We Make It To Broadway

by | May 2, 2026 | Uncategorized

Editor's Note: This will not be my best post ever due to some really ugly tech support problems that took more than an hour to fix. I want to get it online before we head out to breakfast. I promise to do better.

Micheal directing us to our "luxury motor coach"

This is going to be tough. Or as I told Kathleen last night, “I need a sea day.” We’ve had only one full day, and I’m exhausted. I don’t have a lot of time to write and process photos to get this out to all of you. I would give you the entire schedule for yesterday, but that’s for the next post. This one is just to tell you the story of getting there: our bus pickup, our flight, our “luxury motor coach” into Manhattan, and an amazing dinner at Tony’s DiNapoli with some great friends.

Thursday morning at 4:30 am, we gave Keeley her final kisses and pets (she is staying at home with Kathleen’s daughter Michelle), and we set off for Trilogy’s clubhouse, where we would be met by two 14-passenger Sprinter vans I had arranged. They would whisk 21 of us off to SeaTac International Airport. (A quick note for regular readers: I know I promised Kathleen that after arranging all those buses in Scotland pre-pandemic, I would never do that again… but these were vans, not buses ??).

To get this all to work out, we had to find a way to get to the Clubhouse (about half a mile away for us, but 3-4 miles for others—Trilogy is a big place) and not leave our car in Trilogy’s woefully inadequate parking lot for an entire week. Some people actually had friends who liked them enough to get up out of bed and drive them there at that ungodly hour. Others were going to leave our car in the lot, and friends would pick it up later in the day. We had planned to do this, but our friends who were going to do our pick up got called away, and we got really lucky when a friend who is on the trip with us and lives just five houses away from the clubhouse let us park our car in her garage. Her son had her car, so there was room in her immaculate and well-organized garage for our car. We can’t thank her enough.

I had told everyone the vans would be there at 4:30 and that we would leave without them at 4:50. So I dropped Kathleen off at the clubhouse, where we found a BUNCH of people already there before 4:30, loading the vans. We got our luggage into the van, and I drove the short distance to where we would leave the car, then walked back to check off everyone on my van list and make sure we had everyone who had signed up to go with us. The only problem was that when I got back, one of the vans I had left for the airport was gone, and I had no idea who was in it. At this point, it’s only 4:40, and our driver wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave anyone behind since I had said we would wait until 4:50. But he told me that the other van had 10 people and we had 11, so I told him to go ahead, hoping and praying that we were not leaving anyone. Thankfully, everyone had been right on time (or early), and we all got there, WHEW!

The airport was far better than we expected. Kathleen and I hadn’t flown since we went to Africa last July (we drove to our October cruise), and SeaTac had made outstanding improvements to its security lines. We were through and on our way to the Alaska Air FC lounge in no time, where we hung out until we were called (right on time) to board. The flight was smooth, and since we had left early, we arrived at JFK in NYC half an hour early. Of course, that meant there was still a plane at our gate, so we sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes. I wish they would figure this out. Why get us there early just to sit on the plane and wait? Eventually, we got off the plane and headed to baggage claim. Alaska Air had done a great job with all our luggage, and I am pretty sure not a single person in our group lost a suitcase.

JFK is a BIG airport, but when we had our bags, Mike (one of our superb guides from Break-Away tours) was waiting to meet us. He got us out and onto our “luxury motor coach,” and we were off into the city. With the traffic, it took us a little more than an hour to get to our Manhattan hotel, but another one of our excellent guides, Hardy, kept us entertained with outstanding information about our drive and NYC in general. Even though Kathleen and I have been here numerous times before, I learned a lot. He would be our main guide for the week, and we are still (after two days) thrilled to have him.

We are staying at the Westin Times Square. It’s a very nice hotel, just about a block from Times Square. But Break-Away uses it because we can walk just about anywhere. Once we arrived and got settled in, we all met in the lobby to walk to a wonderful Italian restaurant, We walked right through Times Square to get there and Tony’s Di Napoli. This place is an institution and has been around since the fifties (just like us ?). They serve you a LOT OF ITALIAN FOOD, and they serve it family style. They bring it to your table on huge platters, and you pass it around. It was just like grandma used to make. Not gourmet, but delicious. Top that off with a nice Chianti and cannoli for dessert, and it was a perfect way to start the trip.

