We finally made it! … at least to Lisbon. Sally and I have been planning our European cycling vacation for the last six months and we are now on day 2 in Portugal, ready to head north along the coast to Spain, France, Switzerland and Germany.

It wasn’t easy. After failing in my first couple attempts, I finally figured out how to fit the bikes in their bike boxes the night before Serena took us to Dulles for our flight to Lisbon. When we got to Lisbon, we found that the apartment we had rented for two nights was up a road so narrow our taxi had to drop us off with quiet an uphill trek to our Airbnb. After about a half an hour of hauling our bikes and gear up the hill, we finally got there. All we had time to do was assemble the bikes, get dinner and go to bed. Below Sally sheep’s a bike box up the hill to our new pad for the first of our two nights in Lisbon before the real biking begins.

We spent the next day riding around Lisbon, finding a few missing items we did not bring, a trip to the local bike shop, happy hour and deciding what route we were going to take on our first cycling leg of our trip.

Above: Sally gets her first flat tire before we even get out of Lisbon, to the sound of fada, the traditional music of Portugal.