# 2 The Lesson from the Woman in the Photo and the Fallen Traveler

12 Jul 2011 5 Comments

by Sheila Clapkin in International Travels

Behold the hugh hill she has climbed

I realize how far I still have to go in life. Even ageing as I once thought was so bad, isn’t as bad as it is going to get. Look at this lady literally pulling her body step by step up a rather steep hill that had my traveling partners and me a huffing and a puffing. I value this woman and her struggles. I value my life, my aches and pains have been greatly ease by the sight of this gorgeous beautiful effort of this woman.  Once I caught up to her, I tried to smile and say a few words to her, but she could not verbally communicate because of a huge language barrier as well as a cultural divide.   I have spent time contemplating the beautiful non-verbal communications I got throughout a number of days after my encounter with the woman in the photo.

Smiles are few and far between from others UNLESS you initiate the smile.

Today was the first day out on the travel trail, so to speak. A lovely lady traveling with her husband and son, exited the bus and fell hard on the white cobblestones.  She smashed her face and was bleeding profusely, but I saw how she fell and it was on her shoulder. As it turns out, she has broken her right shoulder in three places and will require surgery at some point in time. She insists on continuing with the trip. Oh gosh, she does not know how much pain she will be in, or does she. We met just the night before this happened, but I knew immediately I liked her and we laughed a lot.  Hope we all can help her to laugh a lot more.  What happened to her I have seen on three prior trips and it scares me so much.  All of the previous falling victims went home immediately, so this lady, by the way her name is Charlotte has the courage of her convictions.  I worry about falling the entire time on or not on a trip and am extra diligent. I noticed for the rest of the day we all were cognizant of the fact we need to be so, so careful and even then, we are all vulnerable.

This event made me wonder how many times my lady on the crutches has fallen and has anyone helped her?  Is she able to get up on her own?  She obviously has not given up. She hasn’t let her infirmities stop her.

# 1 Traveling is a Boo Boo, a Bam Bam and a Blast.

12 Jul 2011 Leave a comment

by Sheila Clapkin in Uncategorized

You have all had your horror travel stories. I know you don’t want to hear ours so skip this paragraph and pick it up later, or perhaps just look at he photos. There are six of us in the travel party and we all arrived at the airport within minutes of each other.  I don’t attribute our mishaps to anything other than overworked and some incompetence.  We waited in the line to check into Iberian Airlines for our flight to Madrid and on to Lisbon. One by one we were sent over to British Airways to have our flights rebooked because we would not have been able to arrive in Madrid in time for our connecting flights to Lisbon.  I can hear you, ok, ok, I know never have a connecting flight if possible and that is true, but sometimes not possible from your location.  We were all rebooked onto a BA flight connecting now in London to a flight for Lisbon, well, not exactly, Karen and Rachel’s boarding passes once in London say Madrid. No one noticed this until we got to London. We all accompanied Karen to rebook her on our flight to Lisbon. Whew. Oh, but what about the car that will be picking us up on Lisbon. He needs to be contacted for the later arrival.  Email the company. Try this email feat and calls to the company on a weekend in an airport full of forlorn looking people. We accomplished rerouting our pick up time. That’s done, but now we realized that Karen and Rachel’s luggage is tagged and will be sent to Madrid and they will be in Lisbon. Another frantic dash was made to correct this issue.  We have been in lovely, ever changing Lisbon for two days and the luggage is still missing.

A Gift Day in Lisbon

Today was a gift of the entire day to play in Lisbon. We planned to arrive a day early to acclimate ourselves to the new time zone. The individuals with missing luggage are off to find some apparel and Andy, Manuel, Skip and I head out on foot. We walked for several hours and decided to follow my suggestion and board a bus heading for anywhere. We got on the bus a few blocks before the end. We rode free for the few blocks and then paid our fare for an unexpected sensational ride through Lisbon. I suggest for you the next time you find yourself in a new city to take a long bus ride as a way to connect with the locals; loads of people were coming and going on their everyday rounds. We rode all the way through the tourist sections, the shopping sections, the parks, amusement area, the green belts, and through the residential sections of all categories, some I called “Home Sweet Homes,” which clearly were not!   The bus driver recognized us for the joy-riding tourists we are and realized we could not possibly navigate the end of the bus line, so he told us to stay on as he wound down and back towards reality. Each one of us only paid 1.5 Euros for that 1 ½ hour ride. Very economical wouldn’t you say? We exited the bus finally in a lovely area with restaurants and a flea market, my favorite things to enjoy anywhere, anytime.

Photos I promised. These are some of our first impressions of Lisbon.

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