A Tale of Two Hobos

The process by which J and I finally reached Portugal deserves a quick post in and of itself. Normally, I don't give out the details of how I get from one city to the next, usually because traveling from point A to point B is not the most interesting conversation topic.

Part 1 - camping outside the airport

As I mentioned in my previous post, J and I threw a pintxos party about 4 hours before our bus was set to leave Bilbao. We left the rest of our erasmus buddies around 12:45 am and took a taxi to the bus station because the metro station was already closed. We made our 1:35 am bus and passed out for an hour and a half, until we arrived in Santander. We usually take the bus to Santander airport, instead of Santander, but there were no direct buses to the airport early enough for us to catch our flight.

Once we arrived at the Santander bus station, we looked up times for the bus that connects to the airport. We realized that again, there was no bus early enough for us to make our flight. After pondering what to do, we decided to take a cab to the airport, since it was only about 10 minutes away. It was about 3:30 am at the time, and we decided to get to the airport early and take a nap somewhere inside while we wait for our flight.

We took a taxi and arrived at the airport to find that ... it was closed! At this point, it was too late to go back to Santander (there was nothing to do there anyways) and our only option was to wait outside. We found the brightest spot next to the airport, and huddled close together in the freezing cold.

Our "camp"

Hobo 1

Hobo 2

We camped outside until 6 am, when the airport FINALLY decided to open up for business. The first flight was scheduled at 7 am.


We grabbed a cafe con leche to defrost our frozen bodies and then boarded out 7:30 am flight to Madrid.

Part 2 - Our 8 hour layover in Madrid

After our power nap on the plane flight, we set out to explore Madrid for a few hours before our flight to Lisboa. We had time for:

Churros and cafés

Some bite sized sweets

A few pictures at Plaza Mayor

Bocadillos de calamares

After all of the above, plus some eye shopping, we made our way back to the Madrid airport. We passed through security and found our boarding gate with ample time to spare. We took a look at the duty free stores and waited for the final leg of our journey to Portugal.

Part 3 - our near miss at the Madrid airport

While waiting, J noticed that no one was lining up to board in front of our gate, even though it was close to our boarding time. She went to double check our gate number but our flight wasn´t listed on the list of departures. We ran to a nearby Easyjet gate and asked about our flight. Apparently, they changed our gate number at the last minute. Instead of gate 34, our flight was now boarding at gate 50. J and I looked at each other for a split second, grabbed our belonging, and started sprinting through the airport. We arrived at gate 50 huffing and puffing, only to realize that this is Spain, and nothing is ever on time. We managed to board the flight and we were FINALLY on our way to our final destination.


An hour flight, a bus ride and 3 steep flights of stairs later, we were in LISBOA, Portugal!

I guess this is a price you pay for budget flights. :D