We may be establishing a pattern: last year in October we went to Italy (Rome, Florence and Venice). This year we went to Portugal. It was a lovely trip, which I’ve written about in a series of posts.
I’ve also started compiling an “international traveling tips” list, which you can find here.
Food
One of the fun things about international travel is getting to try foods that you’ve never heard of or wouldn’t prepare in quite that way.
Portuguese food is very tasty! It’s big on fish, which isn’t one of my go-to foods. But I decided to try a few fish dishes (my daughter raved about the sardines, in particular)…and they were great! I particularly enjoyed the lox I had on the flight over (I’d never had lox before), and the sardines I had as an appetizer in one of the restaurants we visited.
There are a lot of Indian restaurants in Portugal, a result of its long history with India. The Portuguese were the earliest Europeans to establish a colony, through conquest, in Goa, which remained part of Portugal’s overseas territories until 1961.
There are also quite a few other cuisines available, particularly in Lisbon. We enjoyed an Argentinian restaurant a couple of blocks away from our Lisbon hotel. The steak I had was fabulous!
But without a doubt, the most Portuguese food you can find is the pastel de nata, a delicious little egg pastry built around filo dough, I believe.
These little treats are available everywhere! And they have an interesting history. Turns out the Catholic monasteries, of which there were many, used egg whites to starch their clothing. Which resulted in a lot of leftover egg yolks! That they proceded to turn into all sorts of tasty treats, the pastel de nata chief among them.
Getting There
We flew TAP Portugal because it offered non-stop service between SFO and Lisbon, as well as business class. The flight itself was delightful, with helpful and friendly service and tasty food. I enjoyed a couple of glasses of port on the flight…which turned out, oddly enough, to be the only port I drank on this trip. Even though we spent half of it in Porto!
Their website, which you need to use to provide information about your trip (e.g., passport numbers, meal choices), was a little funky, claiming we hadn’t completed all the forms even though we had (a quick phone call to their service center confirmed that). But not a big deal.
The business class lounge at SFO was shared with China Airlines (I think). Turns out TAP had been recently “expelled” from the United lounge they advertised as sharing. Definitely a large step down from United. But there was room to relax, and the food & drinks were decent, if mostly Chinese.
The return trip was something else.
…and Back
TAP offers two business class lounges in the Lisbon airport, one before you go through customs and one after. Both were very busy, and, while nicer than the China Airlines lounge they shared in SFO, clearly overwhelmed. In fact, there was a long line to get into the second lounge, so we never actually got to use it (we were warned we might miss our flight if we tried).
The boarding area at the gate was…terrible. Nowhere near big enough to accommodate all the people who would be flying on the A330-900neo bound for SFO. In fact, there were only about 30 chairs…which meant I spent an hour standing around before boarding (Barbara managed to squeeze into one of the small tables sandwiched between seats).
It also didn’t help matters that I was coming down with some nasty two-day gastrointestinal bug.
After I got home, I came across an article about how United and Delta are generating almost all the profits in the US airline industry these days…because they each made big bets on the business class flying experience. Which turns out to be a big draw for baby-boomer retirees like us, who are willing to spend more on flying to minimize the negative aspects of travel. Other airlines, like TAP, are playing catch-up.
Put another way, not all business class travel is equal. I should’ve done more research before going with TAP.
I was surprised getting through customs in SFO “only” took 45 minutes, since we cleverly arranged to return home right as the most recent government shutdown started.
I was also pleasantly surprised we didn’t have to have our iPhones searched. I’d taken the precaution of deleting my inflammatory anti-Trump media before landing. Not that that would’ve kept even a cursory search from “discovering” my views — once things are online, they never really go away. Horrifying that I would even see the need for doing something like that in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But unless and until we replace the evil modern Republican Party in our government, I suspect I’ll continue taking (undoubtedly pointless) precautions.
