June 14, 2024
Travel Day - Gran Canary to Lisbon to Hamburg
I flew from Gran Canary to Lisbon Portugal on TAP - Air Portugal. Easy 2-hour flight, but the Lisbon Airport was a crazy experience! I had 2 hours, between the connecting flights, but spent the time being routed all through the airport. First try, they routed me in a giant circle and I ended up going through the long lines, to clear customs, twice! Second time through I followed different signage, but again could not find my flight listed anywhere on the monitors where I was. I finally figured I must have to change terminals for the connection. When I went all the way through baggage claim in first terminal I came out of the building and saw another terminal across the way and then finally found monitors showing my flight. Shockingly it listed my gate and flight as FINAL CALL. I now had to boogie through this new terminal's security (TSA) and the extremely crowded duty-free shops and tons of strolling passengers. Then, I hear my name being called over the PA system and I am sprinting to the gate, arms waving and thank goodness they saw me. They radioed the taxiway bus, and he quickly got me to the plane. I boarded to lots of stares and breathed a sigh of relief! They shut the doors right behind me and we were off!
Farewell Canaries and hello Lisbon Portugal port, stadium and aqueduct - views from plane.
Unusual store I saw in Lisbon airport confusion that was selling tons of fancy cans of fish!! Shocking not a ton of shoppers here!
On Saturday August 29, 2026 we achieved another historic milestone on this circumnavigation of the World , we cruised into Hong Kong Harbor. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. The land encompassed by Hong Kong is confusing. It includes part of the southern coast of mainland China, just below Shenzhen, Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories . Looking at a map helps, but the rules changed so many times! I asked my buddy Chat several times, to tell me if what I was looking at was the Hong Kong that the British had owned for years. The answer was never straight forward!
Ha Long Bay in Vietnam is one of those bucket list places I have had in my sights for years. It's the iconic picture in my mind's eye, whenever I think of Vietnam . We had made plans to go with 8 others on a brand new, swanky Red Dragon Junk boat for a harbor cruise and overnight stay, but sadly the weather did not cooperate the whole 4 days we were in port. No ships were permitted to sail, per the local government. Many of us were bummed! This is typhoon session and there was a lot of rain and high winds our first couple of days - we were hoping it would blow out the last day and we could at least do a day trip but no luck!
To get to the final stop on our Vietnam FUN Tour in Hue, we had our driver take us on the scenic route called the Hai Van Pass. This 3 hour drive took us back through Da Nang and then into mountains and along coast for what is generally a very scenic route. Unfortunately for us, it was mainly covered in clouds and fog.