“Our driver is kind of a jerk,” seat 22 said.

That was our hero he was talking about, so I didn’t know how I felt about that. Because twenty minutes ago, our driver had been the one who greeted us when we—sweaty, tired, overheated—had finally found the bus, five minutes late.

“It’s your lucky day,” the driver growled, as he climbed down from his seat, with zero desire to help us, in order to open the baggage compartment.

Three hours before that moment, we arrived at Terminal Rodoviario Sete Rios, what we thought was the departure point for our bus to Sevilla. We didn’t want to be there three hours early, but our AirBnb had a ridiculously early check-out time of 10am, so we really had no where else to go. 

The station had “Rede Expressos” bus company logos all over the place. I was a little concerned that I didn’t see Alsa Bus—our bus company—written or listed anywhere, but also not too surprised, as I knew they had limited routes out of Lisbon, and had listed no sales kiosks in Lisbon. Our bus wasn’t listed on the departures board yet, but they only had departures through around noon listed, and our bus didn’t leave until 1:30. No big deal.

With time on our hands, we lugged Franz and Helga on our backs back down the stairs, and down the street in search of a cafe. We found one with a decent price for a prix fixe menu, and decided it’d be a good place to put our stuff down and rest while we waited.

As we tried to ask for lunch from the waitress, we had clearly done something wrong, and had pissed her off.

“Why is she in such a hurry?” Erika asked, as the waitress ran off in a huff when we, evidently, were taking too long to make our selections. I’m sorry lady, if a Coke isn’t included in the drink selection, then I obviously don’t know what a Copo do Refrigerante is, and I need another six seconds please.

She whirled back over to our table, forcing paper table cloths onto it as we hastily moved our things out of the way. We made our final selections, and she motioned toward all of our baggage, saying a lot of Portuguese that we didn’t understand. I guess she didn’t like how much space we were taking up. I will not apologize for Franz and Helga’s space, lady.

“Is everyone cranky in this country?” I asked Erika rhetorically.

***

“Excuse me!” the driver yelled, in English, scowling down at the man lying stretched across the aisle, his feet up on the seat across from him. We’d just come to our stop in Lisbon Oriente bus station.

“This is not a bed, it’s a bus!” he cleared up, as the man slowly withdrew himself back to his seat. “Okay?”

Hoo, our hero is being rough on people today. We needed to be on our best behavior, we agreed, as he’d let us on the bus though you could tell he wanted to just leave the door shut in our face.

“Is everyone cranky in this country?” I asked Erika rhetorically. What in the world is there to be cranky about? The countryside is beautiful, the weather is perfect, the port wine is cheap.

We were still amazed we were actually on this bus. We thought for sure that our trip-long streak of no missed travel was at an end. Yeah, last summer we missed a flight to Punta Cana, but I mean on our whole world-wide trip. So far, everything had been flawless! And I wanted it to stay that way! I love streaks! But earlier, as we were wandering around outside, in the blazing sun, back and forth in front of Jardim de Zoologico, yeah our streak was well and truly dead.

Right, yeah, so how did we get into that situation. After lunch, we cleared out of their precious space and headed back to Terminal Rodoviario Sete Rios to find our bus. We got there thirty minutes before our departure, and the departures board inside had two buses listed as leaving at 1:30, but neither listed Sevilla as their endpoint.

“Huh.”

We looked around, still only seeing Rede Expressos all over the place. I was pretty sure our bus ended in Sevilla.

“Let’s ask the police officer,” Erika suggested, and I fumbled to pull up the tickets on my phone so we’d have something to point at.

“That’s not here,” he said in Portuguese. “You need to go outside and across the street,” I was pretty sure he said in Portuguese.

But we weren’t totally sure, hesitating a bit. “English?” he asked, and said he could try a little. In English, he said we need to go outside and go across the street, and there would be a little bus stop near the Jardim de Zoologico.

Thanking him, we picked up the pace and started heading that way. I was already growing fatalistic about our chances of making the bus. Erika later told me that, at that time, she still felt optimistic we’d get over there and find the right spot.

“Where the hell…” I started to ask, trailing off, seven minutes later when we were over there.

It was a big, open, parking lot-ish area, with a number of bus stop type things scattered here and there. The only buses I saw were city buses. The only signs were for city buses.

Erika asked a random stranger if they knew, while I feverishly Googled for help. Fifteen minutes until departure. The stranger didn’t know, and various Googling attempts turned up a half dozen different addresses for where this bus should be.

“Sete Rios”

That’s a train station.

