Upon arrival, first priority was again to find somewhere to stay. It didn’t take long to discover that our books that were supposed to be up-to-date weren’t. The first hostel didn’t exist, the second had hiked up their prices to out of our range and the third, the YHA for which there were accurate directions, was full. As they had done in Paris, they found us somewhere else. This looked like it could have been a brothel, but we were grateful for anywhere.

We set off to try and find a beach, just to discover that the nearest one of any quality was a half-hour train ride away. We went back to the hostel to get our Inter-rail tickets, just to discover that it was locked. Depressed, we spent the rest of the day checking out the sites of Lisbon. Not exactly an inspiring experience, but there was a very impressive suspension bridge.

Things got very worrying when the ‘hostel’ was still locked when we got back. After an extremely unnerving delay, someone eventually unlocked the door and let us in. We all had much needed showers and then when out for some even more needed beers.

Alan and Richard were planning on going on to Morocco and they had had some jabs before they left England. I had not, so I decided not to risk going with them. So off they went, leaving me sad and lonely again, with a couple of hours to kill before the next train left for France. To avoid a repeat of that hellish journey, I decided to get into the queue to make a seat reservation. After a long wait, I discovered that there was a supplement payable to travel on this train. Since I had not got any change, I was forced to get in another queue for the currency exchange, just before the guy behind the counter decided to bugger off and help one of his mates for half an hour. Back in the reservations queue, everyone was waiting for the counter to re-open after that guy had also buggered off for a break. It came as no surprise that by the time I got to the front, the France train was long gone and I had to book a seat on a train back to Madrid. God help me.

Goodbye forever Lisbon, as it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll ever come back!