Day 1, sort of

Departed Logan at 7:45 pm having arrived at 4:00. Spent that time playing cribbage, charging phones, reading and snacking on various articles, including granola bars provided by Blair.

Flight to Lisbon took about 5 1/2 hours, landing in sunny Potugal, temp around 85, 7:00 am. 

We thought we had ample time to make our connection to Valencia, scheduled to depart at 8:35 am. However, we proceeded to casually start our trek to the gate and discovered that the Lisbon airport takes up most of Europe. We passed through vast empty spaces, caught periodic short moving sidewalks, visited the rest room, walked some more, and then walked some more, discovering we needed to find gate 18A, which apparently is deliberately concealed from traveling foreigners. We finally were directed to a queue for passing through customs. It was now about 7:50 am. The queue was similar to a line for the first Star Wars movie, a switchback of people moving at a snails pace. We could see over the field of heads that there was in fact a line of stations that people were passing through. Looked like we'd get there sometime Friday morning.

Looked like a certainty that we'd miss our flight. But alas, once in a while some airport person would wander up the line calling for passengers going to various destinations, then pulling them out of line to go to the front so they wouldn't be left behind. Tim and Blair stood dumbly in line while Leila and Deana seized the bull by the horns and asked a wandering airport woman about the flight to Valencia. The very nice young woman checked her list, made an "Egads!" Expression, and said "Follow Me!". We did, to the front of the line, through the customs check, and were then herded by another very nice woman towards the gate. However, my bottle of special Canadian Club was seized by an overzealous airport hooligan disguised as a nice person. She said she had to open the bag, look at the bottle to make sure it wasn't explosive, and then bag it up again. While she did that, everyone in our party was yelling at me that we'd miss our plane if I didn't get moving. Finally escaped the liquor bully and we proceeded to run, and by that I mean walk as fast as we could, for another three miles or so until we were standing at a bus stop.....waiting for a bus....just for us. It finally arrived and proceeded to drive around the airport for a few hours before delivering us to our plane, a smallish American Eagle type prop job. Smooth flight to Valencia, relatively event free gathering of luggage followed by car rental connection. Got a cute Citroen with ample space for luggage and people, although it's pedals were designed for an elf.

Managed to escape the Valencia area after circling the city for about 40 minutes looking for the elusive AP7 motorway. Once we actually found the AP7, which was not marked AP7 anywhere but on Blair's Google Map, we headed in the right direction towards Altea. Took almost two hours, driving through a landscape peppered with orange orchards and dramatic mountainous terrain. Tim succeeded in not hitting anything he wasn't supposed to.

Entering Altea we only missed a few turns before cruising the beach road that passed by our new digs. Miraculously found parking on the road in front of our place and were met by the very nice land lady, who gave us the tour, attended mostly by Leila, as others got distracted by bodily functions and exploration impulses.