I only had two tiny quibbles about Tony’s. We were seated in a basement dining room, and the lighting for taking photos was terrible, as you will see in my photos. Thankfully, there are only a few of them. I know I could have taken them with my phone and gotten slightly better results, but I wanted the actual feel of the room. The other thing that was a pain was the noise. This may have been the nosiest restaurant I have ever been in. It was a legacy building, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were hard materials, which meant that with our party and about 50 other people down there, it was LOUD! You pretty much had to yell to be heard by the person sitting next to you, which only made the room EVEN LOUDER! But it was a delicious dinner, and no one left hungry for want of great food. It is almost sad how much we left on the serving platters. After dinner was over (around 10:30 NYC time), we took a short three-block walk back to the Westin and fell fast asleep.

Here are my photos of our the dinner at Tony's. As you can see, it was kinda dark down there. Don't forget, you can click them to enlarge them.

For our first time traveling with 41 people (we only had 21 in the vans—the rest had flown in early or arranged their own transportation to the airport), things were going very smoothly. More tomorrow about our first full day, which about killed us (in a good way). I should also mention that even though we regularly travel with two or four other people, traveling with 41 is really interesting in one big way. We know these folks from living in the same community, and we are all members of the Travel Club. But that doesn’t mean I know every name (because I am president and have a big mouth, they all know me ?). When we first moved into Trilogy, a neighbor who had known us before told us she had been on a Travel Club trip, and no one remembered her name to say good morning or good evening, or anything to her. I kind of vowed that this trip would not be that way for anyone. So I put together a PDF of photos of the entire group with names so I could remember who was who. Two days in, I am doing pretty well, and thankfully, Break-Away had some really great name tags for us, which really helps as well.

That's it for day 1. Yesterday was our first full day, and I hope I get a chance to write it up tomorrow. I certainly took lots more photos as we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, had dinner at Sardi's and saw an amazing Broadway show—Operation Mincemeat. See you then.

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.   —Sammy Davis, Jr.

 

One Last Day in Glasgow

by | Jun 11, 2024 | Photography

Before I start, I have to tell you about the photo above. This is the view out our hotel room window here at Grasshoppers in Glasgow. The hotel sits on the sixth floor above the Glasgow Central Rain Station. Those panels in the foreground that look like solar panels are actually skylights in the station below. Across from our room, we think those are apartments, but we aren’t sure anyone lives there as we have never seen any movement and only one light, and that’s a work light. But no matter what they are, we found the whole thing very interesting, and I had to include a shot of the view, now on with the actual post.

When doing our planning almost a year ago, Kathleen and I had discussed how much time we wanted to spend in Glasgow. We have been to Edinburgh three times in the past and have spent about seven days total there. We could easily spend three or four more and still not have seen or done everything we would like to. It is one of my favorite cities in the world.

So when discussing Glasgow, we decided we wanted at least two full days here along with the transition days when we came up from England, before we drove north, when we got back from up north, and today…when we take the train to London. We thought that two full days would make us want to come back again. In retrospect, one day would have been enough. We found Glasgow kind of boring. Yes, it has a very nice hotel, some great restaurants and beautiful murals, but to be honest, that’s about it.

I mentioned on our first full day that we had taken the Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour. Usually, when we do that, we take the entire tour and then return to the places we want to see again. We didn’t go back to anyplace. Just nothing intrigued us enough. There were a few things I wanted to walk to and take photos of, but I got those (show them to you in a minute) but; looking back on it, if I were planning this trip again, we would have stayed an extra day in Portree or gone up to Inverness (even though we have been there before) and then driven back, dropped the car and taken the train to London the next morning.

I am not dissing Glasgow—it’s just not our cup of tea. It is a grimier, more industrial city than Edinburgh and seems to be centered on shopping and museums. Edinburgh is a museum. I could walk the Royal Mile for hours. I am looking forward to stopping there next Monday during the cruise.

Now, on to the walk I took with my camera and the photos. After breakfast at the hotel, we went out to do a bit of shopping. Kathleen had forgotten to bring a hat, and since we are headed to the part of Norway that is beyond the Arctic Circle by the end of next week, she thought she might need one. So we were off to find her a nice, warm knit hat. Found it. Back at the hotel, I dropped Kathleen off, and I was out for a five-mile walk. Have camera, will travel. But first, here are a few pics while she and I were out walking that I liked.

The one place I had seen on our bus tour I wanted to explore more of was the Cathedral and the Necropolis. In case you don’t know exactly what a necropolis is, the dictionary that’s built into my Mac says that it’s “a cemetery, especially a large one, belonging to an ancient city.” Why did I want to see this necropolis, you ask? Well, a few years ago (quite a few years), we were huge fans of the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, a native Glaswegian. As a special program, Craig brought a few guests (Kristen Bell, Michael Clark Duncan) to his hometown and filmed a great deal of the special in the necropolis. I don’t know why I recalled that, but I do remember that it looked quite interesting, so I decided I had to see it, and since it was right behind the cathedral, I figured I might as well see that too.

