of the Avis parking lot. Unfortunately, we had a single flimsy map, and nothing but a street name for our hotel. After driving about fifteen minutes, we finally located street signs on the streets, and I then navigated us to our hotel. We checked in and were happy to discover a free parking spot (assuming no one steals our car), and that we had been upgraded to an executive suite, which comes with free access to the executive lounge. THAT comes with free drinks all day, breakfast, cocktails and canapes at night, and free internet access. (Thanks for your help, Dad!) I'll do my best to keep updating this journal from here. For now, we are off on a hike around town. Then I think we'll hit the free drinks and canapes later this evening.

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After I last wrote, we headed downtown to the Bairro Alto region (i am sure i am spelling that completely wrong). By following rick steve's map, I had us walk up an entire huge hill instead of taking the lovely, easy funicular. Ah well. We saw a church with a wooden ceiling that was faux domed, and also had a small chapel that was made in rome, then dissasembled and reassembled here. It had paintings that were actually mosiacs. Matt wondered, did they dissemble those as well? I imagine those would be harder to assemble than the Target furniture Meg and I were working on last week.

After that, we went to the port institute. I got a late vintage 2000 ruby port, Matt got a 10 year aged tawny port and smoked a tiny cuban cigar. All was delicious. The place was great, and we hope to go back. We continued on, walking through the church that collapsed during the 1755 earthquake and was never rebuilt. We had lunch of ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, water and bean soup, and grabbed a pastel de nata (custard filled pastry about the size of a muffin) for dessert. Then we hopped a 28 bus and went over to the Amalfa (??) side of town. We explored the castelo over there, and checked out the beautiful views. By that time we were quite running out of steam, and even cappucinos and another pastel de nata didn't help. Now we are back at the hotel, partaking in free appetizers and drinks in the executive suite. Later tonight? A little drink, a little tv, a lot of bed.