The next morning, we had to repack our stuff for flying on the plane. We didn’t have to worry so much about delayed luggage and not having our hiking gear, so a lot more could move into the checked luggage. We checked out at 11am but stayed in the hotel courtyard and worked on our blog entries and other stuff. The sun was hot, but there was a breeze in the shade.
We had lunch at Il Quadrante, salad and spaghetti. Back at the hotel, we chatted with newly arrived guests who had just finished a cruise to Croatia. They were traveling for 11 weeks on various cruises, including Greenland and the west coast of Iceland. They were heading next to Amsterdam and the fjords of Norway.
We got a taxi to the airport at 4:30pm. It was just a kilometer away, but it was too sunny and hot, and we were too tired to walk it pulling suitcases. There was a good gelato place at the airport, melon and intense chocolate sorbetto.
Our flight was only slightly delayed. We got our luggage by 22:15.
Arriving at our Lisboa apartment
Our rental was Bliss Apartments in the Avenidas Novas neighborhood of Lisbon. The apartment was in a renovated building on a tree-lined street. Check out the tiny elevator!
It was almost 11pm when we arrived. We got in the unlocked front door and spent some time on the phone and on WhatsApp to get the door code for the apartment. Considering we made the booking in an emergency situation two days prior when our previous booking got accidentally cancelled, it worked out well enough.
The apartment is huge! Three bedrooms – big, medium, small – with corresponding bathrooms. It had decorative displays of plates and black and white photos of movie stars. Lots of mirrors. Even the TV was in a mirrored cabinet that you couldn’t open. The streets nearby had lots of restaurants, a nearby grocery, the Gulbenkian park, and the popular mall, Il Corte Inglese. We loved how the apartment represented the sort of space we hoped to buy when we come to Portugal to live.