The Azores – Tuesday 27th June 2023

My flight is not until this evening, so I get one last whale watching trip with Norberto Diving. Good weather and Sperm Whales diving and showing their flukes.

Lunch in the Volga Café again, it seems busier than last week, but maybe I’m just here a little later? Then back to the hotel to wait for the taxi. I have vouchers for the transfer to and from the airport, and for the Hotel I’m staying at in Lisbon. The one for tomorrow’s transfer says I need to confirm it on line, and, when I look closer, that the Taxi will be picking me up at around departure time, which doesn’t look right! I try to check on the web site, but it refuses to accept the booking no on the voucher, so I send Ben at Wildlife Worldwide a mail asking for advice. He comes back to say he’s not sure why the voucher says that, and the taxi is definitely booked for 5. I say I will sort it out at the hotel in Lisbon.

Flight is trouble free, and following the instructions, I make my way to the meeting point in the arrivals hall at Lisbon. There are a number of taxi firms with signs bearing names there, and I soon find mine, and am told to wait. Once there are around half a dozen of us we set off (the voucher does say it’s a “shared minibus” taxi) following a courier to the front of the airport, where it transpires that I have a taxi to myself.
He sets off and seems to be travelling in circles. He asks me again for the name of the hotel, and I tell him it is the Star Inn Hotel. He says something about Hotel Melia (that we definitely passed earlier). I repeat Star Inn. It turns out that the Star Inn is opposite the Melia, and they share an entry road, just off a roundabout – and we had, indeed passed it earlier!

The staff name badges seem to have both their own names, and, more prominently, the name of a celebrity, so I am checked in by Whitney Houston. I discover that they have a free 15 minute shuttle service to the airport (shared with the Melia), so am less concerned about the booked taxi now (just as well since the website continues to not recognise the voucher no).