Portugal; Two Incredibly Long Days of Travel

We just arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, yesterday. It wasn’t a great trip. You know I believe in sharing my mistakes with you (which is a good thing—otherwise I wouldn’t have much to write about!), so here it goes. I decided to try a different airline (Norse Atlantic) because it’s so cheap we could afford to go first class. It’s a nice airline and I recommend it. What I don’t recommend is everything else. Normally we drive a rental car to San Francisco airport and take a direct flight on TAP Air to Lisbon. The problem is that we hate driving home in San Francisco rush-hour-traffic after an 11 hour flight.

So here’s what I did; I booked a Southwest flight from Sacto to LA, Norse from LA to London, TAP Air from London to Lisbon. At each layover we had to collect our luggage and cart it to the next ticket counter to check in again, which meant going through security again and again and again. What made it worse was that we had to go through immigration twice—London and again n Lisbon. Honestly, they were both super easy. They have the new system of just placing your passport facedown and then letting the computer read your face. If you're from America, you probably have the electronic passport, so go through that line. It has this symbol on it:

The real problem was in the baggage claim and security. In London we hustled straight over to collect our bags and stood, and then sat on the floor as we ALL waited an hour and a half for our luggage! We had a super long layover, but most people didn’t and they were freaking out. When the belt finally started up everyone actually broke out in spontaneous applause.

Once we got our bags, we dragged them to the ticket counter for TAP Air, which the nice lady sitting at the counter kindly told us wouldn’t open for another 45 minutes. Once again we sat on the floor with everyone else while she chatted and looked at her phone. Mind you this is after the ten-hour flight from LA with maybe two hours sleep. While waiting we heard repeated announcements apologizing for the super slow security check point. Great! We finally rushed to get in the queue (not line—remember we’re in Britain) and took baby steps for another 30 minutes. The guard kept stopping the line to prevent it from being too chaotic. Unfortunately he cut it off after Joe and left me behind. Joe wisely refused to progress through the security line without me. While I waited the security guard whispered to me that the line was long because they’d had 100 canceled flights the day before and this was the backlog. Apparently the flight-control personal all got sick that day?

Once inside, we tried to sit and have a beer and a glass of wine, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Our gate wasn’t posted yet, so we sat in a corner and tried to stay awake. We finally went to our gate and leaned on each other in the uncomfortable chairs. When we got on the plane and seat-belted in, we both fell asleep. Being completely exhausted (and not in our twenties anymore), we grabbed dinner-to-go at the airport in Lisbon (a half bottle of wine, two beers, and two quiches). Then we went out front to get a taxi only to find yet another line. A sweet taxi driver chatted excitedly in English about his upcoming trip to Paris with his girlfriend to Disneyland all the way to our Airbnb. I didn’t even know they had a Disney in Paris. As a side-note; Uber drivers have to pay airport access to pick you up. That’s not a huge problem, but we choose the taxi when leaving the Lisbon airport (24 Euros). When we go to the airport we take uber, and they drop us off near the doors and hurry away.

Once here, we were greeted by Ines. She was so incredibly welcoming and sweet and even gave me a hug. We slept nine hours and woke up feeling brand new (almost). Lots of odd things happened, but I’ll wait for another blog to tell you about it. Next time we come here, I’ll find another way of doing it.