I was going to call this topic "Robbed and Ripped Off"! But changed my mind..as the good things far outweighed the bad.
Although Id wanted to see Lisbon..by my second week Id put thoughts of going there out of my head..as I didnt like the idea of travelling there on my own.
However,fate decided otherwise. Last Thursday, my friend Bev came home from work and said "Ellie. How d'you like to see Lisboa?"
It was complete surprise but I didnt hesitate to say "yes!"
Early next morning, we set off. The bus journey of 3 hours was comfortable..with a film to watch on the way and at 30 euros return..I thought it extremely good value.
By that afternoon..we'd booked in hotel..and then went to the "Vasco da Gama" shopping at expo 98.We had nice meal,then indulged in a shopping spree.Having great time till..on leaving shop I noticed my shoulderbag undone and my purse missing! I froze. It contained all my money( 260 euros) and credit cards. after retracing our steps and asking if it had been handed in..we finally went to find the police. It took forever to find them. We got no help what soever. Bev..who is fluent in Portuguese did her absolute best but they decided 'not to understand her'!
I wont go into the ins and outs of the story..but just to say..please be careful and aware..when youre in these crowded places. I was devastated at my loss. I should have been more careful. 260 euros is a lot of money(it would take me 50 hours to earn that in my work).I shouldnt have carried so much with me.I was lucky..I had a friend with me to help.
We were also ripped off by a taxi driver...it was just a short drive to the castle of St George...no more than 5 euros at most(which the average drive cost there)....but his meter STARTED at 4.25 euros and we ended up paying 10.20 for a short distance.
But I tried not to let this spoil my trip. I saw a beautiful city and some splendid sights. Not least the wonderful harbour and marina..the tower of Belem...the Monastery of Geronimo..and many other places. Losing the money,we had to be economical and walked and walked and walked........
Okay ..I was robbed and stung..but I wouldnt have missed it for the world...
if you go..be careful..be alert..I wasnt..and it almost spoilt my holiday.......

Too bad Ellie, that shows you again how careful one has to be. I seldom carry a purse, and even when I do, I keep my visa card or money in my front jeans pocket or inside jacket pocket, somewhere where it is not easy to get at and where I would surely notice it if somebody tried. I took a bus tour to Lisboa with my brother and we enjoyed our day tremendously.

I keep my visa card or money in my front jeans pocket or inside jacket pocket, somewhere where it is not easy to get at and where I would surely notice it if somebody tried.

Good Advice, Heini.

Ellie realy sorry to hear about your misfortune, may the bad luck of the year go with it ,but fair play to you for not letting it ruin your whole trip, your a tough yoke, wait till ye see yill get an aul win on the bingo or a bit of good news that,ll make up for it,we spent the most awful 3 hours on mon nite driving around lisbon lost and when i got home on tues i found out that the bleedin, cats pregnant....again ,now wasn,t that lovely,,gods sense of humour is really starting to piss me off.By the way where are the hotels in lisbon......only found two(thanks to the taxi driver)one had no name at all the other ,the name was so high up the poor pigeons had a crick in their necks looking up at it .
ps im serious about finding out where they are.

Gerry, I share your perplexion. It's quite a town.

Last year, SWMBO and I arrived in Lisboa one evening, after visiting up the coast a little later than planned, ie at rush hour. No problem, we had reservations at the Mondial, right down town.

Well, we made the circuit . . . round & round the one ways twice or three times or more. We could see about where the hotel should be according to the map but . . . no joy.

At one point, in frustration, I made an executive decision - a right hand turn up a street that looked like it would cross to the one we wanted. Well, it got narrower and narrower till I was certain we were going to spend the next week wedged in the car while some passerby eventually would hail the Garde who would bring in blow torches and tnt . . . .

Somehow I backed back down this steep hillside street. Made another executive decision . . . triple parked (in rush hour mind) along a section of street featuring rather bizarre looking beggars only too anxious to assist . . . ahem.

We walked to the area of the hotel, leaving (nervously) our gear in the trunk of the car, with fingers crossed. Somehow, we missed it again!

After another hour of ever more frantic searching on foot, we finally found a pay phone . . . on the third floor of some government building I think, out of which were pouring clerks et al for the night.

After diddling around,we eventually got the hotel reception, got blow by blow directions . . which turned out to be ever-so-simple to follow on foot.

When we recounted our difficulties to the receptionist, she was not impressed. Nor was she when we enquired how we might best get the car . . .and our luggage over to the desired parking garage. As I recall, we had to drive back to the water front and come up some convoluted route to the side of the hotel but . . .what a relief to get there. Lisboa seemed quite "exotic" to us I must say but after a few days, I wondred how we could have missed it! LOL

The only other similar experience I have had occurred when we thought we would head back to CDG from the Loire via Versailles and Paris. After 3 hours of total confusion, SWMBO made a brilliant suggestion . . . we would stop at that motel over there and after a restful night we would GO AROUND the b****y city! And we did.

