Ibéria, Capítulo Quatro

Having benefited from lessons learned on past Spain trips, I am extremely excited about my flight tonight.

Last year I discovered that I could pay $100 extra for two extra inches of legroom. I don’t know of many things in this world that are worth $50 an inch (clean thoughts please), but legroom is definitely one of them. The year before, I learned that no matter how great an idea it seems to stay up all night watching movies about the world being destroyed in plumes of smoke and fire, it is really not a great idea. And this year, I invested in a sleep mask and neck pillow so that I could possibly get 3 or 4 hours of sleep (which I actually might get, because I got extremely lucky and have no one siting next to me - image at left), which would be 3 or 4 more hours than I’ve had on any of the previous trips. And I will need some sleep, because:

1. I am starting my trip in Portugal. Unlike French and Italian, which I can kind of imagine I understand a tiny bit of, Portuguese sounds to me like a cross between a language I’ve never heard and another, different language I’ve never heard. To prepare, I’ve learned how to say “good morning” and “thank you.” That and a credit card comprise the bulk of my plan for getting through the first week.

2. I don’t do enough research before planning these trips and now that I’m irrevocably committed to spending 1 ½ days in Lisbon, I have learned that Lisbon is a city that one needs to spend many days in. So I plan to pack a lot of living into those 36 hours. Not much time for sleeping there.

3. Once my 36-hour Lisbon meter expires, I immediately hop on a southbound train to start a bike ride along the entire Portuguese southern coast from Spain to a cliff on the Atlantic Ocean, and I need to be pretty awake for that too. On a side note, I just read that they closed a large beach along my bike ride because of e coli contamination. But they assured everyone that it is the sand that is contaminated, not the water. To me this is not at all comforting and raises more questions than it answers.

But for now, I can’t see you. Because I’m putting on my sleep mask.