Lisbon – Wednesday 28th June 2023

Decide that going to any sort of museum or other tourist attraction is going to involve too much stress in ensuring I can get a taxi or bus back to the hotel in time to get the shuttle, so settle for walking to a nearby park – the Parque Vale do Silêncio – Google maps seems to show some strange sort of sculpture, that, when I get there turns out to be some artificial climbing walls.

It is very hot and sunny, so I am glad when I leave the park I am able to find a café where I have a drink, followed by a second drink and some lunch, before heading back to the hotel, passing a small supermarket, where I buy a large bottle of water (and wish I’d passed it on the way out!).

Sit and read at the hotel and wait to see if the booked taxi turns up. When it doesn’t, I instead take the hotel shuttle. Check in and bag drop at the airport is all “self-service”, but trouble free. Queue through security is very long. Unlike Manchester and Horta, they don’t care about removing cameras or tablets from either hand luggage in general or their own bags – they are only interested in whether you have liquids. My bag is shunted on to a separate conveyer belt rather than proceeding to where I can pick it up, so I suspect that contrary to what they had said, they will want to check one or the other, but they just hand it back to me with no further questions.

The departure gate is at the far end of the airport, but there appears to be a plane already docked there, so I get something to eat and then wait for boarding. There is a strange sense of déjà vu when part way through the priority boarding, the people who have already gone through the gates return and we are told boarding will be delayed by at least half an hour…

When boarding eventually starts again we discover that our plane is not the one connected to the gate as we are loaded on to busses, which continue to go nowhere. A driver gets in, moves us forward half a bus length then gets out again, before eventually re-boarding and driving us to the far side of the airport where our plane awaits (I gather the delay was waiting for staff to arrive from an incoming flight).

We do make up some time on the flight to Manchester, where I am astonished that my passport, which has stubbornly refused to be accepted at the electronic gates every time I have travelled through Heathrow works first time (it runs out next year). When I get to the luggage carousel I call the taxi I have booked back to Birmingham. My bag arrives promptly, and I get to the rendezvous point before the driver. (I am his last job of the day, and he lives in Stoke, so Birmingham is at least in the right general direction for him!)