getting into Lisbon, Portugal

We are heading across the Castillo, La Mancha and Extremadura

regions of Spain and it’s amazing how much it resembles the southwest of the US and parts of Mexico.  At times, it feels like I’m driving in Mexico because the houses resemble the haciendas with stucco, the same colors, and a blending with the land.  I guess this shouldn’t surprise me as most of Mexico was Spanish for a long time, but I guess that the tastes would have developed differently in different lands with Aztec and Native American influences.   The plains are vast and we ran into thunderstorms that caused John to say, “The rain in Spain 

 falls mainly on the Plain”, which was true in this case.  I had to learn where the windshield wipers were and I couldn’t set the cruise, because the car was limited in speed, but then I think that we got too far from Madrid and whatever was monitoring it, because I was able to set it where I wanted it later in the trip.  Oscar napped some and we headed into Portugal.  So far, the only things giving me trouble on this trip is the toll gates and slowing down, getting a ticket, paying a toll and trying to drive away again like I’m not shitty with a stick.  It’s starting to get better and every hilltop in Portugal appears to have fortresses, palaces, and world heritage sites on them.  We passed at least 6 different towns that had signs for these things and it felt like we saw way more than that in ruins up on the hills.  We also passed a ton of nesting storks.  They built huge nests everywhere and 

 apparently don’t have any territory issues because we saw one electricity girder with 8 nests on it stacked on top of each other.  We finally had to stop in order to get some gas, take a break and try to let Oscar run around some, but picked a bad exit with not much there and this first stop made us realize how deficient we were in Portuguese.   It’s amazing how just being able to say, hello, yes, give a title and ask a simple question like do you speak English in the foreign language does for one’s confidence in entering a business.  But after that the first stop,  

we got out the speakeasy app to learn some new things.  This drive is going well if it’s a bit long and then we start to enter Lisbon area.  This is a major city with bridges leading into it that rise up into the air and traffic.  Yes, I have chosen to rent a stick shift that I’m not that great at, having a crappy Opel Astra which isn’t a good one to relearn on, and chosen to drive it in (excuse my language) fucking San Francisco people.  There are hills everywhere, we drive across the Golden Gate bridge if it was crossed with the Mighty Mac and into hell for someone like me who’s not confident in big city traffic, with European driving methods, and with a manual shift car.  It was insanity from start to finish with stress levels through the roof.  John is trying to navigate 

 and tell me that I’m doing okay, I’m sweating the traffic and the signs, and the shifting and Oscar has shut up as if he is no longer in the car at this point because I think he could sense the total desperation of both of his parents.  We are following GPS coordinates to an Air BnB that we set up before we left the states.  We have never done Air BnB before, but thought that we would give it a go, since I knew what area of town I wanted to stay in.  Well, the maps don’t show topography do they?  So, of course the place is situated on a hill with parking all up and down the street in various big city, European parking styles and I’m supposed to parallel park this unfamiliar car on a hill in a stick shift?!?!?!!?  We finally find a spot that I can just drive into fairly 

well and sit and recollect ourselves for a second.  Here’s the next WTF moment of the day, we have to message the woman that we are renting the place from that we’re in Lisbon, but both my cell phone and John’s ipad need wifi to do this.  We also don’t know the exact address of the apartment and John just wants to walk around these few blocks, hoping that our hostess will just be watching and run out to greet us.  I finally get him to realize that this is not going to work and some of the back parts of the neighborhood are run down.  The one café we go into, no one speaks any English, there is no wifi and they don’t know anything about anyone.  John states that for the first time, he feels like he is in a 3^rd world country in Europe.  I don’t think that it’s quite so bad, because I’ve seen John’s old stomping grounds in Atlanta, but he’s just feeling down.  John feels bad because he thinks that he should have thought this part through better, I feel stupid because I should have thought through driving in a major European capitol, and Oscar is just along for the ride.  So, we get out of the car and start walking down the hill toward where there seemed to be businesses that might have wifi attached to them.