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!
Somewhere in the South China Sea, i n a galaxy far, far away ... was the Odyssey and a bunch of fun loving travelers....who had an idea for a fun cocktail party!
Yesterday we joined in with many of our fellow residents to take in some of the many water spots around Coron . We signed up through Get Your Guide, others used Trip Advisor and they both contracted with Psalms Travel Services in Coron. As I've explained before, figuring out our excursions in each port, is a big time suck for me. We prefer to find local venders without having to go through the big agencies (because you usually can get better service, pricing and customization) but sometimes it is just easier to stick with the big guys, when the excursion is super popular. Psalms turned out to be an excellent operator and I laughed when I saw they had used the below images on their Facebook page today. Didn't realize my pink dry bag stood out so much!
We are currently docked at the port of CORON , in the Palawan archipelago islands, of the Philippines . While the port itself is nothing special, and the surrounding town is hardly thriving, the people here are amazingly friendly, joyful and so happy to be around! You can see from below, they have a ton of hotels and restaurants but mostly it's their water actives that attract a fair number of tourist. Known for their crystal clear water, dramatic limestone cliffs and powdery white sand beaches. June is the start of the rainy season, but so far the weather has been good.