Portugal Part 1: The Whys and Wherefores
Jun. 10th, 2024 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI’ve mostly recovered from jet lag, so I should probably get around to writing about my recent trip.
The actual purpose of the trip was the Travelers’ Century Club Conference in the Azores. For those unfamiliar with the TCC, it’s an organization for people who have been to at least 100 countries or territories on their list (75 for provisional membership). That list is a little odd in my opinion. For example, Alaska and Hawaii count as territories, which I can understand the argument for, but is Prince Edward Island really all that culturally distinct (or physically isolated) from the rest of Canada? Despite my quibbles, TCC is fun for obsessive people like me and is a good source of info if you are planning to travel pretty much anywhere. I enjoy the (roughly quarterly) meeting of the DC chapter and thought it would be fun to meet more members from all over. (Before someone asks, I'm at 121 countries and territories on the TCC list, including 93 UN countries.)
Plus, I hadn’t been to the Azores before. I leveraged off that destination to go to mainland Portugal since I’d never been there before either. A friend (also travel related, as I know her from flyertalk) lives in Porto. And Lisbon is a pretty obvious destination. I bought plane tickets, made hotel reservations, and that was pretty much the extent of my planning,
By the way, I had gotten my friend, Cindy, into TCC a couple of years ago. (She came as my guest to a couple of meetings and decided to join.) She had been to Portugal, so decided to go to Terceira (another island of the Azores - the conference was in Ponta Delgado on San Miguel). She flew on SATA from New York, by the way, while I flew into Porto on a combination of United and Brussels Air and back from Lisbon on United, with the flights to and from the Azores on RyanAir.
The rest of this entry has to do with logistics. There are no non-stop flights from Washington to Porto, so I’d had a choice of connection points. I particularly dislike the Frankfurt airport, so opted for Brussels, which hadn’t been too annoying in the past. Alas, they’ve redesigned that airport since the last time I’d been there and it was roughly a mile walk between gates, plus a half hour wait at the passport control into the Schengen area, where there was only one person working. Still better than Frankfurt, but I probably should have gone with one of the other options, like Zurich. Still, I got into Porto on time and survived the crowded metro ride to the center, where I opted to take a taxi for the last mile or so because I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to find my hotel.
The Moov Hotel Porto Central turned out to be very conveniently located. It was quite stylish and modern in design, with a few oddities. For example, you don’t get a physical key, but the room door has a combination lock. Overall, I thought it was a good choice. It also proved to be remarkably quiet,
I took the train to Lisbon, where I stayed at the Hotel Fenix Music. I’d had a hard time finding a reasonably priced hotel because there were some big events going on (e.g. two Taylor Swift concerts), making the city even more crowded than normal. The description on tripadvisor looked good but I found the hotel disappointing. The location was okay, close to a metro station, but it was halfway up a steep hill. More annoying was the lack of any interesting restaurants nearby, And much more annoying was the street noise that led to poor sleep the whole time I was there. They do have an attractive rooftop swimming pool but it was too chilly to really make use of it. By the way, the transit system in Lisbon is good, but, while there are good metro maps, I had to rely on my phone for info on bus options.
My flights to and from Ponta Delgado were on RyanAir as I mentioned before. It was cheap and it was on-time, but it was decidedly uncomfortable. Tolerable for a two hour flight, but that’s about it. Did I mention that it was cheap? Also, you leave Lisbon from Terminal 2 which is pretty bleak, though PDL on a Sunday night is at least as desolate. (There was one food place open and I waited in line for over half an hour to buy a tuna sandwich and a soda.)
The conference hotel in Ponta Delgado was the Grand Hotel Azores Atlantico, which was quite nice. I had a large room with a beautiful view and a very comfortable, though oddly short, bed. Cindy, however, had a much smaller room and complained about it feeling cramped. I will note,too, that the areas where we had receptions and lunches were painfully noisy, however. By the way, several people stayed at various cheaper places nearby.
On the way home, I stayed overnight at the Star Inn next to the Lisbon Airport. It was adequate. It’s right next to the Melia, which is probably nicer but is also more expensive. If you’re not dealing with a late night or early morning, you might as well stay a few metro stops away from the airport, but I was arriving back from the Azores t at 11:40 p.m. and all I wanted to do was collapse. One nice touch was that they gave me two cookies and a miniature bottle of port.
One final logistical note is that I had no problem using an ATM to refill my supply of euros. I never convert euros back to dollars since I know I will inevitably need them sooner or later. At any given moment, I typically have at least a half dozen different currencies on hand - U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, British pounds, euros, Swiss francs, and Singapore dollars. Watching my group of traveling friends exchanging money amongst ourselves when we go out to dinner is pretty amusing.
