An Airport Fiasco

Okay... so I never want to go through what I went through on my trip here to Spain. Each pitstop had it's own problems and each were things that people with would never happen to them when flying.

First flight - RDU to Newark, NJ - went great. Mike and I were able to sit next to each other and got to take a little nap... it was glorious. But when we got to Newark I had to go to the TAP Portugal ticket counter because I needed my next two boarding passes. I get to the counter and the gentleman looks at my info and says, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to fix your passport information. The people in Raleigh entered it in wrong." Awesome. Something that should've lasted ten minutes tops, lasted almost a half hour. But in the meantime Mike found Kelly and Sindy, two girls on our trip. After getting my passport info right, I got my two boarding passes and we all went to wait for our flight to Portugal.

Our flight to Lisbon was delayed 2 1/2 hours. :/ But Blair caught up to us after her flight was delayed in Charlotte.

Second flight - NJ to Lisbon, Portugal - long. Flight time 6 hours - real time 12 hours. We got served two meals and I actually got to watch Invictus with Matt Damon which was so so so good!! Amazing movie; totally recommended.

And now the drama begins. First of all, it was confusing in Lisbon because most everything was in PORTUGUESE. How could that be a problem, you ask? Well, when you don't speak it and hardly anything is in English, you HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO GO NEXT. So the five of us now, Mike, Kelly, Sindy, Blair, and me, walked around to where we thought was the right counter to talk to someone because our fight to Sevilla left without us... then again, we were an hour late. First we're told that the next flight to Sevilla is at 11:10am... it was 10:55am. We could either miss it and try to check in our luggage again with a new company or leave it behind and take the flight.

We should've left our luggage.

We all walked (carrying all our luggage we had) back to the TAP Portugal counter to plead for another flight to Sevilla since we had to be at the Hotel Alcazar at 6:00pm that night. They told us the only one that was left for today (May 13th) would be at 6:25pm.

We took it. But now, we had to wait 7 hours till our plane came in. So, what to do? Wait. Eat...

We decided to check in again, but the man we needed wouldn't get there till 12:30pm. So we waited in a lobby near the counter and did crosswords, slept, and waited. Once our man got there, we gave him our passports. Simple task right. Not at all. Mike and Kelly's passports weren't checking out. So what to do. We all sat down on the ground in front of the counter and waited at least 30 minutes. I got yelled at by a Portuguese woman three times because she thought I was waiting in line and I had no idea what to say to her. After the passports finally checked out we could check our bags through security.

But we get to security and the lady guard decides she can't see everything that's in my bag. She emptied out the contents of my duffle and rescanned everything. I just love repacking things.

We got food and then the real wait began. 5 hours of sitting and waiting. But what did I do...



I slept. I was so tired. Waking up at 8:00am and getting little sleep for two days straight is something I should be used to, but this was a different tired. This was frustrated, confused and dazed tired.

But at 6:15pm we were finally boarding for Sevilla. We were ecstatic!!!



Needless to say this flight went off without a hitch. Remember... I said the flight. We get to Sevilla's airport, go to get our bags, and they aren't there. Somehow in our search to find a new flight earlier that morning, the bags ended up delayed. We have no idea where. But we didn't have them. We filed complaints and left. It was ridiculous. But all the airport drama was over. We simply had to wait now for our bags to show up or not. Our taxi driver to the Hotel Alcazar thought he was Mario Andretti, but we made it safely to the Hotel, just in time for dinner.

Dinner was great. But then again, I was starving, so cardboard would've tasted amazing. The best part though was my delayed realization that I was in Spain. I felt elated at once and had a new spring to my step.

Conclusion: when you fly, and something goes wrong... get food vouchers. Make foreign friends along the way (I met the sweetest old Italian men). And learn lots of languages. Or at least find someone who speaks English.

Pues, adios!! Por un otra vez,
Katelyn