We woke up at 7am and tried to eat all of our remaining food, the bread and cheese etc before packing up and leaving the room by 10am. We walked with our bags to a cafe nearby and had a cappuccino. I also had a lovely mushroom risotto. The risotto was warm and comforting. 

We then walked to the ferry stop a few canals over from our accommodation and waited for the ferry to the airport. The cost was 18 Euro and you can pay online, I am unsure if you can even pay in person, it didn’t seem so. If you fly into and out of Venice however you can save a few euros and get a return ticket at the airport for 36 euro. We showed a man our activated ticket at the pier (a wobbly boat in very choppy water) and he instructed us to scan it at the pier on the airport side. We then got on board. The ride took about 20 minutes through marshy areas that surround Venice and then straight across to the airport which we could actually see from our accommodation. I had never arrived at an airport by boat before and certainly not a boat that got in a traffic jam with two kayaks. 

We arrived at the airport at 12:26am, what a cool experience. 

We scanned our ferry pass and then proceeded to a little cafe right beside the ferry dock. I ordered two campari spritz from a very miserable Italian man and we sat at a super sunny patio set, watching the ships pull in and leave. Some people seem to take a taxi boat to the airport as well, but I am sure that is much more than the 18 euro we paid for the ferry. 

We didn’t enter the airport itself for quite awhile as our flight was at 5pm… or it was supposed to be. We went through security and found out that we wouldn’t know our boarding gate until 4:25( I hate when airports do this, Heathrow is the WORST). We sat down in an available chair and I bought us a mozzarella sandwich to share and a slice of pizza. Later on we ventured to the upper floor of the airport and had two more slices of pizza. We then realised that our flight had been delayed more than two hours. In total we waited at the airport for eight hours. Exhausting. 

Our flight was super full, and we had to take hot buses to the boarding area. Ryan Air is always miserable, but this was pretty specially miserable. A Ryan Air staff member was walking around yelling at people to come weigh their bags. You are only allowed a personal item on the plane, so we tried to hide our tiny school kid backpacks. Thankfully we got on the hot hot bus without having to weigh our bags. We each had an aisle seat and sat across from one another. 

I was only supposed to be a two hour flight, we left at 8pm Venice time and arrived at 11pm (10pm Lisbon time). We then took the bus to arrivals and walked through the airport with zero passport security checks. We purchased metro tickets at the metro station, each adding 10 euro to the pass and then we took the red line to the very very end and transferred to the blue line and took that train to the very end. Each metro station was beautifully designed and decorated. 

We then walked for twenty minutes to our accommodation, up the hilly cobblestone streets of Lisbon, by cafes with singers and colourful streamers. I think I am going to like Portugal! 

We had some difficulty finding our accommodation and getting in , but it was a lovely little apartment on the first floor (second floor in North America) with a small kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom.Very tiny but functional. The best part of the apartment was the little “balcony” with red folding chairs. We walked down to the convenience store and got two beers and a bag of chips to enjoy looking out of our little balcony, unwinding after a draining day of travel.