We left Vienna at 11.30pm and arrived at Lisbon airport at 1am. We waited for a bit for the luggage with huge numbers of people. It looked more like 1pm than 1am. We then met Hugo with our rented car and were instructed. Getting out of the parking lot took about 20 minutes and we had to sustain a great deal of honking as a consequence of rather impatient Portuguese Christmas holiday ready. Once out, we immediately had to fill up with gas. The car comes on empty and is supposed to be returned empty. Fat chance that we could actually bring it back empty. Alas, we were on the road with our navigator and maps, however, the navigator had one way to go and the google maps that we printed before the trip had another suggestion. In the end, we used both to some extent. It was rather exciting and of course, took longer than necessary. 
We arrived at Praia Mar Hotel (http://www.carcaveloshotelmar.com/) at 2.30am and there was no one there and the doors were locked. Not fun. One never expects a hotel to be locked up and empty. We rang the bell for a bit until someone finally did wake up and let us in. The hotel is one block from the coastal highway and the coast. The lobby is very modern and pleasant and the rooms are also modern but a bit worn. Not too bad, but not the 4 star quality that we expected. It didn’t matter too much because we quickly unpacked and went straight to bed.
