r ellenberger

Ok so we are writing this many weeks after the event but we are doing our best to keep the trips blogged... even if it's late. So we started off with an early morning 7am bus from Whitechapel. Thankfully the bus turned up on time, so no dramas there. We got the airport without any problems and landed in Lisbon an hour or so later. Unfortunately the immigration queue took a full hour, and we were stuck near a crazy Yank lady who was raging that she had done the wrong thing and had got into the wrong line and it was taking so long... she was voice dictating to her phone her annoyance and dismay, and it was truely cringe worthy... "This is the first and last time I''ll be coming to Portugal"... good we thought. Once we cleared immigration we took the tube to our apartment which was in the Martim Moniz district. We dropped our bags off and it was past lunch time so Jackie and I headed off to find some food. We went into the first place that we saw which was a very...

Woke up relatively early and grabbed a quick breakfast before dashing off to the bus stop to catch a bus to the train station. From there it was a quick 20 minute train to  Desenzano del Garda . It was pissing down with rain when we arrived but we sent off on the short walk down the hill to the lake. We didn't have anything planned some we just set off along the shoreline under our umbrellas. Next thing we know we are accosted by a guy claiming to be a refugee from Libya asking for money. We said no but I offered food, one of my sweet mandies but he said NO, thats not food. We kept walking. As the rain wasn't letting up we went to plan b and found a nice looking cafe, Dolce Caffe . We both had a coffee and tried some of their homemade treats, ended up sitting there for a while to dry off and figure out our next move. We found there was a castle nearby that was a popular attraction, so we walked back up the hill to visit the Castello di Densenzano . The castle itse...

Had a lateish start this morning, didn't wake up until 8.30 and got to brekky at 9. Enjoyed the unlimited coffee and buffet brekky before heading out to the tourist info centre to ask about travelling to a nearby town. We were advised to take the train but there wasn't one for another 2.5 hours so we decided it might be best to go tomorrow instead. Seeing as our Verona card was still valid, we walked over to the Juliet's tomb. It was more of the same Jesus stuff, so we did a quick look through, saw the tomb and decided that was enough. We then thought we might go up to the top of the hill to see the panoramic view of Verona and we started walking, for maybe 20 minutes in the pouring rain, before deciding a cup of coffee was a better idea. The cafe we went to was recommended in a book we saw at the wine bar we went to the first night. Of course the coffee was delicious, and the barista was even kind enough to write my name in the cappuccino. By that time it was almost mi...

Well it was a bit of f#kd up morning getting here. Firstly the national express bus we had booked for 4am failed to arrive. We waited until around 4.50 and then decided to uber it instead. There was one other poor soul there waiting for the bus, an Estonian software engineer returning to Tallin, so he joined us in the uber and split the cost with us. Next problem was at the airport where our pilot failed to turn up... ended up waiting an extra thirty minutes but he eventually arrived. We landed in Verona at 11am and caught the bus to the centre of town, walked past the Colosseum and into our hotel. Quite fancy! We weren't able to check into our room until 2 so we headed out for some pizza at Corte Farina Ristorante Pizzeria - it was delicious! Coffee was disappointing though :( After lunch we went back to the hotel and had a nap, only waking up at around 5.30. We needed some bottled water so went for a walk to a supermarket, then came back and dropped the groceries off. Jacki...