Portugal Day One: Travel to Lisbon

If my sources are correct, the 24th wedding anniversary is the “shelter in place in an airport anniversary.” No? Well, that’s how we did it on our way to Portugal for a summer vacation this past July. Harper, Amy, and I went up to Chicago O’Hare on that Monday evening. Cole had headed to Europe a week earlier, going to visit a friend in Estonia. He would meet us in Lisbon.

This was not our first trip to Portugal. Back in Spring 2021, we made our first trip there. That trip had been an offshoot of pre-COVID plans to go to Spain. There was a work conference in Porto that Amy was going to attend and then we had intended to head off to Spain for the rest of our trip. COVID postponed things, and then we ended up spending a week in Portugal – in Lisbon and to the north in Porto. We liked it so well, we decided that we wanted to return for a summer trip, explore Lisbon some more and then head to Lagos in the southern part of the country.

The weather heading up to Chicago for our flight was sunny and clear. If our flight had left maybe a half hour earlier, we would have been fine. But we didn’t, and storms were rolling in. We got to the airport and ate at the Macaroni Grill there. Amy and I did at least gesture toward our anniversary by leaving Harper with the bags at the gate and going to a bar and grabbing a couple of drinks. The bartender had already given Amy a heavy pour, noticed that the bottle was almost empty and probably gave her what amounted to two glasses of wine. Which, given airport prices, we might have broken even.

Shortly after that, the announcement came over the airport P.A. system that there was a tornado warning. We were directed to “shelter in place,” which amounted to moving away from the windows. Everyone was pretty calm and nonchalant about the whole thing. (Being good Midwesterners, we wanted to go to the windows to watch the weather, but we followed the rules.) One lady from Philadelphia said she had never been around a tornado. Later we heard that there had been tornados that touched down nearby. Wind gusts got up to 80 mph. The windows rattled and doors were left open to help equalize the pressure. It was a little surreal, but did not last too awfully long.

Between the late start and the extended taxiing due to built up airport traffic, we took off about 2 hours late. Harper slept like a rock, I slept some, and Amy said that it was a very different experience as between the two of us. I was tossing and turning while Harper was a lump of concrete. When I wasn’t sleeping, I spent an inordinate time playing “Angry Birds” on the airplane entertainment system. The poor woman in front of me – it never occurred to me that she could feel my poking at the screen. I hope she didn’t wait too long before asking me if I could stop.

Because of the late start, we missed our initial connection from Heathrow to Lisbon. They put us on the next one. Because of (I believe) Brexit, we had to go through security – but not customs or passport control – in Heathrow. Heathrow is an organizational cluster (more on that on the way back), but our reasonable layover time turned into some stress over whether we would make the connection. Ultimately, even with the delays and new flight, we arrived in Lisbon about 2.5 hours later than expected. Ultimately, it was about a 21.5 hour trip, door to door.
Cole was waiting. He had come that morning from Tallin, Estonia, through Munich, and then to Lisbon. It was good to see Cole after he had been abroad for a week. He hasn’t lived at home full time for a couple of years, but having your kid far away from your help adds a level of anxiety to parenting. He was fine, of course.

We got an Uber from the airport to the Airbnb which was a block or so away from the Lisbon Cathedral, dropped off our bags, and our first order of business was picking up some supplies. By supplies, I mean Super Bock and Pringles. I remembered Lisbon being hilly, but my memory just didn’t do it justice. It’s a little like mountain climbing any time you want to go somewhere.

The Airbnb ended up being comfortable enough, but it wasn’t perfect. In particular the kids’ bathroom was an adventure. The toilet was wedged into a position behind the sink where you had to kind of sit at an angle to use it. The shower was such that, if you angled the shower head the wrong way, you were going to flood the bathroom and maybe the adjacent bedroom. And, there were roaches. What I’m trying to say is that the kids mostly used our bathroom.

For dinner, we went to a nearby restaurant that Amy had found called Tu e Eu 2. The restaurant was squirreled away in an alley and up some stairs. In fact, on the way there, we missed the alley and got there from the street above via an elevator that took us to level below which opened up on the outdoor stairway. The line was down the stairs, so we waited there. (We discovered it was cash only, so Cole and I quickly walked back to the apartment to pick up extra cash.)

It’s a small place with walls covered in graffiti from visitors and a healthy sound system playing. I had grilled sardines which had a great flavor, but somehow I couldn’t avoid getting a lot of bones that I had to pick out of my mouth. The staff gave us ginjinha to cap off the night. And then it was time for bed. I slept the sleep of the just, long and deep. I guess mostly skipping a night of sleep will do that!