I always feel like I need to try to speak a local language to endear myself to people but it turns out that in Portugal, at least among the small subset of people I interacted with ( namingly: airport information desk, cabbie, receptionist, room service) English is the way to go!
I forgot to pack my Portuguese phrasebook for my 9 hour layover in Lisbon. I was so good last time about studying it and figuring out exactly how to say the 7 things I needed for the lay over (1. where is the taxi stand 2. please take me to the Radisson 3. How much for the ride 4. Can I have a receipt 5. I have a reservation 6. non-smoking room please 7. may I please have the bacalao in room XXX.) Yet despite all that studying, I was at a complete loss for re-forming those same sentences this time around. So I had to resort to English... and everyone (see above) LOVED it.
I totally recognized the glee on the face of someone who has just delivered a carefully constructed sentence in a foreign language to a native speaker. I feel like the room service guy and I could have gone back and forth, him in broken English, and me in broken Portuguese just getting more and more proud of ourselves until our little happiness readers (here I'm picturing the energy meter in Rock Band) maxed out!
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