Geneva to Lisbon 1 November 2005

Finally getting ready to depart!!

 There was so much to do to prepare for the trip that we finally left Geneva 3 days late and a few hours later than we’d planned that morning. Our good friend Martine met us at CERN, where we left our cars on the parking lot for the winter, and drove us to the airport.
In order to land in Cascais where there are no customs we had to first fly to Annecy in nearby France. Geneva airport is in fact a Swiss/French airport but the customs and immigration in the Schengen countries do not consider it as such, except for France where we can fly to any small landing strip and continue on from there to any Schengen country airstrip. 1st November was the “Jour des Morts” (rather an inauspicious day to start our trip!) and a national holiday in France. This meant delays. The guy who normally collects the landing fees at Annecy airport was on holiday and it took a while before the fireman replacing him showed up. We also had to wait for take-off again due to other planes departing from nearby Chambery. As a result the usual 20-minute stop in Annecy took nearly an hour.
Added to that there were strong headwinds and the flight to Lisbon took over 7 and a half hours. We landed several hours after dark, but at least the weather was good all the way and the twinkling stars were a comfort. Our good friend and fellow earthrounder Delfim was at Cascais airport to meet us. We dined with him and his wife Clara before collapsing into bed at Delfim’s mother’s apartment.