So I guess we’ve lost 7 hours and it’s now evening in Lisbon. We’ve made it safely on board the ship (AKA The Prinsendam), and while the trip itself went as smoothly as one could hope for, the morning prior to departing was rough. This year I decided to lower my pre-trip anxiety by starting trip preparations very early, and as a result, ended up being pretty relaxed about it all, and even having time for some extras. However this morning I woke up with high and climbing blood sugars, which increases my anxiety and makes the sugars rise even more. Eating rarely feels good when my blood sugars are high, but I wanted to get breakfast over with so as to be able to get on with the final preparations. Realizing that I had time for the exercise bike one last time, I found that I felt quite unwell while on it, but persevered, only to be sick to my stomach about 90 minutes before the cab was to arrive. In case my tubing was faulty, I did an unplanned set change of my insulin pump equipment. And in order to hasten the dropping of the sugars I decided to inject insulin through a needle, but in my haste I bent the needle and the insulin bottle fell on the tile floor and broke. That left me with one full bottle for the trip, which would have been enough, unless I lost it, or there was a problem with the insulin. So 15 minutes before the cab was to arrive, I called my pharmacy. Fortunately they had one bottle, so we had the cab driver take a detour to Safeway.
Neither of us slept much on the way to Amsterdam, and after a long layover were able to finally sleep on the short flight to Lisbon. We were fortunate to have missed a five hour airport shutdown earlier in the day, due to a tire exploding on the runway. We had a relatively short drive from the airport to the dock, which did not take us through the scenic part of the city. We saw a lot of run down apartments and abandoned buildings, especially along the dock. Our boarding went very smoothly and our room is very spacious, as we booked one that would accommodate my small wheelchair. Previous cruises have been with Viking and were very good, but now that I’m in need of accommodated tours, they weren’t at all helpful. Therefore we found a travel adjent who booked us on a similar trip during the time we wanted to go, but with HollandAmerica instead. They were exceedingly helpful with the booking process, so I felt fairly comfortable that I would be able to manage the tours that we chose. Michael and I will split for a few of them, as he wants to see a couple of places where I won’t be able to walk, and he won’t be able to push me in the chair. Other than that, we’ll do most tours together.
The service and the food this evening was excellent. The ship’s appearance isn’t quite up to Viking’s standards, and not as much is included, but I think that this trip will work out better for more important reasons. Apparently they are retiring The Prinsendam in July, so one cannot fault them for not fixing some of the cosmetics.
Tomorrow we are at sea for the whole day, which will be a good opportunity to walk around the ship and catch up on missed sleep. I wore my air cast today as my stress fracture, while coming along, isn’t fully healed. I did a lot more walking (in airports) than I would have done if I was home, which is a bit concerning, as the stress fracture I’m recovering from happened after only a 30 minute casual walk in a mall. It developed because I was unable to walk for several months last year, until receiving an injection for spinal stenosis, and then the first time I tried, the poor bones in my foot couldn’t handle it. I didn’t discover this break for two days so hopefully on Sunday I won’t discover another broken bone!
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