Portugal 2018 The Phone

I left my iphone plugged into the wall in Logan airport in Boston. I discovered the loss on the plane. Tore everything apart and finally resigned myself to the loss.

We land about 6am. I now spend the first night in an airbnb in Lisbon in a great bar area called Bairro Alto. Out of need to demonstrate 71 year old monchoness, I use the metro to get to my lodging. There is a metro station at the airport. I’m getting fairly good at remembering to push the english button on the metro card machine and feeding it the money and answers it wants. I even know what the “end” station is on the line I am taking so that I can get on going the right way! Luckily I have communicated with the owner and have chosen a metro stop and the route of my 15 minute “pull”. Of course, without my cell phone map and notes, this is going to be over the top. And it is raining.

By “pull” I mean dragging my belongings. I have a large umbrella. I wear a heavy back pack. A good rolly suitcase. And a yellow sailing slicker which has a fleece jammed down one sleeve and a light wind breaker down the other. In “pulling” I put the slicker on top of the rolly and hold the umbrella in the other hand. There is no room for the fleese and wind breaker in any of the luggage, thus their occupancy of the slicker sleeves. I could put them on but that would certainly lead to me sweating through everything.

“Pulling” in Lisbon is terrible not only for the weight but for the sidewalks being made out of cobbles and being only wide enough for one person, let along one person with a huge backpack so he can not turn sideways and a suitcase. I’m slowly making progress and it seems to be in the right direction. I stop in a small cafe, buy a sweet and refresh my understanding of the route from my laptop computer notes. I find a couple people to ask about getting a wifi connection. They direct me to stand outside their hotel and give me the wifi names and password but I can not make it work. On and on. Lisbon is VERY hilly and one has to think long and hard, especially when lost, about going down one of these steep hills as you may have to pull back up!!!

I go down a steep hill and luck out. The street I am after is at the bottom and even better there is a coffee shop that is open and people seem to be using wifi. The waitress asks me to leave the suitcase in the hall but seats me with the other computer people and I order a bowl of food and send email to the airbnb host telling him I am on his street. Others keep arriving and we are packed closer and closer. I send message “sorry Qinyin, LOST my phone so I am sitting at the bottom of your street in the Mill?” and he replies “Hi, Tom. Ahh really? I’m sorry to hear that. The apartment probably could be ready around 10h30. But if it’s been cleaned up early than that, I will come to meet you at Mill. See you soon” In a while I pull up the street to the address and knock. Qinyin is cleaning but willing for me to drop the stuff. I do so, get the key and head for the SMG where I hope they will sell me a new iphone.

It seems that in Lisbon one buys apple phones at the GMS-Store and there is not? an apple store. I have looked this information up and the location while in the Mill. I still have the hills to deal with but I feel light as a feather without the luggage! I do have my computer with me and I am pretty sure I am only wearing a “day pack” with it inside. No idea when I repacked as I do not remember getting in Qinyin’s cleaning way.

I am consolidating my understanding of the Bairro Alto neighborhood. By the end of my 2018 stay, I really felt that I knew my way around. But, this is the beginning, and while I had a general idea where I was going, I was lucky enough to ask a woman who gave me prefect directions. Ths GMS shop looks wonderful. Lots of young free attendants and I threw my self on the mercy of one of them. He informed me that I had to buy the “phone service” elsewhere near by. Said there were 3 equally good carriers in the same near by building. Luckily I knew the building, a kind of indoor mall, from a 2017 forye. He told me that what I was after was a micro sim card. He tried to sell me on replacing my large iPhone 6 plus with the same big screen but I oped to save $300 and go with a smaller older model. (Turns out this was a little short sighted. My fat lazy iphone 6 usedto fingers spent a lot of time undoing my typos)

I entered the fancy mall a few doors up and after a little wondering found a telephone carrier. With some back and forth, we located the person with the right language skills and I walked out with the micro sim and minutes for like $15? I thought I had also gotten 100 minutes of communication with the US but what I had gotten was 100 minutes to use in the US. I texted the family and called that night and after another couple trips to the same phone company office in Lagos was able to buy minutes to call the US.

Back at SMG, we spent about an hour setting up the phone and an istore account. We tried to hook into my icloud
account but proved too hard as the security kept trying to use the lost phone to verify that I was I. I had paid the young man $14 for the “configuration” service and it was well worth it. I had brought my PC so I was able to login to accounts and facilitate some of the configuration.

So I now have a working phone. I have downloaded google maps and the Gala App that I use to record bike tracks. I even got directed successfully to the Delirium Cafe where they sell wonderful Delirium Belgium Beer and we have the first pictures!!

And the phone date/time stamp says it was only 1pm. Time for Lunch!