Portugal – Travel Day to Porto

Over the past couple of years Tom has been watching a ton of videos and researching Portugal. He has fallen in love with this country before he has even stepped foot in it so when we were deciding where we should go to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, Portugal seemed liked the natural choice.

Our flight didn’t leave until 4:45p.m. out of Chicago so it was nice to have some time in the morning to finalize packing and cleaning before Uncle Dennis picked us up to take us to the bus stop at Mitchell airport. Taking the bus to O’Hare is one of the best, least stressful ways to get there. We were dropped off at the international terminal in no time. Since we didn’t have any bags to check we went straight to the TSA Pre-Check line. There was nobody in line and we were through security faster than the last time I flew out of Mitchell. We were through security and still had 3 hours before our flight, so we went to a nice sit down restaurant for lunch. I got a burger and Tom got the fish tacos. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures of our food. I thought my burger was pretty good (even though it was more like medium rare instead of medium), but Tom was not happy with his fish tacos. The tacos came unassembled with a filet of fish on the plate with rice, beans, tortillas, a little slaw and guacamole. The fish didn’t have much flavor and was dry. For the price of the meal it was a disappointing start to the trip.

The flights were on time and we had no issues. While we were waiting for the flight in Chicago an airline representative came around the waiting area and asked us to check in at least one of our bags since it was a full flight. I checked my backpack and was actually happy that I didn’t have to carry it through the terminal in Amsterdam because it was quite the walk from one gate to the other. I just prayed it would make it to our final destination.

In preparation for the trip I finally figured out Libby and downloaded some books from the library. I started reading “Comfort and Joy” by Kristin Hannah on the bus ride to O’Hare and finished it somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Tom and I also watched the movie BlackBerry which was pretty good. We tried to get some sleep but it didn’t really happen. The almost 8 hour flight did seem to go by fast though. We flew KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and although the seats were compact and did not have very much cushion, I will say they fed us well. I had the chicken dinner meal and Tom had the pasta with a good corn salad and some sort of cinnamon (looked like cheese cake but I didn’t taste cream cheese) dessert. For breakfast they served some sort of cheese pastry thing that was ok and on the flight from Amsterdam to Porto we had egg salad sandwiches and an apple cake.

I hadn’t really thought about immigration and customs for this trip, but in Amsterdam we went through immigration (not Portugal) which makes sense since this is where we were technically entering the European Union. Sadly there will be no Portugal stamp in our passport. It went pretty fast and we made our connecting flight with no issues. My backpack was the second piece of luggage off the carousel in Porto and we were outside standing on the curb before we knew it. I had read about people using the Bolt app for ride shares in Europe (versus Uber and Lyft) and had Tom download it before we got here. It worked great and soon we were on our way to our AirBnB. It was only Noon local time and check-in wasn’t until 4:00, but the company that manages the AirBnB apartments said we could leave our luggage in their office until check-in. We got dropped off at the AirBnB address and we wandered around a bit trying to find the entrance. I found a bench to sit on where I sat with all of our luggage while Tom walked around to find the office. He came back some time later and had found the office was actually about a 7 minute walk away so we loaded up and made the trek to the office. It turns out the company manages over 100 apartments in Porto.

Just outside the apartment management office was a tourist hut that we stopped at to see what we could do while we waited for check-in. We bought a 48-hour hop-on hop-off bus tour pass that came with a river cruise pass as well. We then set off to find a bus stop to pick up the bus. We had a little hard time navigating, but eventually we got it figured out and found one of the stops where we only had to wait 7 minutes before the next bus came by.

It was a beautiful sunny, no clouds in the sky with temperatures in the low 70’s kind of day. We sat on the top deck of the bus and was comfortable in getting acquainted with the city. We were both exhausted and Tom nodded off more than I did, but it was a good way to spend our time just coming off the plane, especially since we can hop back on the bus again tomorrow when we’re more awake and do it again. We got off the bus at a different stop then we had gotten on. Tom’s phone was now dead (he’s the one with the international plan this trip) and once again we tried to navigate back to the apartment offices. We thought we were headed in the right direction but wasn’t sure. I took my phone out of airplane mode to see if I could get GPS but it didn’t connect. Thankfully there was a police officer near by who I asked for directions. We were definitely on the right track and just needed to keep walking down the road we were on. We made it back to the apartment offices by 3:45 and picked up our bags and headed to our apartment.

We have a nice studio apartment on the fourth floor. It was great to finally get in the apartment and unwind from the long day of travel. We set an alarm for 7:30p.m. and took a much needed nap. The shower felt equally as great (not so much for Tom because although my shower was nice and hot, his was ice cold. I found later when looking though cupboards the hot water heater had an error on it so I reset it. Hopefully all showers will be hot tomorrow).

We headed back out around 9:00p.m. (it was just starting to get dark) and we walked down to the river to find a place to eat. We picked a restaurant where we sat outside with a nice view of the Ponte Luiz I bridge. I had a mushroom and bean stew and Tom had the Seafood Rice. Both were really good and much more satisfying than our airport meal. After dinner we stopped for gelato and walked across the bridge before we turned around and headed back. We found a way back that included about a million stairs up but with the help of the GPS we found our AirBnB with no issues.

It has been an extremely long day of travel and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a good nights sleep to really start exploring the city tomorrow.

Stats of the Day:

Steps Monday 5/27/24: 4,595
Steps Tuesday 5/28/24: 14,888
Number of Hours Ahead Portugal to Wisconsin Is: 6
Amount of Sleep In The Last 36 Hours: Maybe a couple of hours