I’m meeting Jake and our friends Jim and Linda in Portugal for ten days of hiking and touring. But I decided to arrive a couple days ahead to adjust to the time zone and see some things the others might not be as interested in! I flew from Albuquerque to Houston, Houston to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Porto. The flights were all fine, but I have a few comments about the airports. Albuquerque is under construction. It’s only been two years (?) so far.
Houston has a dumpy section and newer section. Both were in the same terminal and I had to ask how to get from gate 32 to gate 7 because turn right and the gate numbers go up, turn left and you dead end at Gate 29. It was only a 15 minute walk to get to gate 7.
The last time I was at the Frankfurt airport was more than 20 years ago when I flew to Kazakhstan to visit my dad. It has improved since then, but it was still quite a walk before I could find a monitor that said where my connecting flight’s gate was. I could not immediately log in to wifi so I couldn’t just use my phone. You go through customs before getting from the Z gates to the A gates, once again, all in the same terminal. In my brain fog, my water bottle is also still somewhere in the Frankfurt airport. I hope they didn’t have to investigate it as a bomb threat.
Our flight boarded on time from Frankfurt to Porto, but required boarding a bus (the first bus had Groups 1-2 and the second and third buses Groups 3-5) and driving 10 minutes out to the plane. Once at the plane, the plane was still fueling so the packed buses sat there for 5 minutes. I had a seat but was holding my suitcase in my lap and had my backpack on. Lots of people were standing. Then all three buses let their passengers off and there was a free for all to get up the stairs at the front and back of the plane. I made the mistake of boarding at the front for row 35 so I swam against the current of people who had boarded from the back of the plane for about 10 rows. At least I found an overhead bin for my suitcase near row 22. The Lufthansa captain apologized and said that Frankfurt airport is hiring ground crew if anyone needs a job!
Arriving in Porto we taxied towards a gate only to have the captain come on to say that another plane was at our gate and that traffic control was having a minor panic about where to put our plane. Score for the Lufthansa pilot’s sense of humor at least!
Travel into town was easy on the metro and fortunately my Airbnb host came downstairs to see if I had arrived while I was busy trying to get my phone to work so I could text her. We have a lovely one bedroom apartment in the historic area. Jake arrives Friday morning from his trip hiking in France with a friend. The air was smoky because of some major forest fires that broke out during the heat wave the last week. Conditions overnight improved.
Smoke in the air in Porto
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