Lisbon, Amsterdam ...and home

Leaving Evora was the start of our long trip home.  It was a 90 minute drive down the A6 to Lisbon, during which we paused for sustenance in Vendas Novas.  After a slightly chaotic drive to their hotel at the airport, we parted ways with Kevin and Linda.  They fly out early for their extra legs through Ireland and Scotland,while Sue and I are on our way back to NZ.

Driving south we saw many stork nests.  These ones on the pylons were particularly crazy.

I'm not sure how the storks nesting on the high tension lines avoid electrocution!  Although looking at the photograph above they do seem be avoiding the main three phase conductors.  I guess natural selection would have taught them the basics of high voltage transmission lines!

The 12 km Vasco da Gama bridge crossing back into Lisbon

We stayed overnight down near the new marina area ("Park of Nations"), just to taste a different part of the city, and flew out the next day at a civilized time of day.  At the airport we were swept off our feet by the efficient no-fuss Avis rental car drop-off operation, which took about one minute, but walking into the terminal we passed a queue of about 200 grumpy customers queuing at the Avis desk to pick up cars.  We were very glad not to be in that queue, recalling our hassles picking up our car 8 days ago.

Our (Cathay Pacific) flight back to New Zealand leaves from Amsterdam, so we had to first fly there from Lisbon, and spend one more night in a hotel.  I had booked one right at the airport, so we could walk there and back.  It was very modern and rather interesting, with completely electronic self check-in, and everything in the room controlled from an i-Pad!  However the room was quite small and had a startling "bathroom" arrangement, as you can see in this photo:

The hotel "bathroom" arrangements.

Obviously you would only want to share this room with a close friend!  The bed was a queen-sized square shape, so you could sleep across it or along it, as you prefer.  The room was completely soundproof so we could look out over the runways but hear no sound from the aircraft.

Our flight home went through Hong Kong, where there were daily reports of pro-democracy demonstrations including attempts to disrupt the airport.  However there was no sign of that from inside the airport as we passed through.