It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted last.
We have been busy taking Kimble’s mum sightseeing around Lisbon.
Last week Kimble’s dad arrived from Sydney and stayed with us for three nights. We had two intense days of sighseeing. My feet were hurting so badly after day one that on the second day I chose to stay home while they went out to visit the Fado Museum.
Kimble’s mum and dad left a couple of days ago. They have gone off on their own European adventure, travelling around Italy, France and the UK. The apartment felt very empty the day after they left. We didn’t do much for three whole days. It’s been hard getting used to getting up early again. Margaret was such an angel looking after Camilla first thing in the morning while both Kimble and I slept in until about 10am. We are slowly getting used to our old life and have re-introduced the sleep in roster.
Over the last week lots of bad things have happened.
Anxiety levels are currently high!
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- Kimble’s laptop slows down to a halt and he can’t work. One day his computer decides to not start. We discovered that the hard drive had lots of bad sectors, it took over two days to fix it. He still needs a new hard drive and we have no idea where to find cheap hardware in Lisbon. But for now his computer is working again.
- Car Accident. I get a call from my parents saying that they received a call from Chatswood Police Station. It appears that my 10 year old Daewoo Lanos which is parked outside Kimble’s parents home has been hit by a car. I recently renewed the rego, spent almost 800 bucks for a car I probably won’t drive again. Luckily the idiot who hit my car is a Mercedez owner and has insurance. Fingers crossed the insurer writes off the old bugger and give us some cash. Annoying that we are not going to have a car when we get back but hopefully we will get more $$ than we would if we sold it privately. Check out the damage.
- Lost 280 Euros.We had initially planned to stay in Portugal for 3 months, but we changed our minds and decided to go to Paris instead. Our flights are frequent flyer flights. We decided that we didn’t want to use the Lisbon to London flight we had originally booked. I went ahead and booked all the transport and accommodation for Paris.We decided to do a stopover in Hong Kong which we didn’t book before we left Sydney. So I rang Qantas to tell them of our new plans and advise them that I would like the Lisbon to London flight cancelled and use the unused stopover for Hong Kong.The very unhelpful Qantas staff says It couldn’t be changed and if we didn’t turn up to the to London flight they would cancel our last flight back home (London to Sydney) out of the computer system. Everything I booked for Paris is NON-REFUNDABLE!! arghhh. We had no choice but to book a flight back to Lisbon so we can catch our Qantas flight and not have our flight home cancelled. Plus we lose the Eurorail tickets I had booked. So on the 3rd of May we have to fly back to Lisbon to catch our original Qantas London flight leaving on the 4th of May. What a pain! I wish I had called Qantas before I made our plans for Paris. Oh well, live and learn.[/ordered_list]
Our time in Lisbon is running out. We have thirteen more days before we head to Paris. In two days time we move to our next rental apartment closer to the centre of Lisbon. We have been extra lazy ever since Kimble’s mum left and we still have a whole bunch of places we have been meaning to visit for the last 2 months which we haven’t. By being closer to the action we hope to actually get off our butts and visit these places.
Plans 