We arrived in Lisboa, Portugal early on Oct. 5th, aboard TAP flight 315M from JFK. Sun Holidays picked us up and checked us in at the Lisboa Plaza Hotel, located just north of the great Avenue Liberdade, [phone 346, 3922]. A half day tour was provided and since it extended well beyond the city of Lisboa, it gave us a lot of scenery we would not have found otherwise. Some sites visited were the Coach Museum, the Moorish Castle of Sao Jerge, the ancient and huge Aqueduct, the Arab Alfama district east of downtown Lisboa, the scenic Baixa pedestrian mall near the port, Bairro Alto district west of downtown, Belem Tower, Monument to Discoveries and the beautiful and much photographed Parque Eduardo VII at the end of Avenue Liberdade.

Outside Lisboa we visited Cabo da Roca [western most point of Europe], Estoril, Bay of Cascais, and drove across the Sintra Mountain to the Pina Palace. The area is beautiful and you can spend much more time visiting old European sites and structures. Most of our touring was by walking as much of Lisboa as possible. It's surprising how much you can see when you don't know where you're going or where you are. We found a great Park in a residential area in the Bairro Alto and it had a tree with horizontal limbs that covered a huge area. We also found a not-so-tourist-bound Fado Restaurant, where we made reservations for the evening. It proved to be a great choice. Of course, we also found a large Mall that Jo had spotted from the bus. The food was great, even though we had no idea of what we were ordering most of the time. Small sidewalk places were outstanding.

Oct. 7th, we flew to the south coast [Algarve] and landed at Faro Airport. Sun Holidays provided transfers to the Hotel Delfim at Tres Iramos, which is on the beach and just south of Portiamo. Our room faced the beach and pool, and was great. We enjoyed the beach a lot, and the rocks and cliffs made the scene perfect. We visited Portiamo and other nearby towns, munching, shopping and sipping. This is good vacation material. The hotel had good food, evening entertainment of an international flavor [lots of German guests], and was a good choice. [Later, the hotel over expanded, went bankrupt, was closed for awhile, but I now find it being listed again as a First Class Hotel.] On Oct. 11th, and before coffee, a limo picked us up for our flight home via Lisboa, JFK, and on to Phoenix. We landed in Phoenix at 07:39pm.