Day 1 Portugal

Well, I made it!  I am in Vilamoura Portugal.  This is a resort town, and the hotel is a rather fancy resort hotel.  My room is on the 5th floor with a balcony, and the view is to the swimming pool below and the beach on the Atlantic Ocean.  The ocean is deep blue here.  It's breathtaking because the sun sparkles off the water.

Getting here was interesting:  My bag got safely to Portugal (I had to check it on the flight to Newark and the layover there was short).  When I got to Lisbon, I had 1.5 hours to figure out how to get to the train station, buy a ticket and get to the train gate.  I had to figure out how to use the Metro to get from airport to train station (it was that or stand in a line of 50 people waiting for cabs).  Metro was easy to use (English everywhere), and clean.  At the train station, I got a ticket more easily than  I expected.  The train to this area was very comfortable (and I did see some countryside as well as sleep a bit).  When I got to the destination station, there weren't hardly any cabs to get to Vilamoura.  Fortunately I had been talking with a woman who is a staff for IEEE (international society of electrical engineers),  which runs the conference I"m attending.  She had a cell that works in Europe, and called and got a taxi.

Tomorrow I've managed to get a tour to see the historic sites of the Algarve area.  It's a 12 hour tour that starts at 7:45 am.  I'm psyched and will have some photos by the end of the day.