We booked first class tickets on a train from the Oriente station in Lisbon to Albuferia a month or so before we had left. After arriving in Lisbon we learn that the train union is on strike. They have a two week strike planned and we have arrived in the middle of it.
We check with our hotel front desk and after conferring with her colleague they think we have a small shot of our train running. We head out early.
We Uber to the train station and check with the ticket booth and learn that our train is running. Yay! So we find lockers and stash our luggage since we have a few hours and there is a shopping mall at the train station.
It’s a typical mall aside from a giant grocery/department store. It made sense for the grocery store to be so close to the train station where people pass thru on way to and from work. We spend quite a bit of time wandering those aisles. The fresh fish section was bigger than a large meat section in Wegmans or Walmart with so many different kinds of fish on display.
Getting the train turned into a smooth, painless event. We were seated in a group of four seats with a native Portugese man and his maybe 12 year old daughter facing us. They were returning from Madrid where they had attended a cartoon conference. He had mistakenly made their return flight for March 12 instead of February 12 so they ended up on the train. He was a medical professional in Faro. We passed the four hour train ride with pleasant conversation the entire way on a variety of topics.
The trip ended with never exchanging names, but he gave us his email address and told us to reach out if we needed anything. Sweet!
Words of Wanderers 