Confessions of an Author

A Day in Lisbon Lisbon in a Day (because everyone was ill for the other days!) Everyone was better, so we caught a metro into the city. We walked through the old part of the city, saw some squares, found the castle. J couldn’t find a fridge magnet that matched his set. I couldn’t find a cork cushion cover. We did however, find a queue. We weren’t sure what the queue was for, but we’re British, we joined it. Turned out it was for the castle (8 euros) so all good. The castle had great views of the city and very long lines for the washrooms. We walked back along shiny cobbled streets, trying to not slip. Flat summer shoes are bit of a problem in Portugal, as they tend to have slippery soles, and most of the streets are shiny cobbles. Heels would be worse. I think the best footwear would be wellies really. We ate lunch at Comidas de Santigo. When we sat down, they brought us bread, olives and fishcakes. Luckily, we noticed on the menu that each item, including the but...

Arrival in Lisbon 3 Left the Sheraton Porto after breakfast, and drove down to Lisbon. Husband had helpfully brought a supply of CDs to entertain us during the journey. There was no obvious CD player in the car. We stopped en route at a service station. This was later to have great significance. It looked clean, so we decided the food hygiene would be okay, despite the rather disgusting toilets. Portugal has a lot of disgusting public toilets. In my travels, most countries have cleaner washrooms than England, but not Portugal—wear shoes and take your own paper, and try not to breathe in. Arrived in Lisbon and booked into another Sheraton (Husband gets different perks with his  travels too often with work  card, so we like them). One perk is the use of the hotel lounge, so we dumped our bags and I sat in the lounge with the boys, drinking free beers (them, not me) whilst looking across the city. David and Rebecca went swimming. We caught the metro into the city,...