After planning a two week trip to Portugal with family and friends in a small tour group, we planned on flying out of Eugene Friday morning October 3 at 11:00 am. I got up Friday at my usual 5:00 am time and found an email with the subject heading “Your Flight Is Cancelled”.
Not the way I wanted to start our trip.
Apparently the remnants of a hurricane messed up our connection out of Amsterdam to Lisbon. And this affected six of us since we were traveling with family out of Seattle. The email said they would be booking us on the next available flight and would contact us “soon”.
Not good enough since we paid extra to fly in a couple of days early and we were just a few hours away from leaving. So I jumped on the Delta Airlines chat and within about an hour, I was able to get all six of us rebooked and rerouted through Paris to Lisbon.
Whew. And, we were so glad Jesus went with us (inside family joke; ask our kids).
All went well on our flights, except we got downgraded from Comfort Plus to Economy. Not our favorite for taller people and a 10 hour flight. But, our travel insurance contacted us almost immediately, said they saw our flight was cancelled and we qualified for a $400 cash refund. Yay!
We had a short layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and made it to Lisbon Saturday afternoon within just an hour or so from our original arrival time. I must say John M on the Delta Chat was VERY helpful.
Arriving in Lisbon, we checked into our hotel (no problems) and headed to dinner at Rubro, an outdoor restaurant nearby. It was amazing. A wonderful start to our trip. Six people, tapas and entrees, two bottles of wine, bread and water for €127.
And the food was very flavorful.
We walked back to the hotel and readied ourselves for a day exploring Lisbon on Sunday.