Portugal and Covid

 Our first day in Lisbon after arriving from Dulles started as soon as we woke up from our lovely post-flight nap.  We went downstairs and had a hot breakfast which was delicious (another good reason to have reserved a room the night before arrival). Anyone who has ever been to Portugal always remembers one food: Pasteis de Nata.  These lovely, delicate custard-based pastries are a mainstay of every breakfast and we always have one on the first day to let our stomachs know we are in Portugal.

We took a long wake-up walk around the neighborhood marveling once again at the lovely architecture, wide avenues and stylish people. Since this was a new area for us we did our best to get in as much walking as possible before heading back to the room to get cleaned up and into clean clothes. Directly across the street from us was a huge covered market filled with some of the finest and freshest seafood you will ever see. Mammoth slabs of tuna and swordfish, delicate sardines in all sizes, and fish that I’ve never seen before but wanted to eat nonetheless.  The market also had lots of fresh vegetables, cheeses of all shape and size, and a lot of butchers peddling whole pigs, sides of beef, and all manner of poultry. Sadly we saw no goat or lamb but when you are next to the sea, you eat from the sea!

By about 1:30 we were getting peckish so we located a small restaurant in the market right near the fresh seafood. Using our best Portuguese we were escorted to a vinyl table top for two, presented with utensils and a paper place mat and told to go choose our fish. While Cindy went to the window that held the iced fish, I managed to get us a small pitcher of Vinho Verde (a lightly effervescent young wine with only 9-10% alcohol) and a half bottle of more serious wine. Cindy returned and announced what was for lunch. She had selected tuna for me and calamari for her, and in about five minutes out came the perfectly cooked fish and each plate had enough boiled potatoes and carrots to feed three, all swimming in melted butter. What a feast!  We had a nice coffee after lunch and then the server came and took out a pen and scribbled on our paper tablecloth. That was our bill!! Twenty-five euros for all the food and drink, about $30. No wonder everyone wants to go to Portugal; it is the least expensive vacation spot for all Europeans and has sun and surf to boot.

The following day we wandered into more neighborhoods before going back to pack up to move to the Intercontinental Lisboa where we normally stay. We had two free night certificates that needed to be used by the end of the year so we took a short cab ride to the hotel and settled in for two nights. For lunch that afternoon we headed to one of the best Italian places in town, one we had enjoyed a few times before and knew was really Italian since everyone spoke the language and we could order without pointing! It was truly a lot of fun and we just beat the rain getting back to the hotel in time for our afternoon nap.

That night we had a drink in the bar before dinner and found that our bartender friend from two years ago was still there. He caught us up on all that had happened to the hotel during the pandemic. The government covered almost everyone’s full wages for six months and half their wages for another six months. Everyone was so happy to be back at work and it showed. Our dinner at the hotel was fantastic thanks in large part to Pedro our Maitre D’, whom we have know for awhile from previous visits. He took care of everything, including ordering a marvelous bottle of local wine that was not on the wine list. We had a wonderful evening of fine food and conversation, ending with Pedro making a dinner reservation for us for the next night. 

The hotel was hosting a large convention that was to begin on the 31st. They also had a large Sunday Brunch celebrating Halloween. The following day was a holiday in Europe, All Saints Day, so all day Sunday and Sunday night the joint was jumping. We had long walks and a normal nap and appeared at the restaurant on schedule. Unfortunately, we were the only ones on schedule. The place was chaotic and we stood there for ten minutes while wait staff were scurrying about. Finally we were seated in a not-so-great location mostly out of sight of the rest of the dining room (which means out of sight of all the servers). We asked for Pedro but were told he was supervising room service since there was a higher than expected demand due to the conference.  I’ll spare you the details of the lousy experience but I did not spare them in the letter I wrote to the general manager. Had we not been such frequent guests we would have had a terrible feeling about the hotel but we knew this was a one-off and we will return on the 17th of November for two nights before the cruise.

Portugal enjoys one of the lowest rates of infection from Covid in the world. The reason is that early on the government made the decision to treat Covid the way you would treat anything threatening your citizens and they considered Covid to be an enemy of the state. They wisely placed an admiral from the Navy to be in charge of vaccinations. He is always shown in his battle dress, sending a not too subtle message that he is fighting this disease. From what we read he is personable to the point of being charming but he takes no prisoners. He is quoted as saying there are only two options, you are all going to help fight this enemy or you are going to be part of the problem and will be dealt with accordingly. Thus a 98% vaccination rate!!  No politics, no false science, no exemptions, just two choices - one good the other not so good.  Everyone wears a mask, everyone follows the protocols, and everyone is happy to do so since it means that they can conduct business, tourists are flocking in, (provided they meet the strict requirements of entry) and everyone is happy. Bravo Portugal!  On to Nice.  Best to all, Cindy and Wm

PS Cindy just pointed out to me that these blogs mention an awfully high rate of nap-taking!  The pandemic has made naps endemic as a way of marking time (that is our excuse, at any rate).