Along the way to and from, I saw more of the incredible murals that Glasgow is famous for, and I wanted better shots of them than I had been able to get off the top of the bus. So here are the pics with captions. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

That’s about it for our last day here in Glasgow. As I write this, I am sitting in the “sitting room” at Grasshoppers Hotel, looking out the windows at the view I started this post with. It’s 5:45 a.m., and Kathleen (like most normal humans) is asleep. We have tickets on the 10:18 a.m. train to London right downstairs. In fact, if I listen very carefully, I can hear them announcing the next train. It’s really kind of cool. I think I will leave you with one final photo. This is a panoramic shot from inside the station itself. Our room is above those windows on the left. I LOVE European train stations. For some reason, they just do it for me.  And since we will have more than four hours on a train from that station, watch later today for a summary of our time in England and Scotland.

The great thing about Glasgow is that if there’s a nuclear attack it’ll look exactly the same afterwards.  —Billy Connolly

 

Let me sum up…

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Photography

I am so sorry this has taken me so long. I am back with my final summation of our entire European trip this month. As usual, I will break it down into some categories so it doesn’t look like you have a massive block of text to read all at one time. I welcome any comments about my views, but please realize that they are based on my experience.

We loved Lisbon!

If you read my Lisbon reports, you know that we loved it. It was like the early days of travel for us—just the two of us having a great time in a great city. If there was one thing we didn’t like, it was living out of a suitcase. We loved our tours, the food, the hotel (especially the hotel) and pretty much everything else. It is also a very inexpensive place to visit. Oh, we didn’t have a very good time at our Fado dinner. There must be better places. But that was just a minor annoyance.

Our flights and airport experiences

Again, I have detailed these pretty well in this post in my huge rant about Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris. All the rest of our flight experiences were excellent. We really liked our flights with Delta much more than we did a year ago when we flew with them home from Barcelona.

Prague—ice and cold

Bathed in snowy white.

After we flew to Prague from Lisbon, we became Viking’s problems as this was part of our pre-cruise extension. Read and see all about it by clicking here. It was an OK extension but we could have done without the ice and snow. I know that Viking can’t do anything about ice and snow, but they can figure out a way for people who are not great walkers when it is dry and warm to see some of the city’s sights. Viking offers an “included excursion” for every day of an extension and for every port on a cruise. But to only have an excursion that on a dry and warm day would be “challenging” leaves out a huge part of their clientele and those that shouldn’t attempt it but do hold back those that can handle it.

But other than my complaint about shore excursions, we loved Prague. It was a great hotel with a great breakfast; we found a super place for dinner, thanks to a friend here in Redmond, and the tours we were able to take were pretty darn good.

Nuremberg—worst hotel, best tour of the entire trip

Nuremberg’s lousy hotel

Viking should immediately stop using Le Méridien Grand Hotel. Yes, it is very well situated, but it is so old and out of date, they need to find something better. Our room was tiny and felt like a cell, not a room. There was one elevator to serve more than 200 rooms. The restaurant was never open to guests for lunch or dinner, so we ended up eating in the bar (where the menu was as small as our room). Their breakfast was good, but that can’t make up for the rooms and the fact that there was no place to eat. If you do any pre-extension with Viking, make sure to pre-book your restaurant reservations for dinner yourself. If you get there and find you can’t get into any place, check with your tour manager (who works for Viking) and see if they can find you somewhere. That worked for us in Budapest.

But in Nuremberg, I went on the best tour of the entire trip. If you go, do the WWII Nuremberg tour. If you can get Werner as your guide, you will have hit the jackpot. His knowledge and understanding of the topic are encyclopedic, and he was great with the delivery—a born storyteller.

The Cruise—from Regensburg to Budapest on Viking Gulveig

Now that’s a long ship. Maybe that’s why Viking calls it a longship.

This was our first river cruise, and I have to say we truly enjoyed it. It is quite different from an ocean cruise, and we are looking forward to our next one on the Douro River in Portugal next October. It will be a really different experience than the ice and frigid cold we experienced on this one.

The cruise (as you may recall) was billed as Christmas on the Danube—Europe’s Christmas Markets. I don’t know what I thought the Christmas Market thing would be, but it wasn’t that. My expectations were that once we were in Europe, we would be Christmased to death. We weren’t. If anything, it was almost the opposite. As much as I loved the ship, it just wasn’t very festive. We saw a lot of other riverboats/ships, and 90% were better decorated for Christmas than ours was. And there was little to no Christmas music on board. The piano player would drop one or two holiday tunes into his nightly repertoire, but that was it.

