Portugal Fall of 2026, The Journey Begins!

Sunny Portugal with Porto, A Collette Tour:

The map shows you the tour begins in Porto in the North of Portugal, goes as far south as Lagos, then turns north up to Lisbon where the tour ends.  It shows you the number of nights spend in the locations in the dark circles and the other locations visited in route.

Our journey to get to Porto was cumbersome.  Columbus, Ohio to Chicago....Chicago to Madrid...Madrid to Porto.  4 Airports with an average of about 3 hours layover in each location.  Physical flight time was just under 12 hours.......so a long journey.  We booked with American and Iberia (the Spanish sister airline from Chicago forward).  Business class isn't cheap, but at my age and with that long of a flight, I just couldn't imagine not doing business class.

I had a Bloody Mary in the first lounge

Later in the day in another lounge hubby and I had some bubbly.

Me once we made it on board in Chicago for our overnight flight to Madrid.  I always fly in a dress.  A loose fitting comfy dress that doesn't wrinkle and is mid calf.  When you sit or laydown that long, it's more like wearing a nightgown.  I make a point not to have something with a snug waste.

In the background you see the end of my wine with dinner and in the foreground our nightcap.  We both had Johnny Walker Blue.  We were surprised to see that as an option for after dinner and couldn't turn it down.  It's a bit pricey, so it's not something we buy at home.  It sure went down nicely, then it was lights out, until landing in Madrid, Spain.  In addition to the usual immigration, we also needed to do the new EES (enhanced security that is not yet operational in many countries).  We had seen video's and heard of folks waiting a couple of hours to get through this new procedure; but.......we zipped right through which was a huge relief to us both.  Possibly because it wasn't crowded that time of the morning when we arrived in Madrid 8:20am....AND maybe because we had loaded the app "Travel to Europe" ahead of time were pretty prepared.

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