Someday I will visit Paris, but not by car!

Aaah memories!

Hi Ellie,

Welcome back. Envy you your stay in CVO but not your loss in Lisboa. Nasty!

Sounds like you really enjoyed CVO though. Well done.

Cheers!

well done showwy, shwmbo took me a while. Never thought that that would apply to you.

Since I have constructed a sentence with two 'thats'' in sequence, can anybody give me a sentence with five ' ands' in sequence

Ellie, how awful. I remember how angry I was when I got robbed (for the first and last time) about 20 years ago in Sidney Australia.
……and I wanted to say that its all your own fault and how you oughta know better, you must look after yourself……..
.....................
I’m loosing concentration after reading of Showwwy’s perplexion (excellent!!)

(& gerry’s too: cheers us up)

Gerry,

It says here that according to Ernest Hemingway:

One cat just leads to another.

Gee, I couldn't meet your challenge but along the way it was determined that:

The question of appropriateness of usage of sentence-initial Ands and Buts (SIABs) in academic writing is one beset by confusion and a lack of a definitive consensus. Perhaps the best method of finding an authoritative answer is to 'go straight to the horse's mouth' and see whether and how often SIABs are indeed used in academic writing.
A survey was undertaken to determine the relative usage of sentence-initial And and But in academic writing vs. other genres as well as relative usage of sentence-initial And, But and However in British and US academic writing. This was done by comparing various corpora in the Cobuild Bank of English with a mini-corpus of academic writings available electronically.
The survey revealed that sentence-initial And and But are genre-dependent, occurring most often in spoken English, less in written literature/journalism and least frequently in academic writing. They are also author-dependent, with only 17% and 37% of the authors showing instances of sentence-initial And and But respectively, and 74-80% of the instances in five out of 46 works surveyed. Use of sentence-initial However was found to be almost 10 times more common in US written academic English than in British written English, whereas the opposite was true for sentence-initial But. This preference seems to reflect a difference in usage between the two English varieties.

I'm sure this will help us all to better usage.

The sign over my first pub should have read "GERRY AND GERI"but when the guy was finished it read"GERRYANDGERI"so i had to explain that there was a space between gerry and and and and and geri. Ended up calling the place JUST GERRYS.

Ellie, sorry to hear of your misfortune. A few years back the same thing happened to my wife when we were in a busy shop in Granada Spain. She had her wallet taken out of her shoulder bag. The lost was devastating for her, the wallet contained $1,000, two credit cards and her driver's license.....an expensive lesson indeed. It seems that women carrying shoulder or hand bags are fair game for an experienced thief and the distraction of you shopping adds to their advantage. I use to carry my wallet in my back pocket, a big mistake, since then I carry it in a side pocket and in a crowded area keep my hand over the wallet as well. My wife has taken to carrying a smaller bag and wears it to the front of her with the strap around her neck. Needless to say we have learned our lesson and do not carry that amount of money around in public places.

hen pecked wrote:well done showwy, shwmbo took me a while. Never thought that that would apply to you.

Since I have constructed a sentence with two 'thats'' in sequence, can anybody give me a sentence with five ' ands' in sequence

Sure,....
(deep Southern accent) :

"Honey, I, gotta sneeze, ands, ands , ands, ands, ands, (sneezes)... ands could bring you me another beer?

Someone managed to steal my purse from a zipped shoulder bag in the time it took me to walk from the Alisuper in close to the square in CVO and where my car was parked 12 yards away. I think they must have been watching me leave the shop with my hands full of shopping bags.

Thanks to all you good folk for your sympathy..and reading your posts I can see youve had same experience.
Know what I thought? How awful If Id been alone (I had contemplated ths but decidied against)..but how lucky I had a friend there to help.
But must say Digger..i enjoyed your beautiful City and we (Bev & I ) managed to have lot of fun....despite walking miles(to save cash!) and now have legs like Linford Christie!
To Guest..I say..I was kicking myself that I didnt have zip bag(mine just clipped over) but you say your purse was taken anyway..these pickpockets/robbers are clever people
ShOWWWY..that motel near Paris...Im wondering if its one like our 'Travelodges' in UK..we've thought of doing this..leaving car at motel..and training it to the 'Gare du Nord' (direct into Paris).know what you mean..about driving round outskirts for hours..did it in a camper when kids were little...murder!!
Congrats on expected ones Gerry! --youshould keep her in at night ..how many tins of kit-e-kat d'you have to buy