(Oh my gawd, trying to type this on my old English layout keyboard is sooo difficult! All the punctuation keys are in the wrong place! I'm so used to typing on Portuguese keyboards these days, especially since my old English Desktop machine died and was out of action for a few weeks until I managed to source out a replacement Power Supply Unit. But that's another (decidedly boring) story.)
Anyway...
A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday, Spring started. And it must be said that it started with a bang. With the kids being on their mid term break we decided, with some persuasion from the littlest one, to go to Lisbon Zoo. The littlest had been to Lisbon Zoo before, but way back when he was still being pushed around in a push chair and he was too young to remember. So, with guilt sitting in the pit of my stomach brought on by his albeit incorrect protestations that he'd never been to the Zoo, and a little excitement at the prospect of actually going there again myself, we decided that as Thursday was deemed to be the first day of Spring Sun, to go to the Zoo.
We set off with a plan, in the car, towards Lisbon. The eldest needed some new school uniform, since he just refuses to stop growing, and so a sensible plan was hatched. We'd drive to the El Corte Ingles Department Store and park in their car park for the day, visit the Zoo and upon our return, would pop up to the top floor to purchase the required items after our day out looking at the Lions and Gorillas, etc. There is a Metro station at El Corte Ingles, and so after a brief and somewhat amusing miscalculation involving three flights of escalators and the eventual realisation that we should have gone up to reach the Metro station, we were sitting on a train with two stops to go before the Jardim Zoologicos.
Tired and weary we headed out for the underground, dutifully helping a cheery American couple in succesfully re-charging their Metro tickets along the way, and boarded the tube to El Corte Ingles, to the car park and eventually home. What a tiring day.
Two days later the top of my head, where the hair no longer grows, started peeling from the sunburn. Honest. What a fantastic day!
