Jonathan, Emily, and Daniel (and one more) to Portugal and Italy: (updated with photos) Day 2, arrival in Portugal and Ponte de Lima

Long story short, we made to our first stay in Portugal, and everyone except me is sleeping hard.

Yesterday (Monday) we left Tucson, flew to Phoenix (40 mins), to Philadelphia (4.25 hours), and then to Lisbon (7 hours overnight). From Lisbon we rented a car and drove to Ponte de Lima.

Daniel slept for the second half of the flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia. He threw a huge fit before the plane even took off, and then cried a lot as we came down because he wasn't ready to wake up. But I would still give him a 7/10.

The flight from Philadelphia to Lisbon was overnight. We were very blessed to have a spare seat in our row of three. I don't know how we could have survived without it. Daniel made friends with the woman behind him; she was traveling home to her two young kids in Lisbon after a weekend away somewhere in the US. She is from Montreal, and her husband (we didn't meet him) is from Brazil. She had unending patience for Daniel's little games and she made him very happy. In front of us was a mom with her 4 year old son. She was friendly too, but what Daniel really liked was that her son watched movies the whole flight on his iPad, and Daniel could see them over his shoulder. But as soon as we put Pingu on our tablet, Daniel was glued to it. He was really good on that flight... when we told him it was time for sleep, he laid right down on the seat and tried to sleep. I give him a 9/10 considering the circumstances. The problem was that the in flight movies played all night, and they were so bright that sometimes it was like a strobe light. Whenever a scene was bright, it would shine in Daniel's eyes, and he would start to wake up and cry in his sleep. Emily couldn't sleep anyway, so she just held a magazine over his face all night (he wouldn't let us cover his eyes with a blanket. I slept a decent amount, but I was still tired on the drive from Lisbon to Ponte de Lima.

We rented a little diesel Fiat. I was excited to drive a small diesel car. It's really great because it gets incredible gas mileage, but it is pretty gutless. It makes our Versa feel fast. I also easily managed to find a SIM card at the airport for our old t-mobile tablet which I also easily managed to get an unlock code for. So now we have a GPS unit and a cell-modem through its WIFI tethering feature. Which is how I'm posting this right now. 1 gigabyte of data was $15. I think it's $30 for 1 gig of prepaid data from T-Mobile. This old tablet is essential for two things: playing Pingu and Kipper episodes for Daniel and internet.

The lady at the car rental place gave us directions to the nearest supermarket, called Vasco da Gama, which turned out to be a huge, fancy mall in downtown Lisbon. We didn't bother looking for diapers there, so we decided to stop by a suburb on the way out. We made a wrong turn trying to get to the freeway, and it dumped us at an Aldi's! Perfect. The Aldi's bathroom was more ADA compliant than a nursing home bathroom. There were huge metal rails on both sides of the toilet, and an emergency pull-cord strung around the entire perimeter. I wonder if this is normal or someone just has a passion for safety at that Aldi's.

We stopped for lunch and bathroom in Santo Tirso, just outside of Porto. Daniel slept the entire time, and Emily slept for a lot of it. I didn't sleep for any of it, though at times I was tempted. The freeway was toll, and it was really nice. Nice and wide, 3 lanes most of the way, LED message signs about every 10 miles. (16 kilometers?) usually just giving the time. But some people in Portugal drive on the freeway like it/s the autobahn! They were all BMWs and a few Audis, and I would be doing 120 km/h (70 mph), and they would fly past me like I was standing still. I think they had to be going over 90 mph, maybe over 100 mph. Oh, and going down a hill, I found out that my car won't go faster than 140 km/h (84 mph). But most of the time I didn't speed. It just beeped at me and scrolled a message on the dash saying "speed limited to 140km/h).

All this is just to say, Portugal is very beautiful! Everything is built in a way that ages well, and it is all just so quaint and awe inspiring. There were so many puzzle-worthy photos that I passed by because I didn't want to wake my sleeping passengers.

In Ponte de Lima, we had reserved a little house to stay in on AirBNB.com . We met a woman named Maria, and she took us this great little cabin(?) on the top of a hill overlooking the town, surrounded by grape vines. To get to it, you drive through this impossibly narrow gate, down a long driveway completely shaded by overhanging grape vines (with picture perfect grapes hanging from them) lined with flower bushes. The cabin sits in front of a huge, old stone patio which they told us was used for drying cold in the old days. I think the cabin itself is completely rebuilt, with all new stone and mortar, but it is still very legitimate. The walls are 2 feet thick, except for the wall facing the patio, which is 4 glass sliding doors. The view is amazing and the breeze and temperature were perfect. Oh, and Maria is in love with Daniel. We met her brother John also, and he's a very nice guy.

Everything was great this evening except for Daniel. He was tired beyond belief and throwing once-in-a-lifetime fits every 10 minutes. We still managed to walk to the supermarket and get some cold things (since now we have a fridge), and get some dinner... but it was an adventure.

When I put him to bed, he cried for a short time until I put my hand on his chest, and then he instantly got quiet and started breathing heavily. Emily went to bed too, and a minute after I started this post, I asked her if the screen was too bright. Her reply was "ummmph? I already had 2 dreams".