It’s been the best part of 6 years since I was last in Portugal – I have dusted off my dictionary and phrase books in anticipation of returning to a fab country.
Andy and Ed left on the Sunday leaving on their motorbikes. Ellen and I took the effortless way – by plane. Well, that’s if you can call flying from Glasgow to Lisbon via Heathrow, effortless. I’m not sure about the effortless part of it, however, my ass was aching at the thought of sitting on a bike and riding all the way to Lisbon – let’s just leave that to the real bikers!
We dropped off my pride and joy, or ‘The Beast’ as I call her, to her baby sitters…. in safe hands I am sure! Ha! Don’t like leaving The Beast at any old random car park if I can help it… Anyway, checked in, and zoned in on a Starbucks intravenous drip – the 5.40am start was just a bitty early for me… however, felt much better after a caffeine injection!
The flight was not as quick as I thought it was going to be. We did, however have to get out of Glasgow first. What a bloody racket the plane was making – Ellen suggested that it sounded like there was a dog in the hold, I thought that it sounded like the off-side wheel on the plane had a bearing issue, and needed a good dose of WD40. Even Ellen suggested that it sounded like sawing going on – maybe someone was sawing through a metal 2×4 plank. It didn’t fill us full of confidence. It was a really uncomfortable silence in the plane as it whined and screeched its way down the runway, we were wondering if we were going to be able to take off…
Before we had even moved from the stance, we had moved one woman from the aisle seat so that El and I could have a seat together. Well done El. I ended up sitting next to a young lad, John, who was on his way to London to meet up with his girlfriend. In the navy, been on ship for 2 months – well, you can imagine the rest of the conversation. We laughed our way to London.
Going passed the Air Traffic Control Tower… to amuse ourselves, and take our mind off of the seriously noisy plane…. I commented ..”Control Tower… request for a fly by…..” the young sailor next to us continued with the next lines out of Top Gun – one of my favourite movies… John then told us about the Top Gun evenings they have on board ship – dressing up and drinking lots. Oh boy. That created some images, for sure! Once I had recovered from that, the 3 of us just laughed. It was great.
Heathrow was, well, Heathrow. Get in. Get out. By the time we got there we were pretty darn hungry, so launched into breakfast once we had actually managed to get into the departure lounge via security. There was the usual entertainment of people skipping the queue because their flights leave in 20 minutes. Fine doesn’t bother me…. especially when they realise they are in terminal 1 and need to be in terminal 3. Trying to stop sniggering was the hard bit. Serves them right for being a rude arrogant s.o.b. skipping the queue!!! I do know that Ellen was slightly relieved that I was comfortable navigating my way around Heathrow. (So was I relieved that I didn’t muck (change letter in that) it up).
We landed safely in Lisbon – then it was the interesting moment getting the taxi to take us to Cascais… Ellen being a nervous passenger at the best of times was told once we nearly got to our apartment that he (the taxi driver…) had a terrible ‘twitch’ that involved his whole body. Just as well I didn’t point that out at the start of our journey! 55 euros (eek) later, we arrived at the apartment. As we were in the middle of checking in – the boys arrived on their trusty steeds… how good was that timing!
I chose not to take a photo of our apartment block. It was covered in scaffolding. The apartment itself was really nice though and had everything you needed, including a petrol station across the road, and an Aston Martin garage 200 yards down the road. 
Needless to say, Andy and I were windy-lickers for the entire week, having a drool every time we went past the garage… Nice! One of those days I may just have one in my garage. Dreams, we are allowed to have after all!!
More to follow, with photos 
*grin*