We are on a flight to Lisbon, Portugal right now. It is on the smallest international airplane that Melissa or Chris have ever seen: each row contains 6 seats with a single isle, much like many domestic jets. We were able to get three seats in a row even though we had three separate reservations that had to be booked at the same time (Chris bought a ticket, then used frequent flier miles to buy a ticket for Everett, Melissa bought her ticket from her frequent flier account). Everett is now asleep between us. He is a fantastic traveler. On the trip from Milwaukee to Newark he struck up a conversation with Kimberly, the woman sitting behind him. It turns out that her and her husband are on their way to Barcelona for vacation, and that they are good friends with Meri-Jo, whose husband Klaus works in Chris’ lab. Small world.

We got to Newark and figured out how to use the inter-terminal bus without leaving security (thought the United agent didn’t seem to know about it and instructed us otherwise), then had some dinner and boarded our flight. Everett watched beauty and the beast for a while and then decided it was time to rest. Within two minutes he was asleep. He slept well, but as the night wore on it became more fitful and couldn’t seem to get comfortable, and neither could we. He woke up in time for breakfast and we landed in Lisbon soon afterward.

We will be traveling for two weeks. The first week will be spent in Lisbon and Cascais. Portuguese is kind of a strange sounding language that Chris has had little exposure to. Melissa used to speak it when she was in Brazil. When Chris first heard it he thought it might have been Russian because of many sounds like bshzzz shhhhh dzdzzzz, though these were almost certainly accentuated by the airplane intercom.