Which way is the beach?

The next morning, I was a little bit concerned about arriving at the airport on time, even though we were scheduled to leave at 7pm. The thing was that we had not had very good luck going anywhere in Lisbon, so I had a feeling that we should be Barcelona-early to catch our flight.

Still, we had planned a trip out to Cascais to see the beach, which we were told was only 35 minutes by tram. Our red-haired hostess said that we should stop in Estoril and walk to Cascais because it is very beautiful by the coast. Accordingly, we got off too early - just after Belem - and ended up nowhere. We attempted to walk to Cascais, but it was completely useless. The closer we got, the farther we seemed. We had to walk alongside a highway, which did not encourage me. In a horrible mood, concerned about timing, and just annoyed at Lisbon in general, we walked the opposite direction, back to the tram station.

Ross had a crazy idea that we should illegally cross a highway and jump a fence to get to the beach. Under the pedestrian bridge we went and then back up. Running across highway. Jumping fence. Then there was a walkway, lined with swaying palm trees. It was sunny and the beach was warm. People were sunning themselves in the rather dirty sand. Barcelona's beaches were a bit cleaner but more crowded. Here, clams covered every rock surface and people stayed out of the ocean, generally. We lay in the sun long enough for me to burn my hip bones - yes. I burned my hips. Slowly, we walked out to the ocean, two by two, and dipped our feet in the Atlantic. It was cold.

We left as the day got cloudy and windy. It was 12:15 and I thought we should get back. I wasn't sure if we'd have time to stop in Belem, so we did not. We instead took the longer than 35 minute tram ride back to our hostel and just filled our afternoon with last minute shopping. When it was time to go, we packed and headed to the stop where our Aerobus had dropped us off, only to see one drive past us. We waited FOREVER for the next one to come and the driver opened the door. Matt tried to board and the operator drily informed him that this was the stop going from the airport and that we would need to go to the stop a few stops over. Of course.

It was now 4:30pm and we had already waited for over an hour. We walked the streets over to find people sitting on their suitcases with sunburnt faces. Encouraging. We waited. And waited. AND WAITED. Finally, it came. Full of people and likely late. We boarded the bus and left, anxious because check-in was at 5pm and we were already bridging on late. At the airport, we got off the bus and walked into the open terminal. We checked the reservation and it said Terminal 2B, so we looked for signs pointing to Terminal 2. Under our feet, a highlited pathway guided us back out the doors of the terminal and to ... our bus? Matt asked the bus driver where Terminal 2 was and he said that we would need to take a bus there. Of course.

So we boarded our bus again and it drove us the distance to Terminal 2, which was much smaller. Inside Terminal 2, we could not find a single Easyjet kiosk, except for one headed for Madrid and Mallorca. We walked back outside, terribly lost and afraid we would miss our flight because it was bridging on 6pm now. I asked one of the valets who looked relaxed where we could find this terminal and pointed to our reservation.

"Oh. That is in terminal 1." What?! "Terminal 2B is in Terminal 1."

Great! So we waited for the bus and went back to Terminal 1, rushing to get to our gate, which was already backed up with French speakers carrying far too much luggage. A man in uniform came up behind the kiosks and promptly switched the Easyjet sign for a Portaway sign, effectively switching our line destined for Paris with the next line, destined for London. We all looked at each other and ran to switch spots. It was chaos. By 7:15pm, we were waiting in the security pool, where about 20 gates were being security checked all together. The woman two spaces in front of me was forced out of line, partially stripped and searched. The woman directly in front of me was also stripped and searched. "Take off your boots," said the security guard. She just stared blankly back. "I said take off your boots!" he clipped. He turned to her luggage, which included a guitar case. "What's in here?" She continued to look at him with the same emotionless stare. "Go over there" and he grabbed her arm roughly to toss her over to someone who searched her. He took my passport, glanced at my face, and waved me through. I passed without trouble. The woman behind me was searched and protested when she saw me traipse off without assault.

