Equanimity in Portugal

 I love our apartment. We’ve just come home again after many many hours of wandering the city. We are staying in Alfama district — old, quiet, charming. We woke up early, our internal clock out of whack. We’ve done very little research for this trip, but did read of a nice spot to watch the sunrise. We wandered up cobbled, narrow streets with our jaws open and necks craned up at the old architecture meeting the blue morning sky.  First impressions of Lisbon: lots of smokers, cobbled streets, hills. I love the random festivity of sparkly garland strewn randomly across the streets, much like we’ve seen in Mexico. Because we are in a big city near a cruise ship port, we haven’t quite got a feel yet of the people. I love the tiles on the buildings, laundry hanging outside of apartment windows. We feel safe here, no cinching like we sometimes do in Mexico. Tonight we went to experience traditional Fado at Maria de Mouraria, which came recommended by our air bnb host Nuno. The place...

 Up at six to pack. We decided to pack light and share one suitcase and one carry on. Bill walked dogs this morning while I packed my things… he was left with 1/3 of a suitcase and enough space in the carry on for a few undies. After sneering at him, “Sandles AND flip flops?,” I realized I had packed two pairs of sandles and flip flops. Sharing a suitcase is hard on a relationship, but we made it out the door and I was able to sneak one more dress from my maybe pile. Blah blah blah Construction, Bill forgot his phone in mom’s car, eventually checked in and all the things. Adorable little girl and super keen dad sitting behind me on the plane. He wanted to explain everything to his little Alice — well, if the plane crashes then we sit like this. The Air Canada safety video gave a cinematic tour of Canada; very artty. Anyway, none of this is terribly interesting . The travel part of travel is mostly a tedious drag. Though I did watch Cyrano on the plane and cried twice in my mask. Cu...