  

Our detailed luncheon bill!  

Coffee and Vinho Verde

Europe Adventure in the time of Covid

Greetings from Nice!

After having been shut-ins for twenty-plus months, we were given a serious incentive to get out of the house. And I do mean out, as in out of money and out of opportunities to keep postponing. Two years ago we had plans for two weeks in Nice and had booked an apartment and paid in full, then came Covid.  The rental agency would not refund the money but allowed us to postpone until Americans were allowed back into France. Strike One!

We had long ago booked a cruise on Silversea from Anchorage to Tokyo, then along came Covid. They would have allowed us a refund, but they also offered to give us a future cruise credit of 125% of the price we had paid for the cruise, plus they would credit us with the fourteen days we would have cruised, getting us to within that magical 100 nights making us eligible for FREE laundry!  We took the offer, Strike Two!

We had booked and paid in full for business class tickets to Europe with TAP, the official carrier of Portugal. Then, guess what, along came Covid.  They are not the most organized carrier we have worked with but after lots of calls and emails we did get a voucher for future travel which had to be used by the end of this year. Strike Three.

With all these reasons to spend our money rather than lose it, we decided to bite the bullet and come to France for two weeks and then to Portugal to board Silversea (the Silver Moon) back to Florida.  While travel was allowed, there were obstacles that needed to be overcome before we could fly.  The first, and most important, was getting a French Pass Sanitaire, a EU recognized document that attests to the fact that we are fully vaccinated. The online form promised that it would take from two to four days but it took two weeks and that was with prodding. The day before travel we finally received our Passes and made multiple copies, physical and digital, just to make sure. (In the meantime we were able to get our boosters but didn’t want to burden the French with that information.)

We were now ready to travel for the first time in almost two years and headed to the airport confident that we had what we needed but also apprehensive as to what lay ahead. As it turns out, we should have been apprehensive!  We approached the TAP check-in which was chaotic, clogged with people waving papers at the agents and also yelling at them which just added to the confusion. I learned long ago that if we have lots of luggage, and we did because of the cruise, I get a Redcap to take our baggage. These folks know the ropes and ours was a gem and maneuvered  through the crowd all the while talking to the agents, all of whom he seemed to know. Flying Business has some rewards and a separate check-in counter is one of them. However, that seemed to be where all the problems were (apparently everyone thought they were entitled to Business) so he pushed his way to the front of the coach line, unloaded our bags onto the scales and happily accepted an overly generous but well deserved tip.

We had to show them our Passenger Locator Form, something we had completed online which allows the Portuguese government to track you down if there was an incident involving infection on the flight. Then they wanted to see a document verifying that we had had a negative Covid test within the last 48 hours. We told them we had an EU approved Pass, which no one seemed to understand. Finally the station manager for TAP showed up, took one look at our Passes and told staff that this was all we needed! At last we were on our way to TSA security with our boarding passes.

We first went to Clear, a “pay for less hassle” outfit that works with TSA. They scanned my eyeballs and checked my boarding pass and I was ready to go. Cindy however was stopped because her boarding pass did not have the “TSA Pre” stamp. Since I had already been checked I had to stay where I was as Cindy went back to get TAP to reissue her boarding pass. She came back dejected since despite showing TAP her TSA card, they would not reissue the boarding pass with the TSA Pre checkmark. 

I then left the secure area and we both went down to the normal check-in where we would be able to use Clear to avoid long lines. Once again they scanned me, no trouble, but they said Cindy’s Clear membership had expired. Okay, please renew it I said, knowing that I had paid her membership when I renewed as a family. The folks at Clear could not have done more or have been more professional but it still took a half hour for them to get things fixed!!  Now we could go through security - which we did with no further issue. 

We finally got to the lounge that TAP uses for Business Class with just fifteen minutes before boarding and we both wanted a glass of Champagne.  Only one bartender and two people ahead of me but wouldn’t you know they wanted Mojitos, the most time consuming drink a bartender can make.  We finally had our drinks and sat for five minutes collecting our thoughts and laughing a bit over all that had happened before even boarding the flight!

The trip to Lisbon was thankfully uneventful. Our seats were comfortable, the food and drink just fine and the staff very friendly. No inflight rage as I had read about, just a smooth, fast flight with everyone wearing masks and staying calm.  We landed early, very early at five in the morning Lisbon time. We were the first flight in and praise the luggage handlers, ours were the first bags out. Immigration was a breeze and we were in a taxi within thirty-five minutes of landing and at the Hilton before six AM.

Since I knew we were going to be arriving at the crack of dawn, I had booked our room for arrival the day before so that it would be ready for our early morning arrival. I communicated directly with the front desk to make sure they knew my intentions, and sure enough upon entering the hotel they gave me my room key and we were in a lovely fresh bed by 6:15 and we slept for three hours.  This certainly was preferable to wandering around Lisbon until the normal check-in time of 3 PM!  

