Leaving Lisbon

March 2:

I woke up early this morning but was quite content to doze for a few hours. Once I finally got up and made my way to breakfast I was happy to see that quite a few people were already up. I contentedly ate my pancakes with this ample contingent of fellow Gspotters. It was nice to reminisce and shoot the shit with the people I had gotten to know so well over the past few days. The staff was there as usual and I began my slow goodbyes with them. Other farewells had to be quicker as people had plans for the day. I made many facebook acquaintances via these farewells. I really had made a lot of real friends at the Gspot in Lisbon, staff and fellow residents. In my five nights I had become part of a community, an ever-changing group of people inspired to have fun in one of the nicest cities in the world.

Eventually everyone who was heading out for the day had left and we got around to packing. I had acquired some snacks and wine that I didn’t have room to bring with me so I donated them to Natalia, the cool girl who works at the Gspot hostel. When we were just about finished packing we headed to I Love Hotdogs for some lunch before our plane ride. I was feeling particularly hungry and opted for two hotdogs. When we got back to the hostel we chilled for a little bit with the staff before it was time to go. We said fond goodbyes to the staff that had treated us so well for the past 6 days and headed to the metro. There was a big gathering at the park by the metro but apart from a passing interest we played it no mind. Tickets paid we waited at the Metro station for 20 minutes for an overloaded metro train to get to the station and another couple minutes for it’s entire load of people to disembark. Nearly half an hour behind where we wanted to be we were getting antsy about our flight. After transferring to the airport line we decided we would start running when our train stopped. Unfortunately our efforts were hampered by poor signage at the airport, which has us running 5 for minutes in the wrong direction in search of terminal 2 outside in the Lisbon heat. I was wearing my winter jacket to save space in my bag. When we finally figured out we had to head back to terminal one and take a shuttle to terminal two had to wait on the shuttle bus for 15 minutes for it to whisk us away despite that it was supposed to be an hourly shuttle. Once we had finally arrived at the counter to check our bags, we were informed that baggage check had been stopped already for our flight and we would have to manually carry our bags to the tarmac and check them there for fifty euros. This besides the large some of money involved us taking our checked bags through security. Goodbye body wash, face wash, hand cream, hand sanitizer and Johnnie Walker Green Label. Pat had to part with his Shaving cream and his really nice swizz army knife. Antics complete we boarded the plane and had an otherwise uneventful flight to Rome. In Rome we took the train to Termini Station then a somewhat sketchy bus to Hotel Lodi, where we would be staying the next four nights.

Checking in at 11:30pm we were pretty hungry. Upon inquiry we learned that there was only one place open for food at this hour of a Saturday night: Avalon. Avalon is a medieval fashioned pub. Styled to look like a dungeon the staff wore tunics. It was a bit strange but we were hungry and the food was good. After a fairly large hot salami pizza apiece we headed back to the hostel and to bed.