Meeting in Portugal

Leaving Spain

I walked to Atocha station a little before 0700 only to miss the bus to Madrid airport by seconds.  That was the bus that I hadn’t counted on taking but it was running late.  It was a short wait till the bus I had planned on taking at 0720.  The good thing was that I was there first and boarded early before it filled up.

Today I have a flight from Madrid to Porto departing at 1025 today, meeting Kim and Greg who arrives about 3h40 after me.  The idea was that I’d wait for them upon arrival in Porto and we’d go to the accommodation together.  But with their flight delayed (known in advance) around an 1h, it made sense for me to wait in the accommodation.

Queueing up to board the flight, I was offered access to the priority lane and my cabin bag was tagged as approved.  I read the fine print and it said approved for under-seat.  Even though it was a short flight, it would take up most of my legroom so I removed the tag as soon as I was out of sight from the staff on the airbridge and put it in the locker.

I was in the last row of the Embraer 195 in a non-recline seat.  TAP Air Portugal wanted to charge for me to reselect on this flight (but not the second one a few days later).  The seat was very wide though with plenty of legroom.  The 1h20 scheduled flight turned out to be only 45 mins in the air.

In Porto

We had a 35 min delay due to air traffic and a further 35 min threatened which didn’t eventuate.  Despite that we were only a tad late arriving in a misty Porto around 1100 (one hour time difference).  There had been fog in the morning which caused some disruption, including to Kim’s and Greg’s outbound aircraft.

Due to some confusing signposting, I couldn’t find the access to the metro.  I think it required going downstairs to use an underpass to the station across the pick-up and drop-off area.  But with that confusing delay, I saw the train pull away and the next was some 20 minutes later.  I was now in front of the bus stop and the bus wasn’t far away.  It made sense for me to take the bus instead.

That dropped me in town at Clerigos Tower some 45 minutes later where I walked downhill to Ribeira where we had an apartment booked for 3 nights.  Getting there around 1300, I had about 4h till Kim and Greg would show up.

I went out for a wander and to get some groceries of fruit, milk and bread.  Strangely I couldn’t find full cream milk in two supermarkets.  Only semi-skimmed 1.5% and skimmed 0.1%!  It was actually harder than just looking as the colour-coding and words were unfamiliar and my eyes couldn’t handle reading the percentage fat fine print.  I do prefer full cream in my hot drinks.

Once Kim and Greg had arrived and rested, we went out for a walk along the Ribeira waterfront and across the Luis I Bridge to the other side.  The light was all wrong for taking pictures of Ribeira  but it was still very beautiful for us to absorb the scenery.

Portugal seems more expensive than Spain.  Items at the supermarket were about 30% more than in Spain.  Eating out was around EUR15 for a main whereas I’d get a set meal with wine and bread for EUR10-15.  Despite that, we found cheaper dinner options away from the waterfront and feasted away on some simple but delicious traditional cuisine.  We ended the day with a walk along the waterfront by night.

Portuguese and Portuñol 

On my first day back in Portugal after a long stay in Spain, I was afraid to let Spanish come out of my mouth as it may cause offence.  In the written form, I can understand a bit of Portuguese but in the spoken form, it is so so so different.  It sounds nearly Russian-like with a bit of “zzhhh” sound and is more flowing compared to the clear syllables in Spanish.  Strangely, I did hear a lot of people saying “Hola” and “Gracias” but I couldn’t work out if they were speaking to Spanish customers.  And when dealing with people who spoke no English (quite rare in Porto), I seemed to get away responding to their Portuguese in Spanish!  After all there is a “language” called Portuñol which is a simplified mix of the two languages to help them communicate with each other.