Good news! I arrived safely in Porto - of course, there were adventures getting here as there always seem to be, but both my new laptop and I made it here this time. Huzzah!
The adventure getting here was that my 2:37pm flight to Newark was first delayed three hours, then ultimately cancelled - which of course, caused me to miss my connection in New York to Porto. Now, had they cancelled the flight in the first place, I could have hopped another flight to Newark - even out of Reagan National if needed, where they leave every hour - and been fine. But that would be far, far too efficient and logical for modern air travel. Instead, I spent the rest of my evening waiting in multiple queues with many irate passengers, just to be told they couldn't help if it was international and go wait in another queue, etc and so forth. To make a very long and rather unhappy experience brief - we'll just say that they finally found me a flight to Frankfurt and then Porto, and still managed to get me to my destination on the same arrival day. Fortunately, the customer service manager - who unlike the other employees was actually very nice and pleasant - also upgraded my first leg to business class, so I was able to get some much needed sleep on the flight over.
Can't say that I did much my first day here - of course, due in part to the fact that I arrived at 7pm in the evening instead of 8am in the morning as I was originally supposed to. The airlines lost my luggage *again* - I swear, my suitcase *LOVES* Frankfurt and always decides to spend the night and have a few pints while there. Of course, I can't say that I really blame it....So this morning, I woke up, put on the t-shirt I had in my carry on (thereby flagging myself as an American tourist, of course), and then trekked back over to the airport to get my suitcase. Safely in hand, my luggage and I returned to the hotel and thought I'd toss up a quick post before actually getting to settle in to my trip.
Today's itinerary (after a change of clothes, of course) is to check in for my conference, and then head across the Duoro to do some port tasting. That post should be a lot more interesting then the travel adventures one I just wrote!
Cheers, more to follow tonight or tomorrow.
And wow...not sure whether to laugh or cry. Here I was, getting all set to go out port tasting and looked at the conference schedule. There's a panel on at 4pm, "Hollowing out the State: Illicit Flows and Criminal Violence" - and I thought "Ooh, I may go to that, should be a good topic for the paper I'm working on." I cannot believe I'm passing up wine tasting to go attend a panel about illegal trafficking! Guess I'm a real academic nerd now.
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