Olá de Portugal!

My flight left a few minutes late and we rapidly ascended into the night sky.

After just over 2 hours, we descended over Porto, and turned roughly above the Douro estuary to head along the coast to land at Aeroporto Sá Carneiro a little ahead of schedule. We had to wait for buses to take us to the terminal building but these arrived without much delay.

Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro was the Portuguese Prime Minister for only 11 months in 1980, until his untimely death in a plane crash near Lisbon. Sá Carneiro’s small plane was heading towards a political campaign stop in Porto when it crashed after a suspicious explosion, although the official report disputed the presence of a bomb. The crash also killed Defence Minister Adelino Manuel Lopes Amaro da Costa but they only renamed Porto Airport to honour the late Prime Minister.

Despite being prepared with an EU EES app which currently only works in Portugal and Sweden, the automated booth wouldn’t read my passport and so I was sent to the queue for manual processing by a friendly Border Police officer and his fingerprint reader and camera.

I then found my way to the metro station under the airport and had plenty of time to sort out a ticket and board the last metro from the airport tonight.

With one change of metro, and a 30 minute journey, I was soon banging on the door of my hostel at about 1.30am, to be let in by the very friendly night porter, who showed me to my room.

Alas, my bed was not just a top bunk but the top of a triple decker bunk bed, which I just about managed to climb up onto. I am rather less confident about being able to get back down again!!Read more