And the Christmas Markets were pretty much all alike. The ones we saw in Lisbon were our favorites, followed by the ones in Budapest, but otherwise, they were all about the same. The same merchandise, the same foods, the same crowds, the same drinks. It truly was a case of if you have seen one, you have seen them all. And Viking felt we wanted to see them all for three or four hours. I don’t know what I was supposed to do at a Christmas Market for that amount of time.

Getting back to the ship, our stateroom was excellent. We had a typical verandah, which is tiny by ocean ship standards (205 square feet with the verandah), but it was so well-designed that we barely noticed. The bed was much more comfortable than the bed we had on our Viking Ocean cruise in October 2022. We had plenty of storage, and by the time we got to our stateroom (after being in three hotels in the last ten days.

Things we loved about the cruise and the ship

  • Embarkation was amazing and easy. We arrived from Nuremberg, got off our “luxury motor coach,” and went right onto the ship. We (about 40 of us coming from the extension) gave them our credit card info and got our room keys in less than 10 minutes. Then, every person was escorted directly to their stateroom by a crew member. We got Natalia from Poland. She later turned out to be one of our servers in the dining room. She was so great, showing us how everything in our stateroom worked and telling us how to get help if we needed it. She stayed and talked for about 15 minutes, asking about us and seeing if there was anything else she could do for us. What a treat! Best embarkation ever.
  • The main dining room was surprisingly spacious. But unlike ocean cruises, you better like to meet people because there are NO tables for two. There aren’t even tables for four. There are tables for six, eight or ten people. That’s it. But that worked for us. We were thrilled to have meals with new friends, especially our new friend from New Hampshire, Carol.
  • We never had to wait for an elevator. Because we really didn’t have to. There are only three levels on a Viking longship. And the only reason to go below level two is if you have a stateroom on deck one. We were on deck two (stateroom 213), so we never went down to one. The main dining room is on deck two as well, so we could have eaten all our meals and never even gone upstairs if we didn’t want to. But the top deck had the only lounge and a small buffet. We went up for drinks most nights and to hear what Debra, our Program Director, told us what was on tap for the next day.
  • Dinner times were interesting. By that, I mean that they were later…or earlier. They changed every day. They were usually close to 7:00 pm but, one night (because of an after-dinner concert in Vienna that many attended), dinner was at 5:30. Other nights, if there was a late shore excursion coming back to the ship, it might be as late as 7:30 (which is really late for us).

Things we would love to see changed

These things are going to be really picky. Why? Because Kathleen and I could only think of some minor annoyances that we didn’t like.

  • The pianist in the lounge was too loud! Why do cruise lines, restaurants, and pretty much every public lounge or bar think we want to hear loud music every single second of the day? We met some great people on this cruise—people we would have loved to have traded travel stories with. But most of the time, when we were in the only lounge on the ship, we couldn’t hear people sitting directly across from us talk. The pianist thought that louder was better, and he played one of those electronic pianos that made him the entire band, and he liked to show it off. Not to mention the fact that he barely played any Christmas music. TURN HIM DOWN PLEASE!  During the rest of the day there is excellent recorded music playing in the lounge. At a low volume. Low enough that you can have a conversation. We would have loved to have that in the evenings. If you read my review of our ocean cruise on Oceania’s Vista in October, you know I complained about that on that ship as well. On Viking Ocean ships, there are many places to go and. have a nice, quiet drink with conversation. But river ships only have one lounge, and if Mr. Loud is playing the piano, you are screwed.
  • Laundry service was highway robbery. By the time we boarded the ship, we had been on the road for ten days. We needed to send some things out to get clean. We knew there was a chargeable laundry service on the ship, but not one that charged $4 to wash a pair of socks, $7 to wash a pair of jeans or $6 to wash a tee-shirt. We ended up sending out six items, and the bill was $42. That’s HORRIBLE!
  • Rafting was fine, except once when it was UNSAFE! If you aren’t familiar with rafting (as it pertains to river ships), it is when two, three, or four of these very long ships tie up to each other. Then, if your ship is the second, third or fourth ship out from the dock, you cross through the lobby area of each of the inside ships to get to yours. It’s not a big deal, and you can look at the other ships a little. But this kind of rafting only happened with other Viking ships. The one time we were rafted with a non-Viking ship, we had returned from Munich, it was very dark and we were not allowed to cross through the other ship’s lobby. We had to climb to the top (observation/sun) deck, cross over and climb down into our ship. This meant climbing some slippery stairs, crossing over an icy deck, then onto a very narrow gangplank between the ships (three stories off the water) across our ship’s icy deck and then back down some more slippery steps. This should not happen.
  •  The lunch on embarkation day was just wrong. We left Nuremberg at 11:00 am (too early for lunch). We arrived at the ship at 2:00 pm and were told that there was a buffet lunch in the lounge on deck three. That lunch was really sparse. And really poor. They need to improve this situation. Better scheduling (leaving Nuremberg earlier or later) would help.

