Travelkaos

Looking back a few months, we were dreading our trip to Portugal. Not because we suddenly developed cold feet about the move but rather because of the constant stream of bad travel news and warnings we've been fed since April. What was compounding our anxiety was the fact that we were moving with our three, 4 legged family members over five time zones. In spite of some minor problems with travel sickness which we were able to manage, and one hour flight delay from JFK to LIS, we have been extremely fortunate on our trip here.

We didn't have any trouble with long lines, flight cancellations or missing bags either on departure from Austin/New York or on arrival in Lisbon. Immigration and Customs were also very quick. It took us roughly an hour and a half from the time we landed in Lisbon to the time we sauntered through Customs. At the baggage collection area though we did notice a huge number of stranded suitcases. The cause was discovered later: a large number of cancelled flights over the previous two days due to a shut runway caused by an 'incident'. Just like Domino in Deadpool 2, we were dodging all manner of delicate situations.

At the airport we were welcomed by the amazing folks at BRINT Portugal who helped get us here. After almost a year of planning it was such a relief to meet in person. As we landed in Lisbon right around lunchtime, we split up. The bags were taken directly to our rental home in Leiria, about an hour and half away, while we had lunch with our friends from BRINT. We then picked up our pets, who had landed in Lisbon two days earlier and were taken to a boarding place nearby, and headed to our new (temporary) home.

At the end of the day, we were all grateful that we had more travel during our travel and a lot less chaos than expected.

Chilling @ the JFK Lufthansa Lounge