Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Fuck you, United or how we almost didn't go to Portugal
Editors note: It was a long trip, so I'm going to break it up into several parts.
It was the end of a long journey. Anna and I were tired and stressed but we had finally made it — 20 feet to the check-in counter. The people in front of us had been waiting in the line for two hours. United did not bother explaining why a line of 12 people took two hours but, despite being assured they were holding the plane and we would make it, when we got to the counter, the harpy ticket agent said, "Oh, I can't get you on that plane, it's full."
"Uh, excuse me, who's in seat 12D, you know the seat on my ticket."
"We'll, we overbook flights and this one is totally full."
"That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that we need to make a connection to Lisbon in Newark and that I bought this ticket several months ago."
Needless to say, I lost this battle (although later I won the war).
To make a long story short, several connections later (including flying three hours past Lisbon to Frankfurt to pick up a connection back to Lisbon) we arrived in Lisbon tired, pissed and hungry — a bad start to what turned out to be an excellent two-week trip across the Iberian Peninsula.
As we made our way up to our room the staircase filled with the smell of roasted chicken — churrasqueira, as the Portuguese call it. We b-lined it for the restaurant and split a whole, rock-salt encrusted and piri-piri sauce-covered chicken that saved our lives.
Portugal, as Anna pointed out, is a Heath-sized land. I never knew the Portuguese were so wee and bearded but, with my own facial-hair experiment underway, I fit in nicely and was often approached with questions in Portugues, which I replied to in broken Spanish and everyone lost (Lisbonians probably assumed Anna, who had to duck through several doorways, was my German girlfriend).
Portugal is considered by some to be Western Europe's slice of the Third World and somewhat deservedly so. Infrastructure is crumbly, though beautiful and historic, that drip you felt on your nose is probably from some old lady's recently washed underwear drying outside her apartment window and stray dogs roam the streets looking for a scrap of churrasqueira.
For four days Anna and I roamed Libson's tiled streets, climbed into the turrets of the castles built onto the city's rolling hills and sped throught the streets on turn-of-the-century trolleys while street urchins held onto the outside for a free ride, courting death with every poorly parked car we grazed.
What stood out most in Portugal, though, was a town we visited called Sintra, about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon. Due to some weird micro-climate that dumps rain on the area, the town looks like a rainforest with lush ferns growing next to moss-covered trees. On a hillside next to a windy road near the city center is weirdest place I've ever been to.
The Quinta da Regaleira is a sprawling hilly estate built by a Timothy Leary casualty who really liked Alice in Wonderland. OK, it was built by some demented opera set designer and there was no implication of drug inspiration but my explanation makes more sense. After winding our way through the trails of the estate's tropical garden, Anna and I found ourselves at the dank bottom of an upside down Tower of Babel. Yeah, I don't get it either but its pretty creepy winding your way down this tower, which ends up about 100 feet underground, as the daylight fades above you.
The rest of the estate was equally weird, connected by a series of unlit caves and narrow winding staircases puncuated by angry stone creatures and lush vegetation.
Less cool but more delicious was the meal we had in Sintra, which consisted of spicy pork and potatoes, copious amounts of insanely cheap wine and three power outages (fortunately after our food was cooked).
After Portugal we had planned to head to Granada (my mom's advice: bring a snack to the Alhambra) but we found out that the relative backwater of Lisbon offers no train service to southwest Spain. So we hatched what turned out to be a great plan b and took the overnight train to Madrid.
It was the end of a long journey. Anna and I were tired and stressed but we had finally made it — 20 feet to the check-in counter. The people in front of us had been waiting in the line for two hours. United did not bother explaining why a line of 12 people took two hours but, despite being assured they were holding the plane and we would make it, when we got to the counter, the harpy ticket agent said, "Oh, I can't get you on that plane, it's full."
"Uh, excuse me, who's in seat 12D, you know the seat on my ticket."
"We'll, we overbook flights and this one is totally full."
"That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that we need to make a connection to Lisbon in Newark and that I bought this ticket several months ago."
Needless to say, I lost this battle (although later I won the war).
To make a long story short, several connections later (including flying three hours past Lisbon to Frankfurt to pick up a connection back to Lisbon) we arrived in Lisbon tired, pissed and hungry — a bad start to what turned out to be an excellent two-week trip across the Iberian Peninsula.
As we made our way up to our room the staircase filled with the smell of roasted chicken — churrasqueira, as the Portuguese call it. We b-lined it for the restaurant and split a whole, rock-salt encrusted and piri-piri sauce-covered chicken that saved our lives.
Portugal, as Anna pointed out, is a Heath-sized land. I never knew the Portuguese were so wee and bearded but, with my own facial-hair experiment underway, I fit in nicely and was often approached with questions in Portugues, which I replied to in broken Spanish and everyone lost (Lisbonians probably assumed Anna, who had to duck through several doorways, was my German girlfriend).
Portugal is considered by some to be Western Europe's slice of the Third World and somewhat deservedly so. Infrastructure is crumbly, though beautiful and historic, that drip you felt on your nose is probably from some old lady's recently washed underwear drying outside her apartment window and stray dogs roam the streets looking for a scrap of churrasqueira.
For four days Anna and I roamed Libson's tiled streets, climbed into the turrets of the castles built onto the city's rolling hills and sped throught the streets on turn-of-the-century trolleys while street urchins held onto the outside for a free ride, courting death with every poorly parked car we grazed.
What stood out most in Portugal, though, was a town we visited called Sintra, about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon. Due to some weird micro-climate that dumps rain on the area, the town looks like a rainforest with lush ferns growing next to moss-covered trees. On a hillside next to a windy road near the city center is weirdest place I've ever been to.
The Quinta da Regaleira is a sprawling hilly estate built by a Timothy Leary casualty who really liked Alice in Wonderland. OK, it was built by some demented opera set designer and there was no implication of drug inspiration but my explanation makes more sense. After winding our way through the trails of the estate's tropical garden, Anna and I found ourselves at the dank bottom of an upside down Tower of Babel. Yeah, I don't get it either but its pretty creepy winding your way down this tower, which ends up about 100 feet underground, as the daylight fades above you.
The rest of the estate was equally weird, connected by a series of unlit caves and narrow winding staircases puncuated by angry stone creatures and lush vegetation.
Less cool but more delicious was the meal we had in Sintra, which consisted of spicy pork and potatoes, copious amounts of insanely cheap wine and three power outages (fortunately after our food was cooked).
After Portugal we had planned to head to Granada (my mom's advice: bring a snack to the Alhambra) but we found out that the relative backwater of Lisbon offers no train service to southwest Spain. So we hatched what turned out to be a great plan b and took the overnight train to Madrid.
