The alternative destination to take our aircraft to turned out to be Bordeaux. Agen was originally chosen because our hosts use the Agen airport for their own aircraft and we had assumed that it was due to very close proximity of the Agen airfield to their home. Upon closer examination, we found that their home, located in Lados, was 80 kms away from Agen. Looking for alternatives, Bordeaux was actually closer with only 60 kms distance. So Bordeaux it was.
Several hours of internet time eventually got us set for the trip as follows: Alarm at 06:00, Taxi to Cascais Airport at 08:00, refuel the aircraft, sort out landing, parking and handling fees, take-off at 10:00, fly for 3.5 hours and land at 14:30 (1 hour time zone change), collect rental car at 16:00, drive to San Sebastian, book into Hotel at 19:00 hours. All necessary flight planning along with booking of a rental car from Bordeaux to Santander was done during the day. Booking a rental car as a one way option with collection in France and return in Spain turned out to be quite challenging and while it could be done, attracted an unusually high rental fee. We had looked into other forms of transport including bus and rail, and the rental car was still the best option.
During the course of the day, we also explored the town of Cascais. To our delight, we found a Segway rental booth and decided to rent two Segways for an hour to better explore the hilly parts of town. Having been on Segways several times before, we needed no intro and were on our way quite soon. Different from riding off-road, we were presented with uneven cobblestone areas, narrow alleys and we were required to master various other obstacles like switching between pedestrian walkways and narrow roads. This is were things went wrong. During one of those road to pedestrian walk transitions, I failed to pay proper attention to where I was going and promptly fell off my Segway. At first, it didn't seem like I was hurt much with a few bruises here and there. Over time however, while all other bruises disappeared, one major one remained on my right foot. The Segway must have run into or over that area of my foot to bruise it heavily. By late afternoon it had become clear that this was not going away soon and the foot had become rather painful to the point that I was worried about being able to fly next day. We decided to make the final go / no-go decision in the morning.
The dinner we had planned in the old part of Cascais was scrapped in favour of an in-house hotel dinner, due to my rather limited walking ability. The quality of the food was average at best and pretty much in line with our other impressions of the hotel, which would best be described as poorly run and not caring, coupled with neglected maintenance.
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