The Log Dog Blog: Portugal 2021: Day 1

We left our house yesterday morning at 6:30 am and arrived at our hotel today at 5:30 pm local time. That is 30 hours from start to finish and it was not the greatest day of travel we've ever had!

How this trip even came to be was because of a random email about flight sales sometime back in March. I looked at the destinations and dates simply out of curiosity, because it is not often that we can take advantage of travel sales because of my restrictive schedule at work. However, not only was one of the destinations a place we'd actually been wanting to visit (often times the sales are to places I have no interest in going to), but the flights were for late fall and I could actually make the dates work if I used two personal days on November 22 and 23.

But wait, yesterday was November 19, you say? That's right, we had to add on an additional personal day because Delta eventually canceled our original flight so that it was no longer direct and that it was leaving Friday night instead of Saturday. Luckily, due to the pandemic, I did carry over two personal days from last year, so I had that extra one available.

The amount of paperwork involved with this trip was no joke. Of course we had to get a Covid test before we were able to travel, but in addition to that, France required a Covid form/attestation and Portugal required a passenger locator form to track our travels.

We first drove to New York because the flight was out of JFK, and on the way, we stopped to have lunch with my YaYa in NJ. My dad happened to be visiting B2 and S2 in NY, so they drove down and we all met for lunch together, which was wonderful. B2 and S2 brought their two dogs for the ride, so I was able to see my beloved nephew Max; you may recall that he and Ginny had a very special bond and he is so incredibly important to me, so it filled my heart with a lot of happiness to see him.

In the afternoon, we drove the rest of the way to JFK, and that's really where the travel trouble began, because the traffic to get there was atrocious and it took so much longer than we'd anticipated. Luckily our flight wasn't until 9:00 pm, so we made it there in plenty of time, but it was still stressful to have the GPS direct us through neighborhood street after neighborhood street to try and avoid crashes and traffic backups.

We parked in long-term parking and took the AirTrain to the terminal - JFK's system is so fantastic and easy to navigate! Once we got to the terminal, it was a bit of a nightmare because there were so many needless airline employees directing people this way and that, causing confusion for everyone. There was absolutely no reason for them to be there. Everything is well marked and there are signs everywhere and when people did stop to ask them questions, they were of no help whatsoever. All they did was annoy us and everyone else trying to check in for their flight! (In case you're wondering, we couldn't check in on line ahead of time because of all the required paperwork we had to show.)

We had TSA-precheck and unlike some of the recent airports we've been to (I'm looking at you, DCA) the precheck line was actually open, so that was a pretty smooth process. We grabbed a drink and a bite to eat and then went to the gate; all was well until it was time to board. They called the first group (presumably first class, but I wasn't really listening) and once they were on board, they called for the next boarding group, which was the first of the "main cabin" passengers. It seemed like all hell broke loose because the next thing we knew, the gate agent was shouting at everyone to form a line or no one would be boarding. She shouted this over and over and over again and it was clear no one was listening. Then the passengers started to get annoyed and everything came to a standstill while far too many people stood in line near the boarding area (we were still seated at this point because we weren't in the particular boarding group).

Why on earth can't airlines figure out efficient and straightforward boarding procedures? It's not that difficult! Southwest has been boarding its flights in a timely, peaceful, and orderly fashion for at least 25 years that I can personally attest to! Delta made such a huge mess of things last night and it took forever for us to finally get on the plane. Why were there SO many people in that one boarding group?!? Norwegian does the same thing and it's complete stupidity that creates unnecessary crowds, frustration, and slowdowns. And frankly, the Delta employees weren't nice about it, even though they're the ones who created the chaos with their garbage procedures in the first place!

The plane was a 2-4-2 configuration, so we had two seats to ourselves, which is absolutely the most ideal situation for us! The flight itself was fine, but the crew was nowhere near up to snuff compared with other Delta crews we've had in the past and we were glad to finally get off the plane when it landed in Paris after seven hours.

Yep, Paris. We were connecting to Lisbon through CDG and we had an almost three-hour window to make our connection, so we thought we that we were in great shape to make the connecting flight. If this were a TV show, this is where the narrator would say in an ominous voice, "THEY WEREN'T."

We had to go through security and passport control and they hardly had any aisles open, resulting in hundreds - and I do mean HUNDREDS, although it was probably pretty close to a thousand by my estimate - of passengers just standing in a never-ending queue, moving along at a glacial pace. People all around us missed their connections and the entire process was a complete failure. Hello! This is one of the world's most major international airports, not some rinky-dink regional place that has one flight a day! Every 15-20 minutes, they would unexpectedly close an aisle, causing people to scramble to fit into a different already-existing line, or worse, they'd unexpectedly open an aisle and almost cause a stampede. It was hot, people's nerves were frayed, and the employees were completely awful.

Prior to this stopover, we've visited Paris five times and I've gotten asked countless times whether the people in France were rude. I've always answered no because we've had great experiences there - in hotels, museums, cafes, etc. - we never really encountered anyone who was even close to the stories you hear about how unfriendly the people there are.

Well let me tell you that when it comes to each and every airport employee we encountered today, the nasty stereotypes were pretty spot on. These people were so rude to passengers, not caring if flights were missed, not answering questions, incessantly shouting at passengers...it was truly despicable "customer service." If I hadn't been to France multiple times before, I might have assumed all French folks acted this way - but I also know how generally terrible TSA employees are in America, so I've come to expect the worst encounters imaginable whenever we travel.

Side note: I have to state that the exception to this is Detroit, which honestly has the greatest TSA agents in the country - we've always had exceptionally great experiences whenever we've flown there over the years! And I felt so validated because I wrote about this on my IG story today and I got a ton of messages backing me up on how great Detroit is! Seriously! Other travelers have noticed it as well!

When we finally got through passport control - and thanks to Delta changing the original flight, my passport stamp is from France, not Portugal, which annoys me - our plane should have been boarding for 20 minutes, leaving us with ten minutes before they closed the doors. We ran through the airport to get to the gate, only to find that the universe was smiling down on us and there had been a delay, so we actually ended up having about 15 minutes to spare (this info had not been updated on any screens, so it was a pleasant surprise after all that running).

But it should tell you how poorly things were being run when we went from almost three hours of time to only making our connection because of a fortunate delay. Ridiculous.

We flew from Paris to Lisbon on Air France and there's nothing really to report from that flight, which is a good thing! We landed in Lisbon and took the metro from the airport to our hotel, which was very easy to do; the only issue was when we got off the metro, it was pouring rain. So even though it was less than a block away from the metro station, we arrived at the hotel soaking wet. Seemed like a fitting end to a crazy thirty hours!

Despite all of that craziness, we are so happy to be here and we are resting for a while before venturing out to find some dinner. The hotel is beautiful and it's going to be amazing to spend a week here!