We’ve been counting down the days to this trip for more than 100 days. Part of that long anticipation comes from a mix of work having been an unrelenting rollercoaster of stress since we came back from our last vacation and being ready to explore a country neither of us has ever visited. Either way, we finished packing our backpacks this morning and followed our feet out the door and to the airport.
Getting to Porto from Quebec City makes for shorter flights than usual. There’s the unavoidable flight in the wrong direction to Montreal of course, the length of that flight not changing since they’ve replaced the reliable Dash-8 with larger body jets. Heading to the westernmost country on the Iberian peninsula, it being already pretty much the westernmost portion of Europe, shortens the distance to travel from Canada significantly. Instead of the usual seven hours or more we’re used to when heading to Italy , it’s a smidge over six hours. With the airline insisting on feeding us on both ends of the trip, sleeping opportunities are limited.
Our flight to Porto was initially scheduled to leave Montreal at 19:45, landing us in Porto at 7:00. The weather being clear and with both cities enjoying sunny and warm days, we felt confident we would make it on time. Sadly, the aircraft shell game had other plans. Our first sign of incoming delay was when the original aircraft assigned to our flight was switched. Instead of using a plane flying in from Lyon that would land in Montreal almost four hours before our scheduled departure, we were assigned a flight coming from Seoul, landing essentially an hour before our departure time. One hour to deplane, clean and board a Boeing 787 is a tall ask, especially with long haul flights serving multiple meals. Some delays were to be expected. We won an extra 30 minutes delay. Not too bad we thought. What we didn’t know and would only learn after spending another 45 minutes at the gate, is that someone on the ground crew could not open one of the latched panels on the aircraft and had to use a screw driver to pry it open. It was fine for opening it but now the panel would not close. As optimistic as an airline can be, they even started pre-boarding while the panel would not close and had, a couple of minutes later, to deplane the people until the issue could be resolved. Another 45 minutes later, we learned that they could not fix it and they will need to replace our aircraft. Departure was first scheduled for 1:00 with expected arrival at noon; a full five hours later than expected, then got pushed back by another hour to 2:00, which, if you adjust for timezone, was our original landing time in Porto…
The third aircraft assigned to our route hasn’t flown since arriving from São Paulo last Wednesday morning. We’re unsure if it’s a good or bad sign. On one hand if another screwdriver enthusiast pried open something that should not be pried open they had two days to fix it. On the other hand, aircrafts on the ground don’t make money for airlines and airlines do like their their revenue generating assets to… well… generate revenues. If they’ve kept it on the ground for two days one has to wonder what’s wrong with the thing.
In the end, we’re on vacation, we’ve gorged on food in the lounge and passed the time with our downloaded TV shows and audioboks. Really the only annoying part of that whole thing is missing out on the brunch we had reserved a little past noon the day of our arrival. Unlike the army, we do not travel on our stomach, but for our stomach: all that culture and hiking is just stuff to keep us busy between meals. Missing one is a blow, but again, it’s vacation and we’ll get 29 more opportunities to make up for it.
In a physics-defying move, or, in an attempt to avoid the humiliation of having the airplane depart at its original arrival time, the airline moved our departure time ahead of its 2:00 departure time and announced an “early” departure of 1:30. The agent announcing the arrival of the plane and upcoming boarding time almost received a standing ovation.
The flight was uneventful and delivered the expected short sleep duration. In the end we landed in Porto at 12:12, happy to be there and ready to start our adventure, the first part being getting through customs. For the past months Portugal has been at the forefront of the European Entry System (ESS) launch. A new entry visa process that requires biometric to be captured and a questionnaire to be filled. Reports we’ve been seeing on social media was that it caused hour long entry and exit lines to get through customs. Our experience ended up being a mixed one. We got to the kiosk in no time but queued for about 40 minutes to the “manual” (as opposed to automated) kiosk. At the end of the queue was a kiosk queue coordinator that decided the two people wearing backpack and right next two oneanother were not a couple and were separated and directed to wait at different custom agent kiosk. A small wait and the two usual customs questions later, we were allowed into the country.
We had no issue finding the metro and doing the ticket kiosk dance; we were only taken aback by the lack of contactless payment at the kiosk. We had to insert our credit card and provide our pin for two zone 4 tickets each. We’ll be picking up the rental car from the airport when we head north. The metro ride itself was swift, efficient and, a little surprisingly considering one expects a metro to be underground, entirely above ground.
A little after 14:00 we’ve made it to our Airbnb, showered and can officially call an end to day one of our vacations. Not on the day or at a time we were planning, nevertheless, we’re ready to start our second (half) day.
