DAY 10 - SALEMA TO LISBON
We have a lazy morning to enjoy the last of our overindulgent lodgings. Our only obligation is to get to nearby Lagos for a 10:30 bus.
We roll the dice on Uber again. This time it works! Though watching on the map in the app, we can see that our driver basically has to come from Lagos to get us, and then drive us back. But he does it with a smile.
Once in Lagos we gamble on having enough time to find a breakfast place that is actually open for a pre-bus bite. Our prospects don’t look great for the first few blocks - though we do pass a laundromat with emphatic ‘no dogs’ signs on some of the machines.
But once we head out toward Lagos’ central harbour, our luck improves and we find a spot on a wide thoroughfare along the channel. There’s one moment soon after sitting down where we think we may have our geography backwards and should be on the other side of that channel for our bus, but no! Relieved breakfast follows.
We manage perfect timing back to the station, strolling up to the gate in tandem with our bus. Our tickets have no seat assignment so we just pick a row close to the front. This causes completely unnecessary consternation from the couple who boards after us and who believe they have been assigned our seats. They are (or should I say he is) not mad, just absolutely flabbergasted, like something fundamental has cracked in the universe. And none of this is directly to us, just immediately adjacent to us, as he stammers incredulously about not understanding what is going on and his wife, the driver, and everyone else just tell him to pick a damn seat already. They sit one row ahead of us, him still looking utterly perplexed and lost. She turns and leans over the back of her seat to assure us one more time that this is ‘just him, not her’.
It’s an uneventful ride back to Lisbon. We hit a much more well-appointed rest stop in the middle. No flooded bathroom, a full-service cafeteria and souvenir shop. Breakfast is still heavy so I don’t partake of the latter, but we do wind up sitting around in the blazing sun for a very long time waiting for our driver to get back. Had I known I would have just stayed on the bus. When he finally does get back, I tell Antoaneta we should sit one row up from before, but it seems too cruel.
Maybe because of the extended stop, we’re twenty minutes late into Lisbon, but still with plenty of time. And good thing - I have an aquarium gift shop to patronize. Fortunately the central bus station is close not only to that, but a subway two stops from the airport for Antoaneta.
At the aquarium we even have time to sit for one more drink (and in my case a chocolate peanut butter cake) before I make good on buying an octopus t-shirt and a pin to add to my camera bag. We then wander the multi-level mall attached to the central bus / subway station so Antoaneta can pick up some snacks for the flight.
And, too soon, we part at the subway, her heading for the airport, me heading back to the hotel we’d used on our first night in Lisbon.
On my way I stop back in at the underground mall and vast grocery store where the devil’s granola lurked. I did not get more - I avoid the whole aisle. I get myself some stuff for dinner and try one of the weird pastries we’d seen ten days prior. It was: pretty good.
Strolling up to the familiar hotel I see a tour bus pull to a stop and unload a torrent of passengers. Even at an increasingly frantic walking pace I can’t beat most of them inside, so I have to endure a line of geriatric check-ins, none of whom, it seems, have ever checked into a hotel before. But hey - I have nowhere to be.
The rest of the day is a daze. Once again I’d entertained notions of striking back out across Lisbon, looking for those little knick knacks I didn’t get at the Sao Vicente souvenir shop. But it’s like your body knows when you’re on your last day. All the exhaustion and ache it was holding in for the sake of the trip all bleeds out at once and I want nothing more than to blob on the bed and watch youtube and eat grocery store dinner. Which I do.