Bordeaux, Lisbon and a UK trip

 Sunday 05/05/24

Once we had handed the cats and tortoise back to the owners in St Puy, we headed off to Bordeaux for an overnight stop before flying to Lisbon.  

We arrived in the city during afternoon rush-hour and had to navigate through the traffic to a parking garage near the hotel.  A short walk later we found I had made a faux-pas with the booking and booked the room in February instead of April - and all the hotels in the city centre were fully booked!  Luckily we managed to get into an Ibis near the airport - not where we would have chosen to stay, but mistakes do happen...even to seasoned travellers 😉. At least we were close to the airport for our flight the next day.

Praça do Comércio in Lisbon

A very busy Time-Out food market

My parents were disembarking from the Queen Mary in Lisbon the day before we arrived but Charmaine flew across from London to meet them.  It was really special for us all to get together and spend some time catching up in Lisbon before going our separate ways again.

Three generations together in Portugal.

Coming in to land in Bordeaux

After the airport farewells, we flew back to Bordeaux to pick up Dassie and drive to Calais.  Along the way we stayed at a small hotel in Vivonne, a small town we had stayed in with Bokkie before - and we found it as charming as ever.  

We travelled most of the way on toll roads, a rare luxury for us and, although expensive in France, they are not usually very busy and are well serviced so make covering large distances quite easy.

It was a race between our ferry and the Dunkirk one to get to Dover first.  We won!

We crossed over on a very empty DFDS ferry, spent a night in Canterbury and are now spending the bank-holiday weekend looking after Ralph in London.  What he lacks in appearance, he more than makes up for in personality so he's keeping us busy.

Even putting up the laundry line turns into a game.

It's been a hard day!

Just enough time to find our feet in the UK, get a bit of shopping done and then it will be time to move on so that Toni can have her first dental appointment - the main objective of this trip.