first impression

Lisbon definitely takes the award for creepiest first impression.

We arrived late by bus, catching a cab to our downtown hotel. Which was a great idea at the time, except the guy drove like he was in a Ferrari on the autobahn – a Ferrari with squeaky breaks. When we got out, the first person we saw tried to sell us pot/hashish/marijuana as he quickly called it, hand cupped and outstretched with a really disgusting looking brown lump balled inside. We politely declined. And we walked right past our hotel because it was a four-foot wide gated entrance wedged between a wedding dress shop and a dingy souvenir store. And the hotel was full of old leather – not classy Bogart leather, but dusty storage-room leather. And green felt wallpaper.

You know those movies with the dimly lit hotel and a slightly odd attendant and creepy music playing in the background – the kind of hotel that usually attracts zombies? – yeah, well minus the music, this place was the inspiration.

So we went to sleep in our smoke (and urine, in that one corner) smelling room with sticky carpets and one outlet hoping the paper-clip thin latch on the door would deter whatever living dead happened to have checked in that night.