As you can see, we are nitpicking here. It was a great cruise with four tiny blips. All of them are easily fixable.

Viking Shore Excursions

I have already mentioned that our pre-cruise tours were outstanding. And our post cruise tours were even better when we got to Budapest. But I want to run through the ports really quickly. You can always go back for a more in-depth look in previous posts.

  • All the tours on this cruise were better than any of the tours we took on our Viking Ocean cruise in the Mediterranean back in 2022.
  • The worst guide was the guy we had in Regensburg. His job was to show us around the city in about 45 minutes. What he did was get us off the ship on back streets, told misogynistic jokes as we walked, took us to see nothing really interesting and then left us in the middle of town saying, “The river is over that way. Just get there and turn right.” WTF? He should never be used again.
  • The second worst was the guide who took us to Munich. He was just okay as a guide, but what he or Viking did to us was not. This was the day that we enjoyed going to the BMW headquarters and then downtown Munich and then a very nice lunch. But after that, we were just told we had three hours of free time and no place to go to get out of the cold. That was WRONG! No one needs to shop for three hours, especially on a Sunday when all the shops in the old town core were closed. The only real option for shopping was the Christmas Market but how many ornaments can you buy or how much mulled wine could you drink (and still find your way back to the bus). This needs to change.
  • Some of the excursions were just “fine.” They were nothing to write home about. The tours on the extensions were much better than those on the cruise, except for maybe the “Panoramic Budapest” tour that we took with the hilarious Barbie. The rest were either bad (like the first two above) or just “fine.”
  • It would be VERY hard to do private tours. On an ocean ship, we would just have done private tours, but I am just not sure if you could do that on a river cruise. The reason you would have a hard time doing that is that you never know where the ship is going to be. For instance, we went to bed in Regensburg with the knowledge that the next morning, we would still be in the same place. If we had been doing a private tour, we would have told our guide to meet us there and then found out where we could rejoin the ship. But when we got up, we were miles down the river because the ship had to move quickly to get under some low bridges just outside Regensburg. This was NOT Viking’s fault. The river levels cannot be controlled. When we got up that morning, we were going to Munich. The ship just pulled over, tied up in the middle of nowhere, and we got off and met our “luxury motor coach” on a very rural road.
  • I make jokes about “luxury motor coaches,” but that really didn’t apply to the buses we rode on during this cruise. They truly were luxury motor coaches: great seats, lots of legroom, places to put anything you carried. We had been dreading the long bus rides from Prague to Nuremberg and from there to Regensburg, but they were very nice. And they planned restroom breaks when needed. I would have no problem taking them again. Much better than on our Viking Ocean cruise in October 22.

The Food

Our last ocean cruise on Oceania’s Vista in October 2023 was all about the food. The rest of the cruise was nice, but I wrote a lot about the food, as I do on many of our cruises. On this cruise, we had very little to complain about food-wise. Our servers were outstanding. Breakfast in the dining room was a buffet, but you can also order from a really nice menu.

We had only one complaint about the food in the entire cruise. Jamie and I ordered fish and chips one day, and we sent it back. The fish had sat too long and had turned to rubber instead of being crisp. That may have been more of a service thing than a cooking thing. We do wish that the chef had some heartier soups. When you come in from a cold excursion and go to have lunch and all the soups are just broth, you kind of wish for a nice clam, corn or potato chowder.

Other than that, the food was great. Lots of variety, lots of interesting dishes. My brother said it passed the “Steve Test.”

Beautiful Budapest

If you have been following along for the last three weeks, then you know we LOVED Budapest: great tours, a very nice hotel with an amazing view, and a super tour coordinator. Only one guide was truly horrid, and we have already forgotten the horrible Lazlo. If you missed my detailed reports on Budapest, they start here.

The Final Word

And that does it. I hope you have enjoyed coming along on this trip. We had a great time; it only felt like we had hit a wall a few times and would do it again (but NOT a Christmas Market cruise). We are going back to do another river cruise in October. But for my faithful readers, stick with us. We are off to England, Scotland and Norway in June for almost a full month. And, of course, a few posts before that.

