We are off to a flying start to our camino. This is my third start of a camino. The first was the most exciting partly because of the unknowns and also because we had never done anything remotely like this both in terms of levels of physical exertion and adventure. Looking back, we are happy we started doing it when we were younger. However there is always excitement going on a Camino.
Of course we need a flying start to get to Lisbon first. For the first time over the last little while, flight was right on time and we arrived a bit early. All good. The first delay, if you want to call it that, is the lineup to go through immigration. With my brother not a Canadian and not qualified to go to the electronic passport line, we went with him to the "All passports" line with a serious number of zigzags. Somehow despite the long line, it felt completely organized with the line always moving along. All told, it took 45 minutes but it all seemed acceptable. Perhaps if I was rushing to a connection, I would feel differently.
The plan was to get a sim card from Vodafone before leaving the airport. That should have been quite doable given the time but the fact that I hate lineups. The first kiosk we saw was actually in the baggage claim area. There was a lineup and only one person serving customers so I held out for the one in the terminal. No luck. The lineup was longer with two people serving. So we skipped it and went straight to the Metro station. I was surprised to see another lineup for the metro tickets but there is no other option for this one. Fortunately this also seemed organized.
We got to the train station with time to spare. We saw a Lyca Mobile sales point but I was holding out for Vodafone simply because I have researched it.
The train was right on time leaving the station for Porto but somehow it managed to get into a 15 min delay. That actually could have been critical because we were told by the albergue that they would hold our reservation until 6 pm and we were cutting it close. Somehow we wasted the most time finding the metro station from the train station and vice versa despite they are supposedly at the same place. Finally we made it with 10 min to spare and the hospitaleros are super nice and I doubt that they would kick us off even if we happened to be late
All in all, we did alright and are very happy to be here. Looking forward to our start tomorrow.
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| Courtyard |
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