“No, Sete Rios”

Do you mean Terminal Rodoviario Sete Rios? Google asked me.

“Apparently not!” I looked at the ticket again. Lisboa Sete Rios, it said. “Lisboa Sete Rios,” I typed in literally.

“Babe, I’m going to try asking at the front gate to the zoo,” Erika said. I said okay, and went back to my phone.

Hah! Yes! The pin drop says “Alsa Bus” on it! Wait that’s… where the fuck is that pointing? Looking over across the street where it indicated, there was clearly nothing there, much less an Alsa Bus. “God damnit, Lisboa Sete Rios Alsa bus station!”

Erika came back empty handed. There was no one at the gate. “I’m just going to go up and take a look around the corner, I think we have to be close,” she said. I said that sounded good, and went back to my phone. Ten minutes until departure.

Google suggested Alsa Bus’s web page. That page listed an address. Alright! I’ll try that. I punched it in, hit “Buscar,” the pin dropped… damn near next to me!

I turned around slowly in circles, trying to get my phone to realize which way I was oriented. It was pointing to just… kinda… here, in the middle of this big parking lot-ish thing. A bus pulled up next to me, with a name that was not Alsa bus.

“Babe!” Erika yelled, coming back toward that bus, as the sign on the side said it was Sevilla bound. I kept trying to get my bearings with where the hell this pin was on the map. I mean, maybe it’s pointing at that tiny bus stop over there?

The bus Erika ran to wasn’t ours, but she asked the bus driver if he might know where ours was.

“Oh, that’s the competitor,” he said, in Spanish, with a smug smile.

Erika managed somehow not to completely detonate, and instead ask nicely. He told her it was back where we started from, at Terminal Rodoviario Sete Rios.

“No, they told us that wasn’t right,” Erika replied. But he insisted that it was the right spot.

We thanked him, but neither of us knew what to do. I started wandering toward the spot I now had on the map. Yeah, it was a bus stop, but there were no buses and no signs so, who the hell knows.

“Let’s ask a taxi,” Erika wisely suggested.

The taxi driver also said it was back at the original spot. Well, that’s two against one now. Five minutes until departure, so whatever we did, it’d be our last move.

We ran back across the road, down the street, up the stairs, and back to the front of Terminal Rodoviario Sete Rios. It was 1:33, and I’d assumed that, wherever it was supposed to be, we’d clearly missed the bus.

Our police officer saw me, and waved me over. “Inside here, the very last bus,” he said, pointing to where he meant.

I guess he’d found out at some point his original advice was wrong. “Yeah?” I said, perking up. “It hasn’t left?” We ran down the platform to the last bus, which was clearly a Rede Expressos bus.

“Alsa!” Erika yelled, pointing at it. And sure enough, in incredibly small writing, on the side of the bus it said “A partnership by Rede Expressos and ALSA” What the hell?

“It’s your lucky day,” the driver growled. He checked both our tickets after we’d put our bags in storage, and reiterated that it was our lucky day.

“If I wasn’t so sweaty I’d hug you,” Erika said. This managed to get a smile out of him.

“I don’t really need that, but thank you,” he said.

***

“These guys are idiots,” seat 22 said, shaking his head.

We’d just had a lengthy stay at Lisbon Oriente station, where the driver and another worker had come through counting heads a number of times.

We were talking with seat 22 because we were sitting in seat 22. We had seats 20 and 21, but seat 21 was with 22, so we just sat in those two as quickly as we could so the bus driver wouldn’t kill us. Naturally, at Lisbon Oriente stop, the VERY FIRST PERSON WHO GOT ON THE BUS had seat 22.

But we’d come to realize in the meantime that… there was no seat 20. Over there, in front of me and to my right, were 16 and 17. Directly in front of me were 18 and 19. We were sitting in 21 and 22. And to my right, where I guess 20 should be, was… the bathroom. I guess that was mine?

“Seat’s taken,” I joked that I’d say to anyone wanting to use the facilities.

“Well, it’s a nice bathroom at least,” seat 22 joked. “Though, you have to pay a Euro to go in.” Which, what in the hell, was true.

“So did you hear what he’d said to that woman?” seat 22 asked us. Back at Lisbon Oriente, after the numerous head counts, he yelled something in Portuguese to a woman on the bus. She got off the bus, moved a bag in the baggage compartment, and got back on.

“Apparently she put her bag in the compartment for Sevilla, but she’s actually going to a different city. So the bag needed to move. And so the driver yelled at her, ‘well I’m not fucking moving it!’”

Yeah. Our hero was kind of a jerk.