Paw Paw

 What with everything else going on since the start of the New Year, we have continued to be hermits trying not to be distracted by the pandemic and its associated restrictions. Following the guidelines, yes; but distracted, no.  Starting with Cindy’s birthday on June 3rd, we decided we needed to get out and about, but in a safe, very safe, fashion.

We celebrated Cindy’s 70th in grand style. There is a lovely hotel/restaurant complex about 20 miles from our house that is perched on a bluff high above the Potomac River called The Bavarian Inn.  We have stayed there a few times when there was an evening event we were attending and didn’t want to drive late at night. The food is truly Bavarian and drinking the beer is like taking a cheap trip to Munich. We had an al fresco luncheon, our first lunch out in 18 months, and then a short walk to our room overlooking the river for a nap. They had provided Cindy with a chilled bottle of sparking wine and note of congratulations on her birthday. After a brisk post-nap walk, we returned to dress for dinner and then ambled up to the restaurant.

Since it was a special occasion and we had not been out to dinner in eighteen months, we pulled out all the stops and had a delightful meal, with Champagne, Chablis and Beaujolais Villages to accompany our scallops and lamb chops. I’m sure there was dessert but I’ll be damned if I can remember it!  The next morning after a long walk we headed back to our hermitage where we have been holed up for so very long.  Soon after this experience we decided that we needed to get out and do things so we established our "anything can happen day," which means that once a week we do something we haven’t done or go somewhere we haven’t been.

Which brings us to Paw Paw.  For years I’ve wanted to go there:  It is a little village right on the Potomac that is celebrated for the Paw Paw Tunnel, which was built in the middle 1800’s as a way of speeding up transit for C&O canal boats.  You can read all about it here.  It was a truly remarkable feat of engineering and even today it is a bit awe-inspiring knowing what tools and science they had available for the big dig.  We parked at the camping site and had to walk in, about half a mile to get to the tunnel. Normally the canal would be filled with water but they are doing construction to clean it up so it was just a dry canal bed filled with wild grasses and seedlings.  The tunnel is dark, I mean really dark and even at noon the middle is so dark that you need to have a flashlight so as to not trip and either hit the tunnel side or spill over into the canal. They have diverted water from the river right at the tunnel entrance so that it is filled with frogs, turtles, small fish and other aquatic animals.

As for the name, Paw Paw was named for the abundance of Paw Paw trees in the area.  We kept looking for the fruit but didn't see a single one!

The ride from our house to Paw Paw was absolutely lovely. We went through lots of itsy-bitsy towns and past large farms filled with tall corn, alfalfa and other grains waving in the dappled sunlight. We passed a real Castle in the town of Berkeley Springs, which is noted for having therapeutic waters that George Washington used to take to relieve his aches and pains.  Even today it is a very popular spot for those wishing to take the waters and has an old classy hotel for that purpose.

We took a less scenic route home since we wanted to head to Winchester, VA to our closest Costco (about 40 minutes from our house). Having read that the Champagne area of France was walloped with evil weather I guessed that Champagne prices would be jumping sometime soon, so we stopped for a case of Kirkland Champagne. If you belong to Costco and you enjoy Champagne, do yourself a favor and try a bottle.  At $20 a pop, get it, POP, you will not be disappointed. While there we of course got one of their rotisserie chickens and a variety of fruit that is always fresher than it is in the supermarkets.

All and all we declared it a marvelous "anything can happen day," and yes we stole that name from the Micky Mouse Club!

Best to all, Cindy and William

  

Sad News from Florida

 It is with great sadness that I must let you know that our darling daughter Megan died last night at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Florida after a three and a half year battle with Multiple Myeloma.  Our Megan has always been a fighter and battled this cancer with the same energy and positive attitude she exhibited in everything she did. We have been taking care of her for the past ten days since she had lost the use of her arms and needed 24/7 care, and we cherish that time together. Last Friday we took her to Mayo and she never left.  On Monday she wanted to have a mushroom pizza from her favorite pizza joint in Jacksonville Beach so Cindy went and got it, delivered it to the front door of Mayo and I rushed it up to her still hot. (Meg was only allowed one visitor the entire duration due to Covid.) She ate half the pie with gusto as we talked about our next trips to Italy. Sometime in the early morning hours she had a catastrophic event in her lungs due to the cancer and she was placed in a medically induced coma from which she never recovered. She died peacefully with her family next to her at 10 pm on Tuesday January 12th.

The entire staff at the Mayo Clinic has been fantastic, there is a reason they are World Class. In lieu of flowers, if you are so inclined you may make a contribution to the Mayo Clinic Department of Development, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905. In the memo line indicate that the donation is in memory of Megan Byxbee. You may also do this online at: https://philanthropy.mayoclinic.org/donatemc. Under tribute information indicate that the gift is in Memory of Megan Byxbee.

With best wishes for happier times,  Cindy and William