"Yes, yes. Go over there." said the guard, looking past her and passing her to another officer. I stood on the steps and watched as Matt got the portable metal detector swiped over him over and over. He was always getting stopped. Eventually, we went up to our gate and stopped for food. Lisbon's MacDonald's had a sandwich called the Chicken Mystic. Curious more than hungry, I bought the meal and found that the Chicken Mystic tasted a lot like fish and the mayo was a lot like paprika. The Lisboas are famous for their sweet tooth and I managed to get a bag of caramels and chocolates at a sweet-smelling candy shop before we attempted to board. The Portugese, however, move at a pace of which even the Spanish would be embarrassed. First, they attempted to separate the A boarders from the B boarders, which is there inefficient system of priority boarding. Families and pregnant women board first, followed by first check-in, first seat priority. Since we had taken a bus from terminal 1 to terminal 2 and back again, we were B-grade boarders. Maybe people who don't get motion sick do not understand this, but the key to avoiding vomiting all over your neighbor is sitting on the aisle in the middle of the plane, where rolling action has the least impact. I took physics. And you can ask Michael Davis what it's like to have me vomit all over your lap, thanks. Once that attempt at organization failed miserably, they proceeded just to bar everybody from boarding. It was already take-off time and we could see our plane was not even on the tarmac yet. 10 minutes late, we boarded and our pilot carefully said that we were right on time since the conditions favored an early landing. Our pilot was rather good at speaking Spanish and Portugese but rather bad at speaking French, which was unfortunate for all of the Parisians heading home.

The flight back was uneventful, except for the ladies who were speaking French in hushed tones behind us. Once over Paris, the lady behind Matt asked if he could please turn down his air-conditioning because it was rather cold and blowing right into her. He obliged politely and shrugged. "Canadians, " he said, grinning and shaking his head. Yep. We're cold and frigid alright.

Down in Paris, the baggage pickup went slowly around in circles. I watched as a group from Canada (they had the flag sewn onto their backpacks) contemplated taking a taxi into the city. The Metro was right there, after all. But they had no idea where they were, really. Matt and I picked up his very smelly bag and started the long trek all the way across the massive Charles de Gaulle airport and down into the Metro station. Elise was correct in saying how expensive it truly was to get in and out of Paris. We bought our ticket in for 8,40 euros and 10 Metro tickets for the next two days. Matt's credit card would not work in the electronic kiosks so we used mine. Once inside the gates of the Metro, we had to decide which train would take us into Paris. Luckily, we picked the correct one.

12:30am in the Parisian Metro could have been Edmonton's LRT at the same hour. It was virtually deserted, except for the bearded homeless man who was giving directions to a stop for a woman who spoke much better French than I did. We attempted to look for Jules Joffrin, which was not on the old school map framed inside the Metro car. Finally, I managed to fish an old map out of my backpack and we were thrilled to discover it was on our good ol' line, number 12. We decided to get off at Gare du Nord and take the lines up to Jules Joffrin from there, but as I was about to fall asleep on my bag, we stopped outside the stadium. Here, what looked to be hundreds of people were being held back by police with batons. Once the Metro cars had come to a complete stop, they removed their hold on the crowd and people began to flood onto the platform.

"Move your stuff, move your stuff!" I said to Matt, who was also falling asleep. Groggily, he pulled his stinky duffel bag onto his lap. Then he saw the crowds and moved faster. We squished ourselves into the windows of the train just as hordes of sweaty, happy, Depeche Mode fans flooded the train, carrying posters and wearing t-shirts. My God. The Edmonton LRT would be lucky to get this kind of traffic at any time of day!

Once off at Gare du Nord, we took the appropriate lines and made it to Jules Joffrin where we had initial troubles orienting ourselves. A man with a British accent looked amused and offered to help us. He used the scrolling maps on the street to show us where we were and what direction we needed to head to get to Rue Ramey. We thanked him and he continued happily into the French night. Up the hill and over to the left, we found our hostel which was relatively clean. The man at reception gave us a key and told us there was only one key per room. We were on the sixth floor. Sorry - no lift. Good luck.

It would have been okay if not every building in Europe named their ground floor 0. Damn. After a long, tiring walk up the winding staircase to the sixth floor, we found our room hot and without showers on the floor. There was a WC and a sink in the room. I threw on my pyjamas, washed and brushed, then fell into bed just as Matt mistakenly locked our door. What North Americans we are.

Accordingly, at 2am, there was a knock at the door that almost woke me but could not break my limbs free from sleep. There was another quick rap, this time more insistent. Of course, Matt just turned over and ignored it. Somewhere, in the depths of my sleepy brain, I knew it was our roommates. So I willed myself awake and up and opened the door for them. I had seen them before - they were hippies! They didn't smell so good, but I was too tired to care. I apologized for locking them out then went to bed. Sleep never felt so good as that night, which seemed longer than any night we had spent in any city.