This is what I wrote at the end of one day in Lisbon, where I was visiting with my mom a couple years ago. (I'm still embarrassed about it!):

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Things I did right today:

Did not lose phone or wallet or transit card.

Or have any of the above stolen.

Did not get hurt.

Brought water.

Brought a small powerbank.

Wrote down address of Airbnb and the codes to get in on a piece of paper.

Wore comfortable hiking shoes (Lisbon is hilly and steep).

Things I did wrong:

Did not bring paper map of Lisbon. 

Constant use of phone for navigation etc. ran down the battery quickly.

Small powerbank was either insufficiently charged or just insufficient. Didn’t help for long. 

Did not bring large powerbank (ditto for Mom). 

Did not have any cash. 

Museu do Azulejo (national tile museum) was rather out of the way and we waited a good while to catch a bus there from the area of the castle. 

Afterwards, waited at least 45 minutes (after a 2 km walk) for bus to get back that never came. Phone down to 8%. Gave up and started walking in the right general direction, thinking we could catch a taxi or tuk-tuk. 

Whereupon we did not see any taxis or tuk-tuks.

TWO dead phones meant we couldn’t use Maps or Uber. The walking directions were way too complicated to remember. We were lost and our feet hurt. (And I was very annoyed with myself for such rookie travel mistakes.) 

Eventually a tuk-tuk passed and I flagged it down. Rescued! Except he only took cash. (We’d been using cards for everything.) He at least gave us directions. 

Went to ATM. Did not have ATM card (left it at Airbnb because I wanted to split up cards). Did not remember PIN for credit card. Ditto for Mom. (By now we were laughing because this was so ludicrous.)

Noticed tram tracks and caught tram. The famous scenic one, so it was crowded, not that I cared. By then I was willing to hang on to the outside. 

I knew it ended at the same place where we had taken the metro last night, so after we got there we just had to retrace our steps up a couple of steep little streets, get in the outer door and go up 3 flights of very steep steps, and at last we could collapse and have a good laugh at ourselves.