"If it is Wednesday, it must be Lisboa"

--- and so it is! We have to make a couple of corrections, it is true that we extended our stay in Madrid by one additional night but we used that next day (Tue the 6th) to go to Sevilla, not Granada as mentioned earlier. We decided that we could only go to one of the two cities, so we chose Sevilla with the Alcazar, because there were plenty of trains. We stored our suitcases plus in a locker in the main train station and took an early fast train (2 1/2 hours) to Sevilla. We spent about 5 hours there, saw the fantastic Palace, had a bite to eat and took the fast train back to Madrid, in order to make our overnight Hotel Train to Lisboa. Well, while it was most interesting and amazing to see the Alcazar, the heat was pretty unbearable, 37C in the afternoon!! (That really sapped our "hit points") All the fast trains in Spain require a reservation and with a 10 Euro per person fee, and that was all arranged before we left for Sevilla in the morning. After coming back in the afternoon we had to hustle getting the luggage out of the locker, take the subway to the other train station, to make that stupid night train to Lisboa. Stupid because we could not get a bed on it, all sold out, so we had to sleep in our seats on this 10 hour bad ride. The train went slow, jiggled around a lot and as Geneva said, the only saving grace was the dining car!! It was a really bad night. New rule: never again take a night train unless we can get beds.

We got into Lisboa at 7:40 am Portugal time, one hour earlier, we gained one hour. They just had a rainstorm come thru and it just quit raining. As we were walking slowly toward the exit, a friendly middle aged lady approached us, gave us a card and asked us if we would like to have a room for the night. (It must have looked pretty obvious, although it was just morning). She went on to say, 20 Euros per person, double bed, w/ sitting room, very clean and the (taxi) transportation is included. We looked at each other and said --- lets go for it!! And so we did. She took us to the taxi outside and after a 10 minute ride, her daughter was there to pay the taxi!! We went up one floor and it's very nice. Old building of course, but solid and clean, as promised. We paid for 3 nights. We lay down a little to recoup, then got ourselves a 24 hour pass for the bus and had some lunch near our place. We went on a bus ride then slept a little.

The above is sort of dry reporting what we did. One day I will have more time or what ever, to give of my impressions, observations and valuations of it all, some day. The computer battery was dead going onto the night train, so we could not write, the ipod needed charging, but geneva read her book on it anyway until it shut down.

Getting on the www has been hit and miss on our trip, via WiFi that is. It ranged from 10 Euros for multiple uses to totally free for as long as you want to non-existant.