Sometimes, something that seems to make perfect sense while planning a trip turns out to not make any sense at all once you’re there on the ground in an unfamiliar city.
Case in point: When planning our trip to Portugal I thought that dropping off our rental car at Europcar at Oriente station in Lisbon made sense because then we could just hop on the train and 15 minutes later, we could hop off at Santa Apolonia station, less than a 5 minute walk from the Airbnb apartment that we had booked in the Alfama. WRONG!!
First of all, we discovered on the road in to Lisbon that the GPS couldn’t seem to locate the right Europcar location. We ended up following it out to the Lisbon airport on our first attempt. Then we reprogrammed the GPS for Oriente Station itself, thinking if we drove around we’d eventually see the Europcar office. Also wrong! We drove around in circles in insane traffic for almost an hour before we gave up. We managed to find a parking spot on the very busy Avenida Dom. Joao II and started walking back to Oriente station. On the way, we stopped at the Hotel Tryp Oriente to ask for directions. Even though we weren’t guests there, the concierge was friendly and helpful. She consulted her computer and provided us with directions.
Oriente is a big bustling station and it took a few minutes to get our bearings but with the concierge’s instructions in mind, we eventually found the Europcar office. It was tucked in a corner in the back of the station, off a parking lot and not visible from the street. The manager at Europcar took it all in stride when we explained our situation and sent an older gentleman with us to walk the 4 blocks back to the car and drive it back to the office. He only spoke Portuguese and was very polite to us but his manner seemed to indicate that he was rather bemused by this pair of hapless Canadian tourists. On the plus side, only a very cursory inspection of the vehicle was made, which I understand is not the norm for car rental returns in Portugal. It probably also helped that it was less than an hour until closing on the evening of the biggest holiday long weekend of the summer, which also explains the crazy amount of traffic. I am so proud of my husband for managing to drive through it. This was easily the most stressful incident of our entire trip. We were so exhausted by the experience, we couldn’t cope with trying to figure out the train, so we took a taxi to our apartment in the Alfama. It cost less than ten euros. Taxis are cheap in Lisbon, a fun fact that I recalled reading in Rick Steves’ guide only until after we paid the fare.
Lesson Learned: Airport car rental drop offs are designed to be efficient and easy to find. Transportation to the city is also usually straightforward. Keep this in mind when planning future trips to unfamiliar cities.