So!, today we fly to Lisbon to eventually start our new Camino.
As we weren’t flying until early evening we planned to leave home at nearly lunchtime. The morning was spent doing last minute activities such as tidying, rechecking our bags etc, eventually leaving at about 11:30. We hoisted our bags on our backs and set off to the bus stop. Soon we were at Huddersfield train station for our train to Liverpool.
The train was on time and the journey to Liverpool airport all went smoothly and to plan. We’d allowed ourselves plenty of leeway in case of delays and had none, all very good so far.
It’s some time since we last used Liverpool airport and that experience hadn’t been very good, it was then rather like a building site. All that work is now finished and working well, so we we able to quickly check-in my rucksack. We’d wrapped and taped it in a large outer bag to keep all the straps etc under control. This has to be done as my bag contained two pairs of nail scissors and our walking poles which you cannot “carry on”. The flight was on schedule so we had some while to wait in the departures lounge.
We’d not been there very long when a very pleasant man, Chris as we later learned, came up to us to ask if we’d just been on a Camino. He had recognised the Camino badges and the cockle shell on Barbara’s bag. We explained that we’d actually done one previously but we were now just setting out to do another one through Portugal. He’d walked part of the Spanish route, from St Jean Pied de Port to near Burgos, and was planning on going back to do some more when he got the chance. He was waiting for his flight to Belfast which was delayed. We spent some time talking about the Camino and our joint experiences. Eventually our departure gate was announced and we had to go, but we’d spent a very interesting half an hour, or so, chatting.
We soon found our gate and were quickly checked through as we’d paid extra on our ticket to be able to choose our own seats and to get preferential boarding. However we then had to wait in another area adjacent to the actual gate. Looking through the window we couldn’t see an aircraft outside and wondered if it hadn’t yet arrived. A transfer bus eventually arrived and we were almost the first to board. When the bus arrived at the plane it stopped but nobody was allowed off. We sat there for maybe 15 minutes, apparently because the disembarkation of a disabled passenger on the plane’s previous flight had had some problems. When we were eventually allowed to board it was a case of every man for himself, so much for preferential boarding. Never mind, we soon got on and found our seats and settled in, leaving shortly afterwards, only about 10 minutes late.
About half way into our journey there came an announcement that nobody ever likes to hear; “Ladies and gentlemen, is there a doctor, nurse or other medical person on board?”. It seems that someone was not well towards the back of the plane, quite what was the problem we didn’t find out although one of the stewardesses took the first-aid bag down the cabin. I suddenly wondered if this was going to be a replay of a flight we had in America some years back when the flight had to be diverted to allow the ill passenger to be disembarked. On that flight the emergency meant that we missed a connection, eventually arriving at our destination nearly 12 hours late. Everything seemed to be under control on this occasion and the flight continued, and went well. There was, apparently, a strong tail wind and despite departing late we arrived in Lisbon about 10 minutes early.
The disembarkation process went reasonably OK, the check at immigration was via an electronic system and was very quick. The bag collection was rather slower but not really a problem and I soon had my rucksack. Similarly we soon found, and boarded, our prebooked bus into town, a journey that took about 30 minutes. We had managed to make contact with Kleber, who owned the AirBnB appartment, saying that we should be there by about 10pm.
That didn’t quite happen as when we got off the bus and started to follow a map that we had, we discovered that it didn’t have sufficient detail of the Alfama district to be useful. After getting rather conflicting directions from two different pairs of people we were totally lost, and to add to the confusion my phone battery had died and we couldn’t ring for info from Kleber. I suddenly remembered, however, that my tablet had detailed mapping of the whole of Portugal and also, thankfully, plenty of battery power. Using that soon got us to the apartment (40 minutes after we had expected) where Kleber was waiting along with his wife.
We were soon shown around the apartment and left to settle in. It is a very nice place, small but very well equipped and homely and will suit us very well for our short stay in Lisbon. It is also very close to the “Se” or cathedral, the starting point of our Camino route. But that is all still in the future, for now we’ll settle in and explore Lisbon tomorrow.
