Traveling Light
Hmmm… Travelling light. Yes, well, it seems this expression can be interpreted in many different ways.
I have always wanted to see the world. As a solitary child, I had lots of time to peruse Pays et Nations encyclopedias. I spun the world globe on its axis to determine the places I would go to, one day….
I have waited most of my life to satisfy my wanderlust, so the drive is real.
Impulsively, I decided in September that I could not wait till spring to see the children again. This fall, Grant would celebrate his 75th birthday; his sister in London, her 85th. Last November, I saw my 70th birthday eclipsed by renovations following a dismal flood on the 9th of August. I had been deprived of celebrating a landmark birthday, I decided, and I owed myself a second chance. I booked flights and accommodations for yet another Portuguese adventure, and a brief stay in London to mark my sister-in-law’s birthday.
Packing to travel leads me to assess what is essential. This would be my third stay in Lisbon, my second in London, so I was headed to familiar destinations. As usual, I rented places with washing machines, and my husband and I each left with a small suitcase and a cross-body bag. Europe is hardly the wild blue yonder, I figured.
However, although young at heart, I am not ten; or twenty; or even forty. I am soon to be seventy-one years old. I am fit and energetic, but still seventy years old. Enough said.
I felt confident about my ability to plan my trip, but I overlooked a factor I often chose to discount: my age. I organized a trip best suited to a backpacking youth: two cities with very different climates (clothing requirements), five days in one place, a flight to the next place, another flight back, and six nights in yet another apartment. It is as I write this that I can hear many of you groaning at the many ways such a plan could go wrong.
And they did, go wrong… I landed in Lisbon at 6:30 am. Check in was only at 3 pm. The host had indicated the possibility of an early check-in, but it wasn’t possible in the end. We contacted our daughter who graciously invited us to her place fifteen minutes from the airport, fed us lunch, and let us nap on her couch. We headed to the apartment at the agreed time, and it turned out to be a lovely place in a great neighbourhood. Yeah!
Five days later, as we were getting organized to fly to London at the end of our stay, the key jiggled in the lock and we were met with the shocked look of the cleaning lady. She had expected us to be gone, as our reservation indicated. I had made a mistake with the dates! We had to leave immediately! I contacted my children, who we were scheduled to meet for lunch. We already had plans to leave our Lisbon clothes at our son’s, but we now had no place to go for the night.
My son sent us his address. We brought our suitcases to his place. Once we got there, he sent me a link to a reservation. He had booked us a room in a boutique hotel down the street from his place. Thank God! We had lunch, then checked into a lovely converted palace for the night.
The next morning, we headed early to the airport. We were several hours ahead of the flight. However, as our luck would have it, the Portuguese government had just changed immigration rules for people entering and leaving the country, and the airport staff had not mastered the process.
The Lisbon airport is organized chaos at the best of time, but that morning, it was just chaos. The line-up for immigration took two and a half hours, as all passengers no matter what the destination were in one line, to all gates. Many of us missed our flight. Instead of leaving for London at 10:30 am, we left at 7:00 pm. We landed at 9:30, exhausted, and spent an inordinate amount money on a cab. The London stay was great although very short.
A few days later, it was time to return to Lisbon. A family member graciously drove us to the airport, and we were ridiculously early. We landed at 3:15 in Lisbon. Our son had planned an evening activity, so we went to his place directly since our clothing were there. London weather (15 C) is very different from Lisbon’s (27C). We spent a beautiful evening with the kids. We then packed our cases and headed to the apartment we had rented for the second part of our stay.
We deposited our cases onto the sidewalk, and figured out the lockbox. We opened the door to a staircase that looked more like a ladder: narrow steps at a sharp angle. Thankfully, our son was with us. He carried the cases to the first floor, and I opened the door to the apartment. We looked into a narrow flat with no natural light, bathed in hard to miss aroma of mold. The bed was nestled into an alcove at the other end of the flat, and the mattress seemed at an odd angle. It was late, and too late to address any issues. My son was concerned about the staircase, but little could be done at 11 pm.
We decided to shower and go to bed. The tiny bathroom was a tight fit even for my husband and I, who are both slender and short. As I figured out the dodgy shower, I saw that the whole bathroom flooded as the water flowed from the hand held hose. I quickly washed and got out before things got worse. Grant did the same, then we headed for bed.
As I sat on the side of the bed, the mattress dipped. I slid off. Peering under the bed, I saw that the slats that should have been in place to support the mattress were broken. I pushed our suitcases under the sagging mattress to counter the dip, and went to bed. The next day, I decided to do laundry. There was a washing machine, after all. I loaded our clothes and figured out the instructions in Portuguese (not an easy language, that). The machine started. Once the cycle was finished, I tried to remove the clothes to place them on the drying rack. It turned out the spin cycle didn’t work.I wrung out the clothes in the kitchen sink, and unfolded the rack. The thin metal rods that were supposed to hold my clothes were broken, so I leaned them precariously onto the frame.I hung the remaining clothing over the balcony railing like everybody else in Lisbon. It kind of worked…
We went out for the day, leaving the awful apartment behind. The Bairro Alto neighbourhood was full of young British and Australian travellers, backpacks securely balanced as they scanned the street for their destination.
As my kids would say, that should have been our first clue. What were the two of us doing in such an environment?
Later in the day, my son contacted us. His girlfriend had offered to let us stay in her flat. Our son made arrangements to move us out of the offending location and into a comfortable ground floor apartment with a patio. Saved by our kids once again! Before leaving, I took photos of the broken bed and soaked towels, and emailed the host. I requested a reimbursement, at least for the four unused nights I had paid for.
All in all, we had many wonderful experiences during this trip. We spent time with our children, had amazing food, took a Portuguese cooking class and explored two cities we love. In London, I visited the National Gallery and the Tate Modern, the Borough market, and several historic neighbourhoods and parks.
Some of the difficulties we experienced were definitely not within our control: flight delays, government policies, and dishonest hosts.
However, I learned some critical lessons about what model of travel would be best for a 75 and nearly 71 year old adult.
No backpacking. Check your luggage.
Go for shorter trips with more comfort. Our stay in the hotel was an eye opener!
If you must travel to more than one place, fly to one, then the other, then home. Better yet, take the train. It is far more civilized and way less stressful
All in all, this trip was very eventful. It also was a turning point that is very consistent with the greater lessons that have been coming my way during the last year. The events and outcomes of the last few weeks reminded me that my travel dreams were born when I was much younger; traveling now means adapting the process, and the plans, to my age. Hopping on and off planes several times in a short timespan is exhausting, and it takes longer to recover than it would have when I was younger.
At this point, it is time to own this time and place in our lives.
Maybe all this is part of my ongoing lessons about self-love, the lessons that support feeling enough as I am. After all, you can only love yourself if you accept yourself, as you are at any given moment.
Traveling light can perhaps be interpreted as traveling with the joy of being where we are right now. We can put down the burden of old expectations and delight in the opportunities we still have in ways that honour our todays.
Traveling light takes on a whole new meaning when you look at this way.