@ShiroKuro said:
What a great trip!! What were some of the highlights?
Public transportation: apparently Lisbon now uses the same model of public busses and fare collection system as San Francisco.
Electronic passport control systems: every country implements some sort of electronic passport control system these days. Singapore's is the only one I have seen working quickly and perfectly. Everywhere else, I saw visitors needing to rescan their passports or needing some sort of human agent assistance to get through. Not Singapore -- a big plane load of visitors all got through passport control in a matter of minutes without human agent intervention.
Ice cream: I continue to find that, more likely than not, European ice cream is less creamy but more flavorful than American ice cream. Japanese ice cream vendors often offer a “just milk” option, while the plainest you can get in the USA is “vanilla.”
Seafood and day drinking: never had so much octopus as my days in Lisbon; wine was served at every lunch.
Culture and tech for personal hygiene: I had the chance to experience, many days in a row, first the Japanese-style electronic bidets then also a European-style non-electronic bidet, from which I concluded rather confidently that the Japanese-style electronic bidets are functionally superior and vastly more user friendly.