The actual purpose of the trip was the Travelers’ Century Club Conference in the Azores. For those unfamiliar with the TCC, it’s an organization for people who have been to at least 100 countries or territories on their list (75 for provisional membership). That list is a little odd in my opinion. For example, Alaska and Hawaii count as territories, which I can understand the argument for, but is Prince Edward Island really all that culturally distinct (or physically isolated) from the rest of Canada? Despite my quibbles, TCC is fun for obsessive people like me and is a good source of info if you are planning to travel pretty much anywhere. I enjoy the (roughly quarterly) meeting of the DC chapter and thought it would be fun to meet more members from all over. (Before someone asks, I'm at 121 countries and territories on the TCC list, including 93 UN countries.)
Plus, I hadn’t been to the Azores before. I leveraged off that destination to go to mainland Portugal since I’d never been there before either. A friend (also travel related, as I know her from flyertalk) lives in Porto. And Lisbon is a pretty obvious destination. I bought plane tickets, made hotel reservations, and that was pretty much the extent of my planning,
By the way, I had gotten my friend, Cindy, into TCC a couple of years ago. (She came as my guest to a couple of meetings and decided to join.) She had been to Portugal, so decided to go to Terceira (another island of the Azores - the conference was in Ponta Delgado on San Miguel). She flew on SATA from New York, by the way, while I flew into Porto on a combination of United and Brussels Air and back from Lisbon on United, with the flights to and from the Azores on RyanAir.
The rest of this entry has to do with logistics. There are no non-stop flights from Washington to Porto, so I’d had a choice of connection points. I particularly dislike the Frankfurt airport, so opted for Brussels, which hadn’t been too annoying in the past. Alas, they’ve redesigned that airport since the last time I’d been there and it was roughly a mile walk between gates, plus a half hour wait at the passport control into the Schengen area, where there was only one person working. Still better than Frankfurt, but I probably should have gone with one of the other options, like Zurich. Still, I got into Porto on time and survived the crowded metro ride to the center, where I opted to take a taxi for the last mile or so because I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to find my hotel.
The Moov Hotel Porto Central turned out to be very conveniently located. It was quite stylish and modern in design, with a few oddities. For example, you don’t get a physical key, but the room door has a combination lock. Overall, I thought it was a good choice. It also proved to be remarkably quiet,
I took the train to Lisbon, where I stayed at the Hotel Fenix Music. I’d had a hard time finding a reasonably priced hotel because there were some big events going on (e.g. two Taylor Swift concerts), making the city even more crowded than normal. The description on tripadvisor looked good but I found the hotel disappointing. The location was okay, close to a metro station, but it was halfway up a steep hill. More annoying was the lack of any interesting restaurants nearby, And much more annoying was the street noise that led to poor sleep the whole time I was there. They do have an attractive rooftop swimming pool but it was too chilly to really make use of it. By the way, the transit system in Lisbon is good, but, while there are good metro maps, I had to rely on my phone for info on bus options.
My flights to and from Ponta Delgado were on RyanAir as I mentioned before. It was cheap and it was on-time, but it was decidedly uncomfortable. Tolerable for a two hour flight, but that’s about it. Did I mention that it was cheap? Also, you leave Lisbon from Terminal 2 which is pretty bleak, though PDL on a Sunday night is at least as desolate. (There was one food place open and I waited in line for over half an hour to buy a tuna sandwich and a soda.)
The conference hotel in Ponta Delgado was the Grand Hotel Azores Atlantico, which was quite nice. I had a large room with a beautiful view and a very comfortable, though oddly short, bed. Cindy, however, had a much smaller room and complained about it feeling cramped. I will note,too, that the areas where we had receptions and lunches were painfully noisy, however. By the way, several people stayed at various cheaper places nearby.
On the way home, I stayed overnight at the Star Inn next to the Lisbon Airport. It was adequate. It’s right next to the Melia, which is probably nicer but is also more expensive. If you’re not dealing with a late night or early morning, you might as well stay a few metro stops away from the airport, but I was arriving back from the Azores t at 11:40 p.m. and all I wanted to do was collapse. One nice touch was that they gave me two cookies and a miniature bottle of port.
One final logistical note is that I had no problem using an ATM to refill my supply of euros. I never convert euros back to dollars since I know I will inevitably need them sooner or later. At any given moment, I typically have at least a half dozen different currencies on hand - U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, British pounds, euros, Swiss francs, and Singapore dollars. Watching my group of traveling friends exchanging money amongst ourselves when we go out to dinner is pretty amusing.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 04:49 pm (UTC)I looked at the list and only got 19…
Glad it was a good trip for you!
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 02:31 am (UTC)The few British pound coins I had are no longer in use. I had a few Italian Euros that I eventually gave to someone who collects foreign currency.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 09:18 am (UTC)Wow, damn!
I'm curious how they decide what's a territory or not. Like, is Okinawa considered a separate "territory" from mainland Japan? Hokkaido? I'm going to go down a rabbit hole looking it up…
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 11:47 am (UTC)