Lisbon - trying to get there - AGAIN!

 

Morning

We wake at 5am in the Premier Inn at Stansted and begin our day hoping to make it to Lisbon.

With flight times we need to be at the terminal 2 hours in advance, so we are at breakfast as it opens at 6.30am.

We have a less leisurely breakfast than yesterday as we have to be on the Hotel Shuttle bus by 7.15am for departure.

Stansted Airport

We board and arrive at the terminal 10 minutes later where we head straight to Bag Drop and on to security, both work very smoothly and by 7.35am we are airside. 

As with many airports there is a long walk past a wide range of shops before getting to the seating area at 7.50am, but we soon make ourselves comfortable.   

The friendly departures board has our flight advertised with the word - RELAX following it, this should, I suspect, make us calm, but it is so reminiscent of the DON'T PANIC of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame to be really comforting!

The relax messages alternates with one that says gate information is due at 8.20am for our 9.20am flight, time to finish the book, I'm reading on my Kindle - for anyone interested it is Dead Beat the first of the Kate Brannigan novels by Val McDermid. The delay to Wednesday's flight has been helpful in terms of catch-up with reading. 

We are called out to the plane, but as we walk across the tarmac it is clear that it is still snowing. Drew really doesn't look very impressed with the snow.

Climbing on to the plane at 9.30am, the snow and ice seemed worse not better. As Drew's back and the tail of the plane show:

It seems we are in a queue for de-icing, and, thankfully, at 10.30am they complete the process and the flight takes off at 10.50am. It may be late 90 minutes late, but we don't care as we are finally on the way. 

The flight takes longer than usual, as they have to fly the long way around to avoid French Airspace and the French air traffic control strike. But after two and a half hours we arrive safely in Lisbon at 1.35pm. Yippee.

Holiday Inn

We had reviewed travel options in Lisbon and had discovered that a Carris 24-hour ticket cost €6.60 compared to €1.65, so any more than four journeys in 24 hours and you are saving money. 

Our luggage arrived quite quickly and we headed to the metro station via as escalator from arrivals in the airport. The 24 hour ticker seemed too good a deal for us, so we went to the ticket machine and bought one each before boarding.

The airport metro station has quite fancy decoration:

We caught the 2.20pm metro and travelled the ten stops to arrive at Saldanha station at 2:45pm, it was a five minutes' walk from the station to the hotel. Below is the route the metro (the Red or Vermelho line) takes. A very comfortable journey it was too.

We arrive at the hotel, the Holiday Inn, Lisbon at 2.50pm. The hotel has a huge statue outside, the Monument to President António José de Almeida

So, it is going to be easy to find.

We check in and are shown to Room 914, this is on the floor for IHG Rewards Members! We have such a membership courtesy of staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Fairbanks, Alaska in 2019, due to the pandemic our points, which would have expired by now have been extended - which is why we chose to stay at this hotel out of the many options Lisbon had to offer. 

Pictures of Room 914, and its amazing views of the City can be seen on Flickr, starting here and scrolling right. 

Jack, as ever, has made himself comfortable. 

It is a great relief to have finally got to Lisbon and our arrival is in good time for Drew to register for the race and pick up his race items. But more about that, and the wonderful evening meal, in our next post.