John Edward Cooper’s Notes

Day 8
Your tour manager will advise of the departure time to Lisbon airport, to take your return flight to the UK.

…I got out of bed ca.7.35am… Checked e-mail accounts (07:59). Did [this and that] as Janet was using the bathroom. Showered after she vacated it.… We found our way, helped by a fellow guest who pointed us in the right direction (and floor!), to where breakfast was being served. It was ca.9am. We sat outside in hot sunshine on the terrace overlooking the marina. After that, we set out to try to find a convenience store where Janet might buy bananas and bread for her lunch. I thought I’d seen such a place indicated off to the left on [a] Google Maps search earlier; but when we walked along Avenido da República we saw no sign of one, and after a couple of blocks turned back. Back in the hotel room, we finished packing, and put the rainbow coloured straps on the suitcase. It was a long way from the room to the elevator, which involved going down a long undulating slope, up some stairs (I carried the cases up them), and along a corridor. We eventually got to the lobby, checked out, and took the cases to the waiting coach. We left, ca.11.15am, and the journey to Lisbon Airport took some 45 minutes. There were automatic check-in machines outside, but we couldn’t use them for some reason. Paul accompanied us as far as the check-in desks, not the ones that faced us, but some others round the back of them. (Were these for tour groups?) There was quite a queue, which didn’t seem to be dealt with efficiently. We were at the back of it, and didn’t seem to be advancing forward; then we were pulled off it to go to some nearer desks that had opened. So we got rid of the cases and were issued with boarding passes. The departure time was shown as “14:30”, both on the boarding passes and the illuminated displays in the airport — not “14:20” as on the itinerary supplied by Riviera.



I got through security without incident, but Janet was pulled over for scanning. The automatic passport-checking “traps” allowed us through immediately. It was now after 1pm. Airside, after the (almost as annoying as Manchester) duty-free “maze”, we found, among various establishments and outlets, a semicircular area with different counters around it — pub, convenience store, sandwich bar, etc. — and we gathered that payment for items was to be made at either of two tills, regardless of where those items were picked up. So it was that Janet bought two large bananas and two small baguettes (she ate one of each then, and saved the others for the flight) and a bottle of Coke Zero, paid for them at the till at the bar, and ordered for me a 0.4ℓ glass of Super Bock and a beef sandwich with fries. For the latter, she was given a fairly large plastic disc with lights that flashed occasionally; when the food was ready for collection from the bar the disc vibrated. Then we went to the boarding gate. There were a couple of duty-free shops there, and Janet bought a pack of six Portuguese custard tarts to put in the freezer at home and eat at her leisure. I got very annoyed when one of the staff announced which group or class of passengers should line up at the desk, and was completely inaudible more than about two yards away. When the rank-and-file passengers started to line up, there was one space with no line and one with a long line. When Janet broke ranks and approached the former, I held back; but after she got through, I did the same. On many aircraft, alongside the illuminated “fasten seat belt” symbol above the seats, there’s still a “no smoking” symbol, even though smoking on aircraft has long-since been abolished; on this one, though, instead of that, there were the words “Please turn off electronic devices” — “Ha!” I thought: “No hope of that happening!” The aircraft started to taxi at 14:35, and took off at 14:50. When the snacks came along, I had both Janet’s and mine: a little cheese and ham baguette and a little bottle of puréed mango. She ate the other banana and baguette. I had a little cup of red wine to drink. It was very turbulent on a couple of occasions; and on more than one occasion, during the flight, the “fasten seat belt” signs came on, and passengers were asked to return to their seats. We landed at 17:18; and once I was out of the aircraft, I turned my phone on, and a text message from Graham Buston came up (received, 17:03): “Hello, it’s Graham the taxi driver. Can you give me a call when you get your bags. Thanks, Gray.” The queue for the automatic passport gates was short, and we got through quickly; what’s more, our cases were among the first to arrive on the baggage-reclaim carousel. I rang Graham Buston (17:48). He was waiting outside the door and led us to the car park, but then had to leave us for a short while to go back into the terminal to pay for parking. When the aircraft landed, there’d been some rain on the window; but now the sun was out and it felt reasonably warm. Our way home was in daylight for over an hour: M56, M60, M62, M18, M180, A180. We passed some Eddie Stobart trucks, a TV series about which used to be much lampooned by Harry Hill on his show Harry Hill’s TV Burp, which humorously reviewed the previous week’s TV programming. Graham told us that each truck had a female name; and indeed we passed “Lizzie Ellen”, “Zelah Victoria”, one which passed too quickly to read the name, and “Lisa Jo”. We got home, ca.8.15pm.…

[2018]