24 Hours

I have to say I love living where I do now. The beach is literally outside my door. What I don't love however is how much it adds to the commute, it's brutal. Take for instance my last time here and for simplicity sake I will keep all times in Central time USA.

10:20am leave parents house

11:15ish get dropped off at the aiport

1:15pm flight to Boston

4:20pm Land in Boston

5:20pm Board flight to Frankfurt

1:00am land in Frankfurt

2:15am Board flight to Lisbon

5:30am (11:30am PT time) Land in Lisbon

Up to this point I've been very happy with the trip, little downtime and everything was running like clockwork...leave it to Portugal to give me a reality check, and train strike. I get in and can actually make a 12:29 train! YAY! That means I get to my aparmtnet about 3:30pm Lisbon time...9:30am Central time. I will put both central and PT times now.

12:29pm PT (6:29 am Central) train is late

12:43 (6:43am Central) train arrives, mind you this is 6:43am my time and I'm pretty much done I want to get on the train in my nice seat with no one next to me hit the bathroom and sleep. So imagine my slow surprise when the train that shows up is a local train that says it's the IC train. Like someone trying to blink underwater it's taken me a few minutes to realize what is happening. This IS my train. Now these types of trains are great if you're going from Lisbon to Cascais, not from Lisbon to Coimbra, and certainly not on no sleep with my roller bag and backpack. As I sit there blinking trying to comprehend what I am seeing everyone rushes on (after all the flashing sign on the train does say it is the IC) but from what I can see there is no where left to sit and honestly I'm not getting on it. Having to stand or at best sit on the stairs? For 3-4 hours is more than I can deal with, so I wave goodbye to the train and try and regroup.

First things first, thankfully due to the fact that I booked it with my rail pass I'm not out any money its a flat fee for the month for this particular train. So silver lining and all. I already know hotels are wildly expensive otherwise I would have stayed in Lisbon for the night. I hop on my phone and find they are supposed to be running the "high speed" train in about an hour. I quickly book one of the last 3 seats on the train and decide what to do with my new founded down time. I decide to head to where the train originates, only one stop from where I currently was waiting.

I did this for a few reasons. First if its going to be some frankentrain again I'll know in enough time to cancel and get my money back (this was not the type of train I could use my flat fee card on). Second I was extremely familiar with the train station it was originating from as it was close to where we used to live in Lisbon. We were there all the time, and they had a Pingo Doce (grocery store) in the train station so I could pick up a few staples since I knew I would be very dead by the time I made it to the apartment.

To my happy surprise when I arrived at the station the train was originating from it was indeed going to be the train it was supposed to be. I ran through the grocery store grabbed a few things and wandered to the train. I boarded about 15min early and settled in.

8:09am (2:09pm PT time) Train departs!

9:45 (3:45pm PT time) Train arrives at the station.

I now have a choice. I can uber from this station straight to my apartment it's 45 min and about $40. OR I can wait for the local train which says it's coming but at this point I'm slightly skeptical if it will or not. I say "f*ck it," managed to find an uber (not always an easy task for this route) and gratefully hop in the car.

10:40am (4:40pm PT time) Arrive at apartment.

Almost exactly 24 hours after I left my parents house did I make to my apartment, 24 hours and 20 min to be exact. Honestly its brutal and even with the train snafu I still didn't lose too much time but to think if I had kept my place in Lisbon I would have been done at 11:30am PT time kind of makes me want to cry.

While I don't know what the future will bring, if we ever buy I don't know that it will be in this town, most likely somewhere closer to an aiport (given I did two roundtrips to the US and back in April). Until that time though I'll enjoy the great restaurants and the view!