After Peniche, I grabbed a bus to Lisbon, where I had an overnight bus booked to Granada, Spain, leaving at 10:15pm. I know, I know. Night buses are always bad ideas. But it was an 11 hour trip and it only cost $10 euros and saved me a night’s accommodation. It was only about 1:30pm so I had 9 hours to kill and was thinking of finding a movie theatre, but first I had to meet up with Mariana, a travel friend I hadn’t seen in a few years, and her friend who was living in Lisbon.
We met up at a popular seafood restaurant for lunch, catching up over king crab, prawns, oysters and wine. We then moved over to a bar in the shade to grab a beer before Mariana had to leave for her flight. Which she made! At this point it was about 5pm so I still had 4 hours to go before I needed to go back to get my bag at the metro station lockers, and get my bus. As it turns out, those 4 hours quickly turned into 4.5, as Mariana’s friend was celebrating quitting her job the week before, and we had a couple of beers. All of a sudden, I noticed the sun had gone down, and it does not go down early these days!
I checked my watch and realized it was 9:20pm! My bus left in less than an hour! I quickly said goodbye and walked as fast I could to the metro station, where I had left my bag. Unfortunately, it was a locker that required payment to get the bag, as well as a pre-payment, so I owed 3.50 euros. Which had to be in coins. Which I had just given to pay for my beer. And there was no one around to provide change, as there had been earlier. I ran up to the closest open store, was refused change, so I bought a postcard to achieve the same result. I ran back down to the lockers, got my bag and headed for the train. Except I didn’t have a local sim card at this point and had forgotten to download transit directions and knew I needed to change trains at some point, so it wasn’t that straightforward. I found the first person I saw in the station and asked directions. It turned out to be a lovely Italian student who even showed me where to get off to change trains.
Unfortunately, it was Sunday night, meaning the trains were not running that frequently. I had about 4 (long) minutes to wait for the first train, then another 4 to wait for the next line. At this point I was still about 6 stops away and it was now 10:10. And once I got to the metro station I still had to find the bus station, then the bus. So far, every bus I have taken in Portugal and Spain has left right on time, or even a minute early. So at this point I conceded, resigning myself to finding a hostel for the night and a bus the next morning. At 10:25 I finally got to the bus station, glanced over and saw two Flix buses, which was the company I was going with. I allowed myself a glimmer of hope. The first one was going to Madrid and left at 10:25, which made sense. I lost hope. The next was going…to Granada at 10:15! I couldn’t believe it! I hopped on board and the driver immediately said, you know the bus was supposed to leave at 10:15 right? I sure did! I apologized profusely and hoped on, not believing my luck.
The only bad news was that I didn’t have time to brush my teeth or get out warm clothes for the 11 hour bus ride, so I improvised by getting out my thermo-rest and draping it over myself. But I certainly couldn’t complain, and we rolled into Granada at 9am, right on time.
