I’ll start with the good stuff: we are in Portugal, staying at a lovely hotel in Lisboa. We arrived when we planned, and our luggage miraculously made it, too (more on that in a bit)!
Travel started at 3:00 AM PST on Monday the 20th. Originally the flight had a 10:30 AM departure, but that flight changed the day before – instead of a non-stop to Boston, we had a short flight to Seattle at 6:00 AM, then on to Boston from there.
I think this is related to the equipment change that required the pets to go out of Seattle, too – Alaska seems to have limited flights in and out of Portland.
We also only found out about this change by accident when I called Air Azores to ask why my online check-in wasn’t working …
We got to the airport, dropped off the rental car, and were at the ticket gate at 4:00. We then trekked all the way out to the last gate in the concourse to wait for our boarding in one hour.
In 45 minutes, people started lining up at the counter. We weren’t sure why, until a guy sitting next to us started cursing – he had just got a message that the flight cancelled. Nothing like an announcement …
I waited in line about a half hour to get rescheduled. The Alaska employees were as helpful as possible, but it was a royal mess. They managed to get us booked onto American Airline from PDX to Chicago and from there to Boston, but with plenty of time to catch the flight to Ponta Delgada in the Azores.
I was concerned about the luggage – four big bags that represented everything we owned until the shipping container arrives in the fall – but they assured me they had it under control.
I also had to run back and forth between counters a few times because codes weren’t going through – it was highly stressful, and I messed up my hip, so I was doing a high-speed Quasimodo limp. The ray of sunshine there is I absolutely took advantage of the “Passengers who need extra time to board” thing, which also guaranteed we had space for our carry-on luggage. Originally, we were supposed to fly business class just to prevent that from being an issue, but with the flight switch we were back in coach.
We finally left Portland at 8:45.
I’ll just say in brief that everything you hear about how bad American Airlines are is true. Both flights were full – people in every middle seat. Also, there were a few people on both flights who the attendants had to keep telling to put their masks back on. Not pleasant.
Chicago was a fairly easy transfer – just had to get from the K gates to the H gates. Boston was more complicated. We arrived at the B terminal and needed to get to the E terminal, which means leaving the airport and taking a bus … luckily, the bags were checked through to the final destination, but we were still lugging fairly heavy carry-on stuff.
Arrived at E terminal for the moment of truth – would they let us board and enter Portugal? We showed our respective passports, the rental lease agreement with our address on it, the original copy of our marriage certificate, and our two negative Covid tests. Everything received careful inspection by two supervisors, and we had to explain a little, but after just a few minutes they waved us forward.
This was it! We checked in, passed through security, and settled down for a 2 hour wait for the next flight.
Since at this point we were back on our original itinerary, we were also back in our business-class seats and were looking forward to at least some food and wine. Dream on! Due to Covid, interaction between flight staff and passenger is at a minimum. We had larger seats, but other than that all we got was a bottle of water and a lunch bag with a soggy sandwich, a cookie, and a container of orange juice. The attendants then retreated into the crew areas with the drapes tightly drawn, and that was the last we saw of them. We couldn’t even use the forward bathroom – we had to go all the way to the back of the plane, because the forward bathroom was for crew use only.
Boston to Ponta Delgada was about four and a half hours, and the plane was at least 2/3 empty – there were plenty of people in coach stretched out across three seats sleeping.
Ponta Delgada is on the island of São Miguel in the Azores. It’s a small airport, so you have to use stairs to deplane, then walk to the terminal. I’m hopping along like a deranged Festus – 14 hours of travel so far has not been kind to my hip – but we’re led into the Immigration Control area and go right to the counter with no wait.
Here it is – the final opportunity to have our entry denied … the extremely nice Immigration guy welcomed me home, apologized for the fact that he didn’t get to stamp my nice new shiny Portuguese passport, and waved us through.
I think this was the moment that all the weight fell from our souls – both Kristie and I immediately relaxed for the first time in days. We were on Portuguese soil and had every right to be there!
We were in the Azores less that an hour, so all I can tell you is the breeze was nice and I smelled cows when we were walking back out to the plane. From there to Lisboa was a quick two hours more.
The Lisboa airport is enormous. Even though we didn’t need to do immigration control there, it still took at least 30 minutes to get from the gate to the baggage claim area, walking through what felt like miles of shops and restaurants – many of them open, by the way, since Portugal is much further along the road to recovery from the virus.
One final hurdle to overcome – will our luggage catch up with us? Amazingly enough, the answer was yes! We collected our mountain of possessions, trundled out to the curb, and got it all into a taxi.
We arrived at out hotel about noon, but luckily our room was ready early. The extremely nice desk clerk helped us get everything up to our lovely and comfortable room, where we promptly passed out for a good three hours.
PS: We’re getting daily updates on the pets, they’re fine!
Next Episode: A busy few days in Lisboa
A Modern Odyssey - Expatriates in Iberia 