It's Saturday evening and I'm at the airport, looking out at the rain on the dark runways and typing away on an Internet terminal in the lounge. I've made it this far without thinking of anything serious I've forgotten. This is much better than the time a couple of years ago when I realized, while being driven up the 427 in the back of a limo, that my wallet with my money, bank card and credit cards was back at the house. (I missed that flight.)

I'm flying to Frankfurt overnight, and will be connecting there to a flight to Lisbon tomorrow afternoon. With any luck, I'll get a few hours of decent sleep tonight and be suitably tired to sleep tomorrow night in Lisbon. I only hope that my room at the Pensao Prata is indeed reserved for me; the conversation I had a couple of days ago with the proprietress was convoluted and confusing for me (being in Portugese), and I think we both gave up on trying to communicate some of the more difficult concepts. (Example: she gave up on getting my last name spelt properly and has me down as simply 'Tom' arriving on Sunday some time in the afternoon.) I may yet end up at the youth hostel.

The web tells me that the weather in Lisbon is warmer than Toronto (no surprise) with a high of 15 degrees C expected for tomorrow. It's supposed to rain later on in the week. Hopefully I will have oriented myself to the public transit options by then and will be able to get around the town without getting soaked.

Actually, I'm still having trouble believing I'm finally embarking on this trip. I'll be more coherent in a couple of days when the reality sinks in.
posted by Tom at 11:16 PM | link |