Last week I was in Portugal, at Caravelos, about 20 kilometers from Lisbon. I just came back, but I was impatient to share the following story...
When I boarded my plane in Madrid, I ran into Vicky, friend and program chair of the conference, who was already traveling for something like 20 hours and had a stop-over in Madrid. We thus decided we would share a taxi once in Lisbon. When in Lisbon, while I was waiting for my suitcase, V. went exploring the airport to find the bathroom... and she ran into David, invited speaker at the conference. We thus decided to share a taxi. While we were waiting for the taxi, D. went to the tourist info and ran into ... no, just kidding ! lol Anyway, we took a cab and drove to the hotel, which was actually on the beach, and not downtown Lisbon. This came a little bit as a surprise to me. I must say I wasn't too well organized, I just bought my plane ticket a few days before departure, so I did not have time to check anything :-)
The same night, we decided we would go for dinner at about 7pm. The thing we did not know was that the organizer had planned a special dinner for the chairs and invited speakers. Although I chaired one session (and eventually presented a paper -- but this is another story), I was a bit of an alien among the other persons... but I joined them anyways. Thanks Doug for not going ;-) ! lol
The dinner was in a very nice restaurant with a very nice view, awesome wooden chairs and tables, the best port wine ever and entertaining people ;-) Because J. was a local and a wine amateur, he had to tell us all about Portuguese wines. Of course, I had to counterbalance things by adding the French rules to wine drinking (such as no white after red). We eventually agreed about the fact that it was important to open a bottle of red wine something like 45 min before drinking it and to drink it at the correct temperature: not too cold, not too warm. That's about when it happened ! S. confessed us that he had a wine cooler to keep his wine at home, and also that he is a very impatient person. The consequence of this is that when he decides to drink some red wine, he goes to the fridge, opens a bottle ... and puts it into the micro-wave for 30 seconds !!!! LOL LOL LOL LOL Ah, Americans ! lol lol ;-)
And because everybody liked the roof (very ancient roof of the ancient trade center of Lisbon -- I believe), here is a photo !
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