Day 43: Lisboa!

Cloudy 22°

The Bayonne Blackout!

Having tried to stay awake while writing yesterday’s blog post and failing somewhat miserably, I got up, had a great shower then packed my gear for the flight to Lisbon. Sorry about the quality of the blog yesterday. I’ll try to do a better effort, and I’ll be writing as we travel today. Right now the train has just left the Gare de Bayonne and we have an almost 2 hour trip to Bordeaux. We are sitting in 1st class only because the online rate was only €3 more for the two of us combined. Super! Very comfy seats and free wifi as well.

We had a great meal last night. Probably the best meal since I arrived 6 weeks ago today. The time has zoomed by, at least looking backwards it seems to have. It didn’t really as I know I’ve lived long very full days since arriving.

Dinner:

Dessert: I had chocolate cake with a melted pistachio and chocolate filling with the best ice cream. AM had a boring crème brûlée! When she saw mine I knew that I was in trouble.🙄 I was. We swapped at the halfway point.

The wine was a very good Bordeaux, while AM enjoyed another glass of sangria. The chef came out to see how we liked the meal and I told him honestly that it was the best meal I’d had in 6 weeks. I mean, you’ve read about most of the crappy meals I’ve eaten, so it was a very honest assessment! He seemed doubtful that I was telling him the truth, but very pleased for the compliment.

As we were finishing up we started to hear huge booms. It took us a while to realize that we were hearing thunder. A massive storm hit and all hell broke loose just outside the door! At 9:30 it was getting worse so we put on our light non-waterproof jackets and decided to brave the elements!

Arriving back at our place a little damp we hung everything up so that it would hopefully be dry for our travel today.

We went to bed with the weather continuing to explode outside. I messaged Hil who arrived at Irun to hold off on the first stage along the Norte until the weather clears Monday. It’s a beautiful climb with spectacular views and in the mud and rain it would be very unpleasant. She replied that the storm had just hit her location south of us, and I hope she heeded my advice. I guess I’ll find out later today.

When I woke up at 6;00 this morning I soon discovered that we’d lost our power and the entire city was dark. We packed our remaining gear in the dark, used our phone lights to make sure we had everything and then climbed down the outside spiralling stairs (open stairs) 3 stories. The elevators would of course not be working, and we were a bit concerned that perhaps the electric door releases to get out of the building might not work either. They did 😮‍💨

The bakery was unable to open so we set off for the train station. Thankfully the forecasted rain wasn’t falling.

Fortunately we were able to get a bit of breakfast at the Relay store in the station. I figured they had called out for emergency pane de chocolate as they were actually fresh.

Then out to platform B to wait for our train which was running 5’ late.

We left about 10 minutes late, but we have lots of time to get to Gare de Bordeaux.

We are riding a continental train that moves along pretty fast!

This is just the first 3 hours of our journey. More later…

Later:

Well, I thought that went very well. AM sorted out our route from the train station to the airport on Google maps and she had it all well sorted out with walking and trams. It would have taken quite a while to get to the airport, but it probably would have worked. It sounded a bit awkward to me, so I Googled how to get to the airport and to no one’s surprise there was a transfer bus service. While on the train I opened an account, booked us two tickets and paid. Super easy! The travel world really is completely setup for the smart phone. Such a change from our earlier travel years. So much easier today.

It took us a while to sort out the Bordeaux airport, but we eventually did and now we are sitting in the lounge having our lunch. Lounge pass, right Rob? Wrong. There is no lounge at the Bordeaux airport!😑

Oh well. We have a table to sit at for the next couple of hours and the security process is done. Speaking of security, AM was again pulled over and checked. It has happened every single time we travel. If there was a bookie giving odds that this would happen we’d be billionaires by now! Like clock work. Happened to her on the way over too. If you are late for a connecting flight you definitely do not want to be travelling with Annemarie.😂

Note to self, the duty free here is expensive. I always check Toblerone and Grand Marnie prices, and these are way above the usual.

It’s now 11:34 and our flight is at 14:40…

14:00: time to board!

After a long bum numbing wait on a definitely not soft chair, we finally had our gate posted. The usual European discount airline cattle rush ensued and somehow we ended up first on! You have to pay considerably more these days to take your carry-on bag on these airlines than in the good old days. The airlines are trying to make more coin by having people check their carry-on. With our increased fee we get priority cattle car boarding, bum numbing non-reclining seats AND we can take our bag on with us. We still just have one toilet for the whole plane, but that allows the airline to fit more seats in. More seats, more coin.

One such airline (not this one, the other one) once considered charging a fee for using the toilet and they played soft drink ads on the PA system the whole flight. As you might have guessed there was considerable pushback from the travelling public and the plan never took hold.

We have a taxi waiting for us (first time ever) at the Lisbon airport because we have spent enough € on our Lisbon hotel through Booking.com to qualify, and because we have booked with them hundreds of times we sometimes get a few perks! It promises to hopefully be the easiest entry into Lisbon we’ve ever had.🤞

I already have my dinner planned tonight, so let’s get going! Next stop Lisboa!!

It was cloudy most of the way.

But when we landed it cleared.

Presently waiting for our driver Abdul. One of his coworkers told us he would be a bit late. So we will wait. While we wait we are trying to sort out our SIM cell connections. Always a joy when we change countries. They always assure you that your data plan will work in every EU country, but that’s not always been our experience. Oh well. Just a few days. 



After a long day that started at 6 o’clock this morning we have arrived at our hotel in Lisbon. We’ve also gained an hour, or I suppose you could call it lost hour as we travelled west. In France, it’s 6:30 PM, and in Portugal, it’s 5:30 PM. You get the drift.

It seems like it’s time to go out to find a place for a drink before dinner and then to locate somewhere to eat dinner. Our phones continue to not function property with cellular data, and it looks like that’s how it’s going to be while we’re here. We have access to Wi-Fi only when we’re in our hotel. We can live with that for a couple days.

That’s about it from here. We will go wandering in Lisbon tomorrow and I’ll post something at some point.

Geoff 🍻☀️