PORTUGAL, LISBON: GETTING THERE IN THE TIME OF COVID

 June 21-22, 2022

This post probably has a bunch of information in it that no one but Bob and I care about, but since this blog functions as our trip journal, I want to put it down here anyway. Feel free to scan or skip.

Three weeks before we were scheduled to leave for Portugal, when we were babysitting our granddaughters for a week while our daughter and son-in-law were on a getaway to Mexico, Bob started feeling ill. He test positive for Covid on the evening of May 30th. I took him to the Urgent Care the following morning. They did another test, also positive, and prescribed Paxlovid, an antiviral developed to treat high-risk Covid patients. He went into quarantine in our daughter's basement.

Two days later I woke up sick, tested negative, but went to Urgent Care, where I tested positive. Later in the day our oldest granddaughter also tested positive at home. It was clear we needed to go home before we infected everyone. Our daughter and SIL canceled the remainder of their trip and booked a flight home. Feeling that it wasn't right to expose a plane full of people to Covid, we rented a car and drove the 650 miles home.

After three days on Paxlovid, Bob tested negative (at home) for Covid on June 4. It was ten days before I tested negative on June 11. However, Bob had a rebound on June 10, something that occasionally happens with Paxlovid. The rebound commonly lasts three days, but on June 20, the day before our trip, Bob still hadn't had an official negative test, which was required for entry into Portugal. (As far as we could tell, Portugal was one of the last EU countries to require that, and it was on every site we looked at. I see that the requirement was officially lifted on July 1.) It was 21 days since Bob's original positive test. He hadn't had any symptoms for days, so a friend who is a Physician's  Assistant wrote a letter for him that cleared him for travel, but we were still nervous about Portugal's requirements.  We weren't sure if the letter would be accepted as it wasn't on an EU form, which seemed to be required, but visitors from outside the EU can't use the EU forms. So complicated. 

I had gotten my "official" clearance from a company called "E-Med," which offers at-home Covid tests proctored online and which emails users an official certificate if they test negative that can be used as proof for travel.  (Our son-in-law, who travels a lot, told us about it.)  Bob decided to try that. He cleaned out his nose as best he could with saline solution and tried not to be too aggressive swabbing. His efforts were accepted by the online proctor, his test came back negative, and we both had the appropriate clearances to cover any possibility. Whew.

The next morning we left the house at 8:15 AM, arriving at Quik Park near LAX at 10:15 AM. We had been hearing news reports of 11,000 cancelled or delayed flights in the United States and horrible problems at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, our connecting city, so we allowed ourselves extra time. We also did not check any bags because of reports of massive numbers of lost luggage. We were at our gate just after 10:30 for a 2:00 flight, so we ate an early lunch and waited.

Our flight took off a little late, but nothing to be too alarmed by. We made up the time in the air. The flight was 9 hours and 15 minutes.  I was wound up and couldn't sleep and watched three movies en route: Marry Me with Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson (very stupid), the 2022 version of West Side Story (much better), and a third movie that I already can't identify.

We had a 3.5 hour layover in Amsterdam, which we were happy about because of what we'd heard about the airport during the previous week. We showed our passports on the way in, but we were not asked a single question about Covid and did not have to show our vaccination card. We weren't really expecting that in the Netherlands, so it was no surprise. 

We enjoyed strolling around the airport and window shopping. Schiphol Airport is obsessed with tulips, the national flower of the Netherlands. I saw tulip purses, tulip bouquets (both real and not), tulip key chains, bulbs for planting, a tulip-embossed cow, tulip chocolates--name it, they have it in tulips.

I bought a very large bar of Tony's Chocolonely chocolate, which is one of the earliest chocolate companies to produce "slave-free," fair-trade chocolate. See more about their mission here.

Of course we had to peer into the McDonald's to see if there was anything distinctly Dutch on the menu.  It's harder to tell these days with their electronic order boards, but we couldn't see anything we weren't used to seeing.

We boarded our second flight to Lisbon and took off more or less on time. That flight was 2.5 hours long, and before we landed, they announced that we should have our Covid papers ready.  

Mural in the Lisbon Airport

We walked off the plane with our carry-on luggage and right out of the airport--no passport control, no Covid paper check, nada. There was not even passport control, although I guess since we had come from another EU country, that wasn't required. We saw a Covid station, but no one was manning it. It was as if we had just flown from one state to another in the US. All that stress for nothing!  However, on our way to the metro, we noticed a Covid testing station, and our guide the next day told us that the previous week she had worked with a tourist who had been detained six hours because he didn't have the proper Covid paperwork. I think we just lucked out. Maybe the Covid person had Covid???

We figured out how to take the metro, which had a convenient airport station, to a stop just a couple of blocks from our hotel. It was €1.45 rather than what I had read could be as high as €45 for a cab, depending on time of day.  (The exchange rate was $1.05 for €1--the best we've ever seen it--so it was pretty much an even dollar/euro exchange.)

Our hotel was a block from Restauradores Square, which commemorates the end of the Iberian Union and the restoration of the Portuguese crown in 1668 after 60 years of shared governance with Spain.

On one corner of the square behind the monolith is Eden Cinema, an art deco building built in 1929 that is now a hotel.

Foz Palace, which borders one side of the square, was designed in the 18th century and completed in the 19th century, was originally the home of a count. It was purchased by the Marquis of Foz in 1889 and turned into an extravagant showpiece, complete with a Hall of Mirrors inspired by Versailles. These days it is used as an event hall and is generally not open to the public.

Luckily, we had an important landmark a block from out hotel:

We had booked a room in the Hotel Residencial Florescente, a lovely boutique hotel on a restaurant-lined, pedestrian-only street. 

Our room was small but well-designed and beautifully decorated. Over the bed was a beautiful glass fixture that looked like a skylight

The shower wall was covered in azulejos, the traditional and iconic blue tiles of Portugal. A small "office" with a desk, a fridge, and a closet was separate from the bedroom.

Lisbon was making a good first impression. We dropped off our bags at the hotel and got ready to begin our adventure.