Monday, April 19th
Today I got my first taste of the major effects the volcano has caused throughout Europe. I went to the main train station in Lisbon to get tickets worked out for the next couple days - total chaos. Lines were enormous, people were panicking. Although Portugal has not seen any of the ash from the volcano (at least to my knowledge), many people are trying to get back to places like Paris, Berlin, London, Dublin, etc. Flights are still cancelled which has caused people to revert to train travel.
I stood in a line for 1-1/2 hours and still wasn't close to the ticket agent. I decided to opt for a different plan. I chose to find a Wi-Fi spot in the airport and figure things out. Man - for me - this is just a very small inconvenience. For many people, this is a nightmare. At the internet cafe, I sat next to a middle-aged guy and his 2 little girls. I'd say the girls were 1st and 5th graders. The guy was frantically calling people while looking up travel sites on the interent. His wife was upstairs in the line I just came from. I couldn't help but listen because he spoke perfect English while I couldn't understand anyone else in the cafe. The family was from Stuttgart, Germany. Their flight had been cancelled and they must have been stranded at least a couple days. It sounded as if they had a flight scheduled for tomorrow, but if it cancelled again, there was not another flight until the following Wednesday. As a backup, they were looking into train travel back to Germany. This would cost them $1500 + the $1000 they would lose on the flights. He was saying all this out loud to his girls. He kept saying: "This is the most expensive low budget trip ever - girls - don't expect any more trips this year". The girls were being perfect angels as I'm sure they could see the distress on their dad's face. They said, "Don't worry dad, it'll be OK" It was neat to hear - the kids consoling the parent. Probably not the best thing to freak out his kids - but I guess he should be given a pass.
Since I really couldn't get anywhere due to train lines, I decided to plan the next couple weeks. I made a big call - I've decided to take a 4-day trip to Turkey. Because I need to make up 13 days, I decided to do 3 extra days in the states after returning from my Peru trip, and then spending an extra 6 days in England versus the Scandinavian countries. I needed 4 more - somewhere close - non-Schengen - that I was not already visiting. According to some sites I've visited, Istanbul is a great place to visit. I'm a little nervous about the location, but it should be fine. $350 for my flight - I thought it was a great deal from Spain.
In the short term, since everybody is heading north, I've decided to head south. I took a train heading to the southern tip of Portugal to a placed called Faro. I'll spend the night there on Monday and then will head into southern Spain via bus to Seville, Spain on Tuesday morning.
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Great Idea to see Istanbul! I would really like to go there sometime. It used to be called Constantinople after the Emperor Constantine, first Roman Catholic Emporer. You'll see much older things there since it was founded on the site of an already existing city, Byzantium, in the 6th century BC. Very old and very wealthy city.
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