Depends on who you ask. I might not have slept well last night…worrying. I might have sighed heavily when I couldn’t get the pick up location right for the Uber. Maybe I paced back and forth through the halls of the Fado museum. Did I raise my voice when Grubb wandered off to take pictures instead of watching for the Uber? Sure, but just the tiniest bit. So don’t believe Grubb’s interpretation of the situation.
Today was Covid test today. The U.S. requires a negative test no earlier than one calendar day before the flight. So today and not before. A negative test means we can go home. A positive test means a whole lot of hassle rebooking flights and finding a place to stay for some number of days.
Hurdle 1 was making an appointment. I did that couple of weeks ago. Found an app called Traveler CheckIn that helps travelers find Covid tests. Lisbon Airport does have a testing center, but you can’t book ahead. You just have to show up.
Hurdle 2: Getting to the clinic.
The appointment is at 11 but neither of us can wait so we are out the door before 9:30. After futzing and moving up and down the block to get a good pick up location…we got our Uber within 5 minutes. A nice Brazilian guy who says something about the police being on strike. 20 minutes and we are at the door of the clinic.
Hurdle 3: I assume the lone nurse in the clinic will understand some English. Not so much. So we make do with Google Translate. All sorted. She has no one else to attend to so she doesn’t mind taking us an hour early. First Grubb, then me. Then we are done. One more communication through Google…our results will be emailed with three hours she says.
Hurdle 4: Act cool for the next 3 hours while waiting for the results. We are way the heck up in the north end of Lisbon but instead of Ubering, we decide we can take the metro to a central location and have coffee. Then we will decide what to do while the minutes tick by and I fret about the test results.
Grubb decides I need to walk it off plus I’d really wanted to visit the Fado Museum. So we walk, maybe 20 minutes to the museum. I can absorb nothing at the museum, although I did listen to the music and it’s quite nice. Soulful. But I did take some photos of cool old record covers.
We hopped an Uber home and I dared check my email in the car to find my results have arrived. My stomach churned while i search the document, all in Portuguese except the last paragraph, for the results. Negativo. I did a happy dance in the back seat of the Uber. Grubb checked his. Whew hu, we are both cleared.
Hurdle 5. Uploading the results to the United website. Once you upload, you have to wait a bit for an agent to check the document to verify. I got a text within a couple of minutes. Hey, I’m green lit! Grubb had to submit his twice but finally got the all clear.
Hurdle 6. Check in. This can be frustrating as we discovered on our flights out. Even though my passport was already stored and had a green check mark, I was asked to scan it again. Okay, okay. Grubb got locked out of his United account on his iPad and had to switch to his phone…which worked. Dunno. Finally boarding passes for all three flights, all stamped “Travel Ready” safely tucked in our Apple wallets. More happy dancing.
Remember when you could just show up and walk right onto the plane?
This calls for a nice meal with sangria.
