Our hike hasn’t even started yet, and we’re already off to a challenging adventure!

We left Dallas on Sunday evening about 5 PM and landed in Madrid about 9 AM on Monday morning. After making our connection, we took off from Madrid around 12:15 PM and landed in Porto an hour later.

Right away, we knew something was off. Most of the power was off at the Porto airport. As we waited, waited, and kept waiting for our luggage, there was lots of chaos in the baggage claim area. Things seemed a little more crazy than normal, but we just smiled and said, “This is probably how they do things in Portugal.”

As I was chatting with a local guy, he told me that usually things are far smoother than this and that a massive power outage had disrupted everything.

News of the Power Outage

We eventually made it to the hotel. Taxi lines and traffic out of the airport were also quite crazy. 

Driving to the hotel was also quite an experience with no traffic lights, and everyone was confused. Our taxi driver kept calling people and yelling on the phone, shaking her head. This was obviously different for everyone. We eventually got checked in to a hotel with no power, and got to the room. We started looking through the news articles and realized that we were experiencing “the largest peacetime power outage in one of Europe’s history.”

Great.

But we’re so glad that we made it out of the Madrid airport just before the outage, because if it had happened while we were still there, we would have probably been stranded in Madrid, since all the airports around Spain and Portugal were closed due to the outage.

After a short “jet lag” nap, we walked to a local grocery store to get a few things. Wow, it was crazy. Lines out the door, empty shelves—there was lots of panic shopping.

We eventually walked to a local park to enjoy some sunshine and chirping birds. The city life was still and serene.

Dinner and Darkness

Later, we found a nice little restaurant that ended up setting up a gas grill outside and cooking for its patrons. We had grilled lamb, grilled sturgeon, and grilled vegetables, and it was awesome!

As the sun was setting, we had our flashlight out, ready to endure a dark night, but we ended up going to bed just as the power came back on.

I’m so glad we were able to charge our iPhones and iPads. Man, this pilgrim life is hard!