Day One of Miss Kid's Portugal adventure: Luggage lost. Hopelessly lost. Hotel gone missing.

You know that you’re in a bit of a conundrum when your respective airline sends your bags packing on an adventure of their own to explore yet another part of the globe without you.  You, meanwhile, are stuck with just the clothes on your back, in the midst of a torrential downpour that has no intention of letting up anytime soon.  Needless to say, your umbrella is buried at the bottom of your suitcase, and is merrily jetting around the globe, soaking up the sights and sounds of more exotic locales.  To make matters even worse, you are now hopelessly lost amongst a maze of cobblestone rues and avenues, a zillion miles away from home, with your “conveniently” situated hotel nowhere to be located.  Welcome to Day One of Miss Kid and Grocery Gal’s long anticipated overseas sojourn on what can only be described as the vacation from hell.

Umbrella off on an adventure of its own

Lost amongst the cobblestones somewhere 

And, to think, it had all started out so swimmingly well.  Their last minute booking was that rare combination of dirt-cheap price (Clue #01) for a four star hotel (Clue #02) at peak high season (Clue #03).  So what if their across the pond holiday included 3 layovers over a 24 hour time frame?  Why go the direct route when you can instead save a couple of bucks and languish in foreign airports for hours on end waiting for a connecting flight?  After all, when one is 18, young and carefree, time is on your side and jetting there is just half the fun, stumbling across an avalanche of roadblocks and diversions along the way.  Just for fun, of course.  Yeah.  Right.  Whatever.

Which layover was this one??????

And so, a mere 24 hours later, Miss Niece and best friend found themselves sans luggage in Lisbon, map-less and clue-less as how to high-tail it to their economy priced luxury accommodation, all without getting drenched, in a mad-dash across town.  It’s quite unfortunate that their decision to forgo a five minute cab ride so as to conserve a couple of Euros and opt instead to hop on the metro on the night of the World Cup was not the wisest move of all, with the train jammed to capacity with the rowdy of the rowdiest bunch of revellers out to paint the town red. 

Not one to be easily spooked, World Traveller Kid Extraordinaire felt a slight tinge of apprehension as she boarded the over-crowded train, the hooting and hollering of young lads and lecherous old geezers adding a sense of unease to the journey ahead.  The fair-haired duo were perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in a frenzy of over-zealous sports fanatics celebrating the victory of a century.

Bull-dozed with non-stop catcall after catcall of hollering gone wild and up to their eye-balls with the lewd and crude antics of partygoers gone mad, Le Niece and pal cleverly executed one of the wisest moves of the century by electing to hop off the train at the next station, several stops earlier than their scheduled exit.  Better safe than sorry, the motto goes, even though the trek across town would now get them to their digs even later than originally anticipated.  Yikes!!  Another sleepless night involving trekking for hours on end but heck, look at the bright side, there’s no miserable schlepping of luggage this time round!!

As darkness had descended some hours on in and with the witching hour drawing near, a sense of unease permeated the creepiness of the shadows lurking about, unhinging even the most resilient of globe-trotters, let alone two lost and forlorn teenage girls.

Yikes, it's dark!!  Where are we????????

And then the clock struck twelve.

Come jet around the globe with Miss Kid, on a journey like none other, where luggage is lost, maps are undecipherable and hotels are nowhere to be found.  Come stumble along on a quest to somewhere or anywhere, far away across the pond, frantically searching for your home away from home.

Next blog – Wednesday November 26th (in two weeks, every other Wednesday)   


Do the gals eventually end up at their hotel or are there a few roadblocks tripping them up along the way?  Stay tuned for the continuation of the adventures of Miss Kid and Grocery Gal’s mis-adventures in Lisbon!!


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