Holiday Extension

Lisbon to Madrid to Geneva, 29th-31st July

I wasn't really expecting to wave M off at Lisbon airport, but then again you can never be sure of anything in life.

It was on the train to Lisbon from Cascais that I first realised that my ID card was not in my wallet, where it has been for the last 10 years. A thorough search of my pockets revealed that it wasn't in any of them either, and on arrival at the airport I launched a full scale assault on my bag, which took a long time but resulted in nothing. Miika hadn't found it at his place either. Where the hell had it gone ? M suggested that I call our hotel in Sevilla on the off-chance that I may have left it there. The cheerful guy at the reception confirmed that it was, and I was stuck with no ID. After a desperate attempt at getting on the plane using my health insurance card (which, predictably, failed), I was faced with the reality of of the situation. I can normally talk my way out of trouble but EasyJet is a formidable opponent and there was no (legal) way that I was going to get through. M gave me a look that only women can give, its complexity out of reach to any man - part sympathy, part annoyance, part pity, part bloody-hell-not-this-again. I was suddenly waving as she went off to the plane and back to work, and I headed back out into the Portuguese sunshine and back into Lisbon. I would like to take this opportunity to confirm that this is the first time that such a plane-boarding failure has happened to me (although I have missed planes for various other reasons, nearly all involving my own incompetence) and I have no idea why or how my ID card was not in the same country as I was. 

I headed off to Oriente bus station and bought a ticket for the next available bus, which left at 11pm. It was now 1pm and so I bought "Fresh Air Fiend" by Paul Theroux (the pretentious father of the pretentious Louis Theroux), sat at the beach and read it until the sun went down. On my way to the beach I also tried to find the tower of Belém, Portugal's most famous landmark. I failed at that as well, although I did catch a glimpse of it from the train as I headed out to the suburbs for my beach session. I'd been looking for it at the wrong station. It all made sense.

The bridge to Setubal

The same bridge as in the previous post, just this time with fishing rods.

Another overnight bus session followed, and it was my penitence for not having my ID card on it. I probably clocked up about an hour of sleep. The only seat I could find was behind the central door and so my knees were jammed against one of those hard walls. The woman sat next to me was of a certain age and the owner of a smartphone which rang incessantly. Unfortunately the smartphone appeared to be new and she seemed unable to either answer it or refuse the call (or indeed turn down the volume) and so every so often I would hear the blare of heavy metal coming from her handbag and try to close my ears as she got increasingly flustered and violent towards her screen. We arrived in Sevilla at half past five, I tried to walk to the hotel and instantly got lost. Any other day, a wander through Sevilla's old town at night would have been a pleasure but I was desperate to find somewhere to sit down and try to have a nap again. I picked up my ID card, went straight to the train station, got a bucket of Coke from McDonald's (and I am ashamed) and bought a ticket for the next slow train to Cordoba, where I hoped to pick up another one towards Madrid, saving money in the process. Another hour and a half to kill, during which Coca-Cola company shares probably rose a little as I tried to stay awake. 

"A portrait of the artist as a tired man" - Sevilla, 6am

Cordoba pulled into view at 9.30 and it seemed that no slow trains ran north. The fast train was 80€. Fortunately, the bus station was just over the road and, 4 hours after swearing I'd never get on a long distance bus again, I bought myself a ticket for the far more pleasant price of 16€. The bus left at 2pm and would arrive in Madrid six hours later. I set up camp in a cyber cafe, bought some flights from Madrid back to Geneva and stared vacantly at the screen while keeping M up to date with developments over Skype. My breakfast consisted of a sandwich, carefully crafted from a supermarket baguette and a buy-one-get-one-free pack of chorizo. The second part of this became my lunch. It was a far cry from the tapas and limoncello of the ten previous days. After an interminable wait, I got onto the bus and, naturally, the guy who sat next to me was not only the largest person on the bus but also the one with the loudest music and the least soundproof headphones. I slept like a baby anyway.

 Sunrise from the train. Not a particularly interesting or good picture, but I didn't take many

 I wasn't sure if my friend Fiesta in Madrid was aware that I was coming. My phone battery had died and I'd sent him a text message from a newly acquired Spanish number that didn't appear to want to cooperate. I'd sent him a message from the cybercafe in Cordoba and hoped that he would check his emails before I arrived. As luck would have it, we arrived on his building's doorstep at exactly the same time. As always happens, my tiredness evaporated as the evening came and we ended up going out with his friends for a night out which lasted far too long. We got home at 6am on what was, for the second time of asking, the last day of this trip. Our tiredness ensured that the trip ended in exactly the way I would have wanted - with a day at one of Madrid's exotic and enticing municipal swimming pools.