Mistakes Were Made

In our last post, we were finishing up in Lagos, Portugal and ready to move on to Sevilla, Spain. We were packed, and just relaxing until it was time to order a Bolt to take us less than a mile to the bus station.

What could go wrong?

Well, it all started about 11:45am. Our bus was leaving at 12:30pm, due to reach Sevilla at 3:35pm their time (one hour later time zone). I casually called up the Bolt app to make sure there would be cars in the area when we were ready to leave in about 15-20 minutes.

I looked at our tickets on the Omio app, confirmed our bust station was “Lagos Rotoviário”, and typed that in. Much to my surprise, it showed me the route was 28 minutes long, and went to the nearby town of Lagoa for the Rotoviário.

In a mild panic, I double checked the map for our local bus station. It was listed on the map as Estacion Rossio.

I told Rita the bad news, but luckily since we were all set to go, we still had plenty of time to make our 12:30 bus. We hastily got our things, locked up, and called a Bolt.

One arrived within minutes, and we were on our way.

Twenty-five minutes later, we arrived at the Lagoa Rotoviário. A small station in the middle of a loop where two empty buses were parked and nothing else was going on at all. There was one couple there who were waiting for a 12:50 to Lisbon, but that was it.

A little concerned, I went to check at the station.

It was closed.

Next I started looking at all of the signs and the schedules taped to the windows.

Not a single mention of the Alsa bus line, or the destination of Seville.

By now it was 12:25pm, and I was starting to think I may have made a big mistake. I pulled up our tickets again, and they clearly said “Rotoviário”, not Rossio. I looked up the original confirmation email, and it also said Rotoviário. Finally, I clicked on the attachment and looked at the invoice itself.

It said Rotoviário Rossio.

I looked back at the tickets, which didn’t just say Rotoviário, they said Lagos Rotoviário, and I started to feel very foolish.

I looked up Rotoviário in Google Translate, and found that it means “bus driver” or “highway”, depending on whether you use “a” or “á” when spelling it.

When I typed in “estacion Rotoviário” in the Bolt app, it brought up Lagoa Rotoviário first because of that pesky alphabetic order. Lagos Rotoviário would have been next on the list. In fact, I later found its full name was Lagos Rotoviário Rossio.

Needless to say, we could not make it back to Lagos in five minutes to catch our bus, so we were now out the cost of the bus tickets, the Bolt to Lagoa, and now the Bolt back to Lagos.

On the ride back to Lagos I searched the Omio app for alternatives, and did find a bus from Lagos to Sevilla that would leave at 3:35pm and reach Sevilla at 9:15pm.

So much for picking up some breakfast supplies and finding a nice dinner. Our AirBnB was right next to a supermarket, but it was closing at 9:30, which we would definitely not make. Even worse, it was closed on Sunday, so it wouldn’t be open the next day either.

Worse, the price Omio was asking for the two tickets was €64, which seemed a little steep since our original tickets were €36. We decided to wait until we were back at the right bus station and buy them at the counter, so we could be sure we were in the right place.

Sure enough, at the counter back in Lagos at the correct station we were told we could indeed buy two tickets for the 3:35pm bus to Sevilla for €46. Good lesson there, sometimes it may be better to buy our tickets at the counter rather than online.

So there we were, back in Lagos with our suitcases, and homeless. It was not quite 1pm, so we would have to wander around, dragging our bags for 2 1/2 hours.

At least the weather was nice.

I was a bit peeved at myself for making such a rookie error, but we weren’t despondent. We would still get to Sevilla, we would still have a room, and we could probably find a convenience store or something to get some milk and eggs for the morning.

To waste our time in comfortable surroundings, we took advantage of something we’ve noticed about restaurants in Europe – really, everywhere we’ve been except the US. To wit, if you do not ask for the check, they will not bring it to you or ask you to leave.

So we walked a few blocks back to a city square across the street from the marina, found a restaurant called “Momma Mia” that had outdoor seating under a large sunshade, and parked ourselves.

We ordered a beer each, which we proceeded to linger over until about 1:30, at which point I ordered another round. We watched the people passing by around us and chatted, stretching that second beer out until after 2pm. Time to go into the restaurant and use the bathroom, then on the way out ask the waiter if we could order food.

A pizza and a salad (and another beer) were delivered to us by 2:15, and it was no problem at all to stretch the meal out until just past 3pm. Finally we asked for the check, made one more bathroom stop for the road, and walked back to the station just as our bus was pulling up.

We put our bags in the storage area, found our seats, and were soon on the way to Spain, setting out just about the same time our original bus would have been arriving at the Seville station.

Our Bolt driver in Seville played a little hide and seek with us, but we did make it to our new home before 10pm, but too late for the grocery store. As expected, we did find a convenience store just a few blocks away, so we were able to pick up milk, eggs, yogurt, fruit and breakfast meat for our stay.

The moral of the story? Mistakes were made, but we’ve been traveling enough not to let it get us too wound up. Yes I was a bit mad at myself and we didn’t get that first meal in Seville, but we did make the best of it by having a relaxing and slightly intoxicating late lunch in Lagos while we waited.

The big question – would Seville be worth the effort it took to get there? Watch for future posts to find out!

Don’t forget you can find pictures and videos of Lagos and many other destinations on our Travel Photos pages, Instagram and YouTube.