Portugal to Barcelona, Spain

Yesterday, we sadly left Cascais, Portugal behind. We had a wonderful time there and can hardly wait to go back sometime in the near future. In the morning, I got up around 7am, showered, packed, and then went down to the lobby to do some computer work. Vee showered, got packed and later came down to join me. The night before, we had a really nice conversation with the owner of the hotel, and when he arrived in the morning, we continued our conversation in the lobby. It turns out, he and his parents of Barcelonians, and so we talked alot about that since we were flying to Barcelona in the afternoon. He is an excellent businessman, very friendly and attentive, and his hotel and staff are extraordinary. The hotel is the Hotel da Vila and located in the center of Cascais. The hotel opened just 10 weeks ago. This hotel is just one of his many businesses, with his main business being a software vendor and consultant to the hotel industry in Europe. At 9:30, Jose arrived, and we walked to a nearby cafe for a light breakfast and conversation. We were sad to be saying goodbye, and also about not being able to get together for dinner the night before as planned, but I'll discuss that in a bit. After our goodbyes, Vee and I walked to find the pick-up spot for the shuttle to the airport, but absolutely could not find it, and everyone we asked pointed us in different directions. Exasperated, we ran into the hotelier (embarassingly, I never got his name, though he knew ours) on our way back to the hotel, and reassured us that his staff would take care of us if we went back to the hotel. So, we did a quick scan of our room, and went to check out, and by that time, he was already back behind the desk. We paid the bill, and then he had his assistant actually walk us to where the shuttle stop was a few blocks away. This is just one example of how we were treated the whole time during our stay at the Hotel da Vila. The shuttle ride was alot of fun because we got to see parts of Estoril, which is beautiful, and right next to Cascais. We also got to see more of the "suburbs" of Lisboa and some of the futbol stadiums. The shuttle only stopped a few times, and so it was a nice direct trip to the airport for 8.5 EUR each. The airport signage was excellent, and the layout was easy to navigate and seemingly well designed. We attempted check-in at a Vueling gate, but we were still too early. Since we had some time to kill, and I was starving and thirsty, we found a little sandwich place where we shared a salmon sandwich, a chicken sandwich for very surprisingly reasonable prices. They even had lettuce and tomato and mayo on them!! Eventually, it was time to check in, and head up to the departure gate. The security folks wouldn't let Vee on board with our wine bottle opener because of the cork-screw, so that was confiscated...grrrhhhhh!!!! We walked all over Madrid to find that! Anyway, despite the annoying designated smoking area right next to our gate, the whole process of getting on the plane, flying, and landing in Barcelona via Vueling Airlines was a non-event. The flight attendants were very friendly and helpful, much more so than I am accustomed to, and the seats were quite comfortable, though tight, and they showed some videos of Friends episodes, and then some extreme sports so we were well entertained in addition to our mp3 players, books, computer, etc. One back on land, a bus took us from the plane to the terminal. We thought we'd have to go through customs, coming from Portugal back into Spain, but that was not the case. It was a breeze, no customs, no checked bags to pickup. We went to the info desk and got a map to try and figure out how we could get to our hotel. It was around 7pm by then. We found a place to sit, plunked down and open up the huge map. Within seconds, a very friendly Catalan (spelling is probably wrong, but the idea is that people from Barcelona are called Catalanes, and are very proud of this...they also speak their own language, Catalanian, with Spanish being a second language) man asked us if we needed help, and of course we said we did. For the next 20 minutes or so, he told us all about the City, it's problems, it's beauty, things to do and see, etc. He even asked us how "Mr.Bush is doing", which launched a whole other entertaining conversation.