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.  —Louis E. Boone.

Day 2—HoHo, HoHo, rain, a little fog and Fado

by | Dec 4, 2023 | Food Experiences, Photography

You might notice there are four Hos up in the headline. That’s because today was all about the HoHo (HopOn, HopOff) bus. And there is a lesson to be learned…but we will get to that. Come on along as I tell the story and give you some visual fun as well.

Hop-on, Hop Off

Originally, we had been scheduled to do our food tour on the second day of our trip, but the company called and asked us if we could swap from Sunday to Saturday. We were OK with that, but I think in the end, it wound up costing us some money. Don’t get me wrong, I think it was the right thing to do, but this is where the lesson comes in.

Our original plan on our first full day was to take the HoHo bus around the city. This is something we like to do because it provides an overview of the area, and we learn where we might want to go back and see later. Usually, in cities the size of Lisboa, there are at least two, if not three, routes, and they include some additional stuff with your ticket (discount admission at museums, boat rides, etc.), and in this case, that was true as well. We never had time to use any of that “extra stuff” and we only ended up using the bus for three rides.

I had pre-purchased a 72-hour pass about six months ago based on recommendations from people I trusted. The plan was to use it daily to get around the city. Since we didn’t start using it until the second day, we really lost a day right off the bat. Then, on top of that, we ran into what I am now calling the “running race jinx.” You may recall that when we were in Québec City last October, our day was shaken up by the Québec Marathon being run throughout the city on the only day we were there. We have run into the same thing in at least four other cities, and it happened again. Sunday was the Lisboa Marathon. And even though I considered skipping the touring and doing the race myself ?, it meant that the HoHo bus could not do one of their two biggest routes…the one we wanted to take first. The one that would take us to the area known as Belem.

Not only that, but the bus company neglected to post a sign at their base/first stop (a block from our hotel) that told us that the stop would not be used until after 1:00 pm. So we stood around waiting for a bus until one of their workers came by and told us to walk to the next stop up a hill.

I have to take part of the blame for not realizing the stop was closed. There was a small sign taped to the bus waiting area that said, “Stop will be closed on 3/12/2023 due to the Lisboa Marathon.” And being a typical American (shame on me), I thought it was an old sign saying the stop had been closed on March 12. But in Europe (and most of the rest of the world), they list the day first when writing a date; the sign actually said it would be closed on the third of December. It dawned on me right about when the worker showed up to tell us to walk to the next stop.

I should also mention that the weather had turned bad for us. Some rain, but it turned a lot colder. So that meant that I felt like I was freezing for most of the day. We hadn’t broken out the heavy sweaters and coats we are saving for Prague and beyond because we thought it would be much more temperate in Lisboa. (Apparently, it is because we found the hotel has no heating system for their rooms. To get heat, you just shut off the air conditioner. The buildings are well-insulated, and they don’t have enough cold days to warrant having heaters.)

When we finally hiked to the other stop, we were informed that the Belem route would not be available until 1:30 pm, so we did what they call the “Modern Lisboa” route. It was very nice, and we learned a lot, but for me there were not a lot of photo opportunities. And because it was so cold, we didn’t go up to the open-air top to sit on the wet seats that had been out in the rain. So, no photos except through windows. I don’t suppose Kathleen was as disappointed as I was, but we both would have liked a warmer bus (on the bottom deck) and a softer seat. Old butts don’t do well with rock-hard seats. That route took almost two hours, so after we got back to the first stop, we walked around the Christmas Markets and we just enjoyed each other’s company. We also stopped back at the hotel because we had been told the stop near the hotel would reopen in the afternoon.

We set out again at 1:30, and sure enough, the stop a block from the hotel was open, and so was the Belem route. We jumped on that bus and did a tour that was more interesting but still not as pretty as the city had been the day before because of the blanket of clouds it was shrouded in. Let me drop in some photos here so you can get an idea of what I am talking about. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Pastéis de Belém

Before we go any further, I have to tell you about the BIGGEST reason we came to Belem—Pastéis de Belém. I am pretty sure I mentioned in writing about the food tour that the tiny custard tarts we had eaten to end the tour were from what Fred had told us was “the second best place in Portugal to get them.” Well, Belem is where you find the best. How do I know? A whole lot of people have told me, and the fact that the Pastéis de Belém has been baking them since 1837 in the same exact place.

