Ramble on

Today was a travel day, in the truest sense of the word. Sometimes, travel days are the days when we move from one city to the next, by bus or by train, and only for a few hours or so, allowing us the liberty to explore some in the morning, but not usually, and explore again in the evening, upon our arrival. Today we traveled.

First by metro, in Paris, where my wonderful sense of direction led us to the wrong station. How was I to know there were 2 metro stations in Paris that go by the name La Chapelle, but one is a door and the other is not?!? Up the stairs, over the tracks, back down we went, to retrace our steps. We took 3 more metro lines than necessary to get to Gare du Nord.

Next by RER, which is really a train, but don't tell the Parisians that. You call it a train, they get confused. Regardless, we took the RER to the airport - but not all the way to the airport, because there was a problem at the station for Terminal 2, where we needed to be, of course, so we only got as far as Terminal 1.

Here we crammed into the airport shuttle with all the other confused international travelers looking to get to Terminal 2 and rode the lamest excuse for a roller coaster I have ever seen. Because that's what it looked AND felt like - a reeeaaalllyyyyy ssssllllllooooowwwww roller coaster, filled with suitcases and people.
Now comes the big time traveling: After a short respite from all movement, where we mailed some postcards and relaxed at the gate, we boarded our comfortably short and roomy flight to Lisbon. Roomy, you say? Why yes, I did say roomy - we lucked out and scored the emergency row seats on the plane, with their bucket loads of leg room. I guess we looked like able-bodied, responsible adults should the need arise to deploy an inflatable slide or something.

Landing in Lisbon, we needed to commute from the airport to the city's main rail station, Oriente, and that was easily done by way of metro. Super-easy, bought the tickets through an automated machine, where the Italian family next to me cheated off my technique(I pressed the "English" button). 

Insert here a brief intermission here for a coffee break, snack break and bathroom break.
We transferred to our ride to Porto, the Alfa Pendular train, which travels at awesome speeds of over 200km/h and leans into its turns. Its leaning motion (the pendulum) induced a sort of slight motion sickness when we tried to read, though, so I wouldn't suggest anyone try this if ever riding one. Instead, we snacked on bread and apples and a tiny wheel of Alentejo sheep's cheese that was creamy and tangy. And All Bran bars, since Mario keeps insisting he's going to feed me nothing but All Bran for the rest of the vacation, to stabilize my questionable digestive system, and never came through on that promise.

We arrived in Porto after dark, with the streets lights of the city sparkling in the waters of the Douro river. At this point, we were just about ready to call it a day, but our train arrives at Campanha station, and our hostel was next to Sao Bento station, so we buck up for one last transfer, this time by local train which was luckily included in the price of the AP ticket. Finally, we disembark at Sao Bento, on solid land, and without a set of wheels under us.

Now, if you were keep track for points, our grand total of travel looks like this:
1 - Paris metro
2 - RER
3 - CDG airport shuttle
4 - Air France plane
5 - Lisbon metro
6 - Alfa Pendular
7 - Porto local train

That is far too many forms of traveling in one day. But we made it to Porto, which, so far, is a surprising and beautiful city. You see, we did get out after all of that movement, to walk about the neighborhood around our hostel, pick up few savory pastries to munch on, admire the Christmas lights around the main plaza, and catch the end of a San Sylvestre foot race happening this evening. And even after all that, we are still looking forward to the traveling that we will be doing tomorrow.