"Two beers, please!"

I don't speak Portuguese. But here's what I learned last week on holiday in Lisbon:

• how to say "two beers, please"
  

• it's olá, not hola.
  

• a "thank you" with a smile is worth three "thank you"s with no smile
  

• i need to add "this please" to my Survival Japanese course as a central key phrase.
  

• learning words in a new language is a lot easier when you can read the words already (hurray for the roman alphabet!)
  

• you can delete social media apps for a week and put the out-of-office on, and the world will not end
  

• sometimes a very short blog post is fine