Familiar Faces 8/1/08

Wallet: Day 25
Shorts and T-shirt

We awoke in our deserted hostel. Such a weird feeling being in a building with so many beds yet no one sleeping in them. It was an early morning wake up as people in Lisbon feel the need to honk their horns incessantly at 8 AM. We got ready and headed out to do some touring of the city. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 2 so we had few hours to walk around.

The city of Lisbon is quite beautiful, with the Atlantic Ocean lining it shores. The Ocean air can be smelt at all times. The streets are as narrow as possible, often without room for people and cars to go down together. As we walked around the windy streets and up the hills, we became tired quickly. Even in the early hours of the morning the heat is intense. We snapped our last few pictures from the top of the hills and headed down towards the internet café. We surfed and made a few more arrangements for our trip. Loyd managed to piss off the manager, as he was trying to hack the system to use the internet free. Classic.

Once we packed all our stuff we headed towards the bus station to catch our ride to the airport. The ride went smoothly, with a local lady telling me to get on a different bus than we planned because it had less stops. We checked in to our flights and headed towards security. That’s where the adventure began. As soon as our packs were checked in and were out of our possession, Loyd remembered that he had his wine key from Bordeaux still in his backpack. He also had 2 lighters sitting in the front pocket. I tossed the lighters into the trash we decided to try to sneak the wine key through security. It’s Europe, I thought – What do they care?!

I went through security first and was stopped immediately. As they opened my bag they found the 2 leftover beers we had from the previous night. Our plan was to drink them before we got on the flight so I apologized and explained. The security guard was young and laughed when he saw my expression. He said in his best English “Can you drink them fast?!” I answered with of course I can, so I started drinking. He said I had until his supervisor saw so I was moving quickly. I didn’t want to drink Loyd’s so I wanted a bit. His security check was taking forever, I watched as they opened his backpack and took everything out piece by piece. Within a few minutes the supervisor saw me with the beer and ordered me to throw it away – damn. Loyd was still getting searched at that point so it was getting ridiculous. I started laughing when he shot me this WTF look.

Finally, the lady scanned everything for the 2nd time, all separately, and found the wine key. They allowed Loyd to mail it to the US, thankfully. As we walked towards our gate Loyd told me the full story of how he tried to hide the wine key in his pocket during the inspection only to have second thoughts and put it back in the pack as she was ravaging through it. Hilarious.

We waited for plane to arrive and the line began to form for boarding a good 30 minutes before our scheduled departure. On EasyJet there are no seat assignments so people are always thinking about where they are going to sit. Loyd wanted to get up immediately but I told him to just chill out, since we were sitting so close to the gate. Just as they opened up Section B of boarding, which we had been assigned to – I slipped into the front of the line. We were the first two people on from our section. As we stood waiting for Section A to finish boarding we took a fake picture of us – while actually taking a picture of the huge line behind us.

As the plane started to take off my heart began to race, it had been almost a month since I had left the ground. It was strange to travel so far in Europe without ever using a plane. The flight was so quick there was barely enough time for me to read 5 pages in my book.

We were entertained on the flight by a couple in front of us who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other…gross. We touched down in Madrid a short 55 minutes after we took off. We grabbed our packs and headed towards Christina & Alice’s.

The subway ride to their area of town took longer than our flight. We dropped our stuff after Alice came to found us after we got ourselves completely lost in their neighborhood. The girls offered us their apartment for however long we wanted, you have to love fellow NU students!

We hung out until Christina came back from her last day at work. She was pumped to be finished so all four of us walked down to the Sol neighborhood and grabbed a great dinner. Around midnight we got moving in terms of night plans. We headed to another NU student’s apartment and pregamed for a big night. We made it to a club called Pacha around 3 AM and partied it up 6, when our bodies started to give out. The party was still raging but I felt finished. As we arrived home and after a little discussion both Loyd and I agreed that we couldn’t only stay for one night so we might as well stay for 3 so we can see a bullfight on Sunday! So from Madrid – ADIOS!