We arrived in Portugal yesterday AM after an overnight flight.

I think it is fair enough to totally write off the first day of a trip to Europe because it seems that there is always an over night flight flying east. So glad we have 3 days prior to starting our Portugal camino.

I am going to tell about our first 2 issues coming into the country, only as a means of alerting others, so as not to make the same mistakes as us.

First of all, totally exhausted we ended up at customs with several very large flights arriving at the same time and two very large areas of customs. We started into one area and the lady told us Canada, US Europe passports etc. So we got into this huge lineup, it said electronic passports. We were pretty sure that we had “electronic” passports since we have the new Canadian passports which include a large plastic page that seems pretty fool proof. Since it seems like a large credit card page we thought YES these will be the ultimate in “electronic”. We after a very long line of the back and forth sort where you face the same people again and again as you work your way to the front. As we were going through the line, I commented to Ken, that I wondered what was the difference between the two areas of lineup….. We got to the front of the line and this lady noticed our “NEW” “Canadian” passports .. and she said OH no, these machines do not handle the new Canadian passports. Then she announced to all of the other people in line this little “detail” about the new Canadian passports, and we were directed to area 5, which was the “traditional” customs area where you walk up to a guy and he asks you questions. This lineup was even longer. I told myself…. relax, you KNEW that the first day was a write off. 🤨

The next “event” I am not including as a negative against Portugal, but as a warning that might prevent anyone else from …. being as dumb as we were. As usual we got our first scam out of the way to begin with early. I guess being up all night, as well as being a little overwhelmed with a totally foreign language, we were ideal subjects. The first question the guy in the airport asked was “first time to Portugal?” which I think was important …. We were looking for the transit to get to the very large BUS station in Lisbon, which was 3 KM from airport. Under usual circumstances, we likely would have just walked, given that we ARE here for a Camino hike. When the guy approached us saying Taxi? We sort of turned him down but when ken asked him how much to get to BUS station he said it was under 10 Euros. I guess we thought, what the heck, let’s indulge ourselves. We SHOULD have been alerted when we got outside and there were lots of taxis waiting, but he had obviously contacted his taxi guy. I guess we SHOULD have known at this point that something was up. To begin with we had thought he WAS the taxi driver. It was all downhill from there. The Taxi finally pulled up and the guy helped us into the taxi. I was following the direction we were going on my phone, and we seemed to be going in the opposite direction, and I commented. Although Ken was attempting to talk to him in his rudimentary Portugese, he clearly only seemed to know a few words of English. We finally got to the BUS station and he turned to give us the fee amount, and we had our 10 Euro prepared, but he used his phone to show us that the fee was 246 Euro. We very quickly woke up and told him in so many many words…. words apparently wasted on him because our words were all in English. Ken was a bit confused as to whether it was pounds, or Euros…. I quickly calculated that this was about 450 dollars Canadian. It WAS 3 KM, and our luggage was in the trunk… which I usually never do. OMG!! Ken made it clear that we only had about 15 euros and 15 pounds sterling. The guy started saying that he was going to take us back to airport and contact the police. We asked if we could talk to his “boss” the guy that we had originally been lured into this “taxi”. He contacted this guy on the phone and suddenly the guy from the airport who spoke perfect English did not understand any English…🤨🤨

I guess I figured that this guy was not going to do us any harm, but I was most concerned about our luggage in the trunk, so I asked him to open trunk, ……. and he did. We gave him all the cash we had, which was about 15 euros and 15 pounds. Got out luggage and left. My theory was that this guy thought we were dumber than we actually were, which was pretty dumb already. He gathered that we would be paying with credit cards AND that we were not familiar with how the pricing was written out. It can be kind of confusing between commas and periods.

I guess our lesson which we should have known is not to respond to anything the guys lurking, and coming up to you in the airport, are selling.

We got to the bus station and caught the bus from Lisbon to Porto, which I realized later was a wee bit aggressive for the first day. We arrived in Porto about 5 KM from our hotel and it was absolutely pouring rain. Long story shortened, we caught the metro to the area near the hotel, walked 1KM in pouring rain to get to a lovely hotel.

Pretty darned wet….. For a variety of reasons we took very few pictures on our first day and I guess I wish Ken had not take THIS ONE.

We had a lovely dinner of Cod and potatoes, and although we have looked forward to some great local Port, now that we are in Porto, we decided to wait another day until we have had maybe 12 hours more sleep.

Today bright and perky, and ready to face the day, and buy umbrellas. I must say I have never seen so many umbrellas in my life.

Janet and Ken, missing our dog Tucker…..