We had been warned there would be a line for their takeaway window, but if we went to the other side of the building to the sit-down cafe, we could get right in. Even Rick Steves has this in his books. Well, so many people have read his books and seen his videos that now you can get them as takeaways in about 1 minute, but the line for the sit-down cafe was at least a half-hour long. Being late in the day and totally worn out, we decided to skip the sit-down and get them takeaway.  As you can see from Kathleen’s photo, we got them, but we had a REALLY long day getting them. I also might add that we bought two of them. One each. They were truly delicious and were absolutely better than any of the other eight or so we had eaten before this…but be warned. They are 10 euros each for about three bites. Worth it? Not really, except to say that you have eaten a Pastéis de Belém.

After our Pastéis de Belém we were back to the bus stop for a very long wait (it was so long that we considered doing an Uber back to the hotel) the bus showed up, and we headed back. One of the things we didn’t like about the tour to Belem is that you go back on the same route you went out on—nothing new to see here.

So, what’s the moral of the HoHo bus story? Don’t pre-buy 72 hours of touring. You never know what you will have time for. We could have saved some money and lessened our expectations if we had only purchased one day. And there was no discount for purchasing them early, just a warning that you might have to stand in line and wait to buy them. Nothing could have been further from the truth because we were able to get on and off with no line at every stop. It would have taken us about two minutes to buy our passes from the bus driver or one of the workers at the stops. Warning: This may not be true in the high season (March to October) when the crowds are heavier.

Fado Dinner

On the evening of our second full day, we booked a Fado dinner. Fado is the national music of Portugal. It is a sad, mournful music. We had heard so much about it that we decided to make reservations to see the show while we had dinner. The restaurant opened at 7:30, and of course, we were first in line. We were seated immediately and they brought bread, took our orders for soup, dinner and wine.

I need to note here (and Paul and Gail our British friends are laughing right now) that we are typical Americans and usually eat dinner at 5:30. So waiting to eat until 7:30 is really different for us. And it got worse. The wine, bread and soup showed up by 8:00, but then the Fado show started. Other Fado shows we had seen on YouTube had shown the servers continuing to bring food while the singing was going on but this Fado place (Club de Fado) did not allow that. They wanted total silence during the performance (and to be honest, that really made it better), but that also meant we didn’t see our entrées until sometime after 9:00.

To make matters worse, we saw others that had ordered after us served way before we had ours. In fact, the only way we finally got ours was by telling our waiter to go ahead and tally a bill with just the wine, soup, and bread, and we would be leaving. Guess how fast the entrées showed up? Almost instantly. We ate them and then headed back to the hotel before the second half of the show. By the time we were done eating, it was after 10:00, and we had to be up at 6:00 am for our tour of Sintra.

To top it off, the food just wasn’t that great. I guess when you are there for the show, the food doesn’t have to be that good. I took a few photos with my iPhone (I didn’t want to carry the big Nikon to dinner), and you can see them below. Since I took them with a phone, feel free to look a them on your phone.

Pre-dawn Photo Walk

Editor’s note: When I went to grab the photos from the bus ride, I discovered I had not shown you the results of my pre-dawn photo walk on Day 2, so please see below for those. They are much better than what I took during the day because it wasn’t really raining, and I could walk further because we weren’t getting on the HoHo bus until 9:30. Again, don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

That was our complete second day in incredible Lisboa. Even with the clouds, rain and the late dinner, we had a great day. I think if we do it again, we would find a different Fado show. Off to bed late because tomorrow is our tour of the amazing Sintra. Come back for that.

Frankly, I’d rather go by bus.  —Prince Charles

Lisboa Day 1–Almost too good to be true

by | Dec 2, 2023 | Photography

When we last met, Kathleen and I were sitting in the airport in Paris, waiting to board our flight to Lisboa (The Portuguese spelling–trying to be authentic). We were exhausted, tired, beat, worn out, and did I mention…exhausted. I wish I could tell you how we liked the flight from Paris to Lisboa, but I don’t have a clue. From the moment we got on the plane until five minutes before we got off, I was sound asleep. Well, as asleep as one can be in the seats that pass for Business Class on intra-Europe flights.

I am pretty sure I have mentioned it before, but intra-Europe flights don’t have Business or First Class seats. What they do have is a regular coach seat (these on Air France had the worst legroom I have ever experienced), three on each side of the aisle, with the middle seat left empty. That’s Business class. I only want a US domestic FC seat for my money, but I have never seen one. But in this case, it only meant I woke up enough to shift my legs to the other side of the seat in front of me before I went back to sleep again.

