The real trouble hit with the second flight. At this point, Chubz has had 2 tiny cat naps and was going on 10 hours of practically no sleep and went off hysterically, with a brand new founded banshee/mandrake screech, for an hour straight of the 2.5 hour connecting flight. The piercing kind that, even as her parents, neither of us could handle her for more than a few minutes at a time before having to hot potato her in fear of breaking, let alone everyone around us. So between cursing ourselves for doing this to her (please do not confuse with regrets, No Ragrets), and trying to sink out of sight as far into our seats as possible, we eventually griped her again (not even 1/5tsp this time) but enough so we could all pass the eff out for the last hour in order to not kill each other. Again, worked instantly.
Landing was smooth, and aside from them almost losing our car seat and us inquiring/convincing them that we did in fact have one, we got our luggage (the very last one on the conveyer belt, of course). Chubz was now super cute again so we decided we’ll keep her after all, although weary of the fact that we need to get her napping ASAP.
We went to get our rental car and turns out we’ve been sleep deprived much longer than just this flight as we booked the car for the day before and they assumed we were no shows so they gave it away... thankfully, one look at the baby, and they made it work.
We were given directions to our car multiple times and we still managed to make up our own and go to an entirely different floor/end of the garage. Nevertheless, these 2.5 lost puppies got their car, took a bunch of wrong turns that added 10 min each to the ETA, forgot to message the host upon landing, but eventually made it to the Airbnb and met up with said host who came sprinting. He was fantastic in every way!
After giving us the rundown of the place and the city, we were relieved it was raining since we didn’t feel guilty saying “screw it” and laying down for a 1-turned-3 hour family nap. This nap turned all 3 of us around entirely so we went looking for food and wandered downtown Lisbon for a little while. Our Airbnb couldn’t have been in a better place (although on a hill, and luckily the construction for the street escalator was just completed!). Got a pretty good local gem for some dinner, checked out the lit up downtown square, and although we got a huge second wind, we headed home nevertheless to control our jet leg and get baby down in order to keep our heads on straight and avoid the above fiasco again.
