Greetings from Nice!
After having been shut-ins for twenty-plus months, we were given a serious incentive to get out of the house. And I do mean out, as in out of money and out of opportunities to keep postponing. Two years ago we had plans for two weeks in Nice and had booked an apartment and paid in full, then came Covid. The rental agency would not refund the money but allowed us to postpone until Americans were allowed back into France. Strike One!
We had long ago booked a cruise on Silversea from Anchorage to Tokyo, then along came Covid. They would have allowed us a refund, but they also offered to give us a future cruise credit of 125% of the price we had paid for the cruise, plus they would credit us with the fourteen days we would have cruised, getting us to within that magical 100 nights making us eligible for FREE laundry! We took the offer, Strike Two!
We had booked and paid in full for business class tickets to Europe with TAP, the official carrier of Portugal. Then, guess what, along came Covid. They are not the most organized carrier we have worked with but after lots of calls and emails we did get a voucher for future travel which had to be used by the end of this year. Strike Three.
With all these reasons to spend our money rather than lose it, we decided to bite the bullet and come to France for two weeks and then to Portugal to board Silversea (the Silver Moon) back to Florida. While travel was allowed, there were obstacles that needed to be overcome before we could fly. The first, and most important, was getting a French Pass Sanitaire, a EU recognized document that attests to the fact that we are fully vaccinated. The online form promised that it would take from two to four days but it took two weeks and that was with prodding. The day before travel we finally received our Passes and made multiple copies, physical and digital, just to make sure. (In the meantime we were able to get our boosters but didn’t want to burden the French with that information.)
We were now ready to travel for the first time in almost two years and headed to the airport confident that we had what we needed but also apprehensive as to what lay ahead. As it turns out, we should have been apprehensive! We approached the TAP check-in which was chaotic, clogged with people waving papers at the agents and also yelling at them which just added to the confusion. I learned long ago that if we have lots of luggage, and we did because of the cruise, I get a Redcap to take our baggage. These folks know the ropes and ours was a gem and maneuvered through the crowd all the while talking to the agents, all of whom he seemed to know. Flying Business has some rewards and a separate check-in counter is one of them. However, that seemed to be where all the problems were (apparently everyone thought they were entitled to Business) so he pushed his way to the front of the coach line, unloaded our bags onto the scales and happily accepted an overly generous but well deserved tip.
We had to show them our Passenger Locator Form, something we had completed online which allows the Portuguese government to track you down if there was an incident involving infection on the flight. Then they wanted to see a document verifying that we had had a negative Covid test within the last 48 hours. We told them we had an EU approved Pass, which no one seemed to understand. Finally the station manager for TAP showed up, took one look at our Passes and told staff that this was all we needed! At last we were on our way to TSA security with our boarding passes.
We first went to Clear, a “pay for less hassle” outfit that works with TSA. They scanned my eyeballs and checked my boarding pass and I was ready to go. Cindy however was stopped because her boarding pass did not have the “TSA Pre” stamp. Since I had already been checked I had to stay where I was as Cindy went back to get TAP to reissue her boarding pass. She came back dejected since despite showing TAP her TSA card, they would not reissue the boarding pass with the TSA Pre checkmark.
I then left the secure area and we both went down to the normal check-in where we would be able to use Clear to avoid long lines. Once again they scanned me, no trouble, but they said Cindy’s Clear membership had expired. Okay, please renew it I said, knowing that I had paid her membership when I renewed as a family. The folks at Clear could not have done more or have been more professional but it still took a half hour for them to get things fixed!! Now we could go through security - which we did with no further issue.
We finally got to the lounge that TAP uses for Business Class with just fifteen minutes before boarding and we both wanted a glass of Champagne. Only one bartender and two people ahead of me but wouldn’t you know they wanted Mojitos, the most time consuming drink a bartender can make. We finally had our drinks and sat for five minutes collecting our thoughts and laughing a bit over all that had happened before even boarding the flight!
The trip to Lisbon was thankfully uneventful. Our seats were comfortable, the food and drink just fine and the staff very friendly. No inflight rage as I had read about, just a smooth, fast flight with everyone wearing masks and staying calm. We landed early, very early at five in the morning Lisbon time. We were the first flight in and praise the luggage handlers, ours were the first bags out. Immigration was a breeze and we were in a taxi within thirty-five minutes of landing and at the Hilton before six AM.
Since I knew we were going to be arriving at the crack of dawn, I had booked our room for arrival the day before so that it would be ready for our early morning arrival. I communicated directly with the front desk to make sure they knew my intentions, and sure enough upon entering the hotel they gave me my room key and we were in a lovely fresh bed by 6:15 and we slept for three hours. This certainly was preferable to wandering around Lisbon until the normal check-in time of 3 PM!
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