We got to Lisboa expecting to have to clear passport control, mainly because we had been told by our original Delta pilot that if we were just transiting between two flights, we would not go through passport control and customs and would do that at our final destination. It turns out he was WRONG! All that time spent waiting in line in Paris paid off. We got off the plane and kept walking, expecting to run into someone who would ask for our passports. But we never found them. We did find our luggage, and then our driver (who I had booked before we left home) from Welcome Pickups. They are all over Europe, and if the service we got here is any indication, I will be booking them a lot in the future. The cost was slightly more than a taxi or Uber, but it was so nice to be met by a friendly man with a sign that had your name, who helped you to the car, got you to the hotel and then walked you right to the front desk.

We are staying at the Hotel Portugal. They call themselves a “boutique hotel in the center of old Lisboa.” We learned about them from our good friend Mike Priesman, who stayed here a few years back when traveling with his son. If you want some great recommendations on anything travel-wise, go over to Mike’s website (click here) and find your destination. If Mike has been there and has stayed at a hotel, you can stay there and know it will be exactly as he has described it. This one certainly was—as were any of the ones he has recommended in the past.

The best part about this hotel is the location. Walking distance to just about any place you want to go. And if we can’t walk, it is within walking distance of almost every mode of transport we know of. A huge taxi line is a block away, and a big hop-on, hop-off bus stop, a trolley line, and a metro stop. All within 10 minutes of walking time. But there are lots of other reasons to stay here as well. They pass what I call the Big Three Hotel Test—lots of hot water, great water pressure and the included breakfast has superb coffee. I can put up with everything else, and this place has those and more—including a big shower, comfortable bed and the aforementioned breakfast. Our only quibble is intermittently poor WiFi. I’m working on this at 3:30 am today in the lobby, where the WiFi is awesome.

One of the things we loved when checking in was that the young lady at the front desk was beyond helpful in showing us directions to just about everything we wanted to see. She had maps for us with food recommendations and lots of great tips about where to go and what to see. She gave us a dinner recommendation that was only a few blocks away and told us the food would be great and the prices would not be “tourist prices.” She was right. Most of the people eating there were locals (the servers greeted many by name and knew their regular orders), and the food was wonderful. I had a superb octopus salad (regular readers aren’t surprised) and a dish called, “Portuguese fish and rice. So much great fish, so little time. This came in its own pot and was amazing. No way one person could eat it all, and I can’t begin to tell you how good it was. This restaurant easily passed the “Steve Test.” (If you eat in a restaurant while traveling, and that restaurant were near you once you got home, would you go there again?) If it were in Redmond, we would eat there weekly.

After a short walk back to the hotel, it was off to bed. The first night was not great (our only minor setback so far) as I had committed a big travel no-no and had not hydrated enough on our flights. This meant that I woke up in the middle of the night with a SPLITTING headache. Worst I have had in years. But after some Tylenol and lots of water, by the time I got up for my pre-dawn photo walk, I was feeling great. Crisis averted. Let this be a lesson to me—and to everyone who reads this—when you fly, drink a lot of water. One of my hardest conundrums when flying overnight is to balance the water intake with the number of times I have to use the facilities on the plane, interrupting my sleep. I went for sleep this time and paid for it later on. BTW: I also tried something different on this flight to help me sleep. It did get me a few hours of shut-eye (that would have been more if some tech-types sitting next to me hadn’t talked throughout the entire flight). I purposely did not have any alcohol, didn’t turn on the in-flight entertainment system, took my Kindle, and just read a book. I have to say it worked pretty well. May try it again in the future.

After that fun night, I was up for my usual pre-dawn photo walk. The photos I took on the walk are below. If it looks like the streets are wet, they are, and it’s from rain. But we never saw the rain. It rained again during breakfast, and we never saw them either. The weather here has been close to perfect since we got here. The highs are in the 60s and sunny, with the lows in the high 40s when I go out to walk just before sunup. I will take it. Speaking of pre-dawn photo walks, here are the pics I got yesterday morning (and a few from the night before). Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I was originally going to give you our first full day in Lisbon, but I have only gotten to breakfast (which, as you can see from Kathleen’s smiling face), which was awesome. And there is so much more to tell about the food tour we did and the incredible Christmas decorations and Christmas markets that I need to make that an entirely different post. This trip is going to be tough blogging. Just too much to cover (on the first day) and no time to do it. It is a good thing I am back on my regular schedule of rising at 3:30 am (local time). But still, between processing photos and writing, this will take a while. So be prepared for me to be writing about Lisboa when we are actually in Prague (on Tuesday), writing about Prague when we are in Vienna, and finishing the entire trip sometime after we are home on the 18th. I hope you like it so far (the trip and the post) because there is much more to come.

I’ve got two places I like to be—Portugal is one. —Cliff Richard