The Time has Come...

There's always new art in the Terminals

For inquiring minds, the Uber did come at 12:30pm and Kat and Cleo came over earlier and we visited and said our 'goodbye for now'. They ensured all our things made it into the Uber and then final hugs and tears (well not final tears) and we were on our way.  Our driver was fantastic and got us right in front of the outside check in for United.  Bags checked - check. 

At this time, there had been a government shutdown and tales of hours long security lines were being reported. Two days before, "extra personel" (trying not to get flagged here) had been sent to major airports. We had the usual angst turned up a notch so had gotten to the airport 4 hours before our flight.  We have Clear+ and TSAPre and boy were those handy. From what we could see, the wait for all the other lines was appx 15 minutes. We walked over to Clear+TSA Precheck - which is its own line separate from TSAPRE and CLEAR - and five minutes later were through and walking to Terminal A.

Since it was lunchtime, we sat and had a leisurely lunch, read our books and checked about 500 times to ensure we had our Passports with the Visas. Then it was time to board. we had chosen the last row near the galley as there were only 2 seats instead of 3 and we could sit together and not have to worry about other people in the row.  It was the right move.  The plane left on time and arrived at our first stop - FRANKFURT GERMANY. We read and did something we rarely do, sleep on the plane.  Made the time fly right by (see what I did there). 

None the worse for wear, we followed the signs - well, the few we could find. Frankfurt doesn't have the best signage sometimes. Border Control wasn't very busy and we passed through in about 15 minutes, without issue and received our stamps on the page adjacent to our fresh new Visas indicating our Visa time had been begun along with our 4 hour layover. Planes like to serve either egg and cheese or some other unsatisfying breakfast, so as soon as we could we hit the coffee & pastry near our gate. Freshly caffeinated JR decided to do some sketching.

 

We moseyed over to the gate and realized that while our boarding passes had seats on them, they didn't have a boarding group.  No problem. Waited for the gate attendant and asked for paper boarding passes and she happily printed them out.  She also offered to gate check our Rick Steve's bags, so that was super helpful...right up until JRs bag started to vibrate. I should have known - my waterpic buttons were prone to be triggered when the bag got jostled, so the bag would start buzzing. FINALLY, I opened the bag, pulled half my stuff out, found the waterpic and stuffed it in a shoe. 

The flight was quick - 2 hours - and we landed in Porto where it was 60 degrees and sunny.  The baggage claim wasn't too far and we waited with our newest, best friends to see who won the lottery.  Well, apparently, we did. All 4 blue bags, the pink and black roller bags and both Rick Steve's bags came off the belt pretty quickly. Dig the yellow Aussie bag tags provided by our friends over at Outback Solutions - our friends Eva and John Lisle; for all your web design and internet solution needs.

We took the elevator up and waited near where our driver - the Fabulous Flavio - at North Travel Solutions met us and gave us the royal treatment. He was joyful and welcoming and reasonably priced ;)   The street on which we live is pedestrian only, so parking on adjacent streets is..challenging. Not for Flavio - zipped right into a space at the corner and unloaded what we could all comfortably carry. He also called our Portugal the Place contact, Francisco, who also came to help. Flavio took two of the 45lb bags, Francisco took one and JR and I navigated with our backpacks and a blue bag between us. They then went back to get the rolling bags.

Flavio said his goodbyes and Francisco showed us how everything worked, handed us the keys, and all of a sudden, we were alone - in our apartment!

Immediately after this picture, we did a 360 around the apartment and high-fived each other - WE MADE IT.