The last day of the TC2. All that remained was getting back to Florida.
Easier said than done,
We checked out of the hotel and used Marlene’s credit card to pay the incidental expenses. I discovered after the fact that I could have used my stolen Visa card because I had not, as I thought, frozen it and the hotel had it on file. But no charges had been made on it or any of my other cards, all of which were frozen.
The hotel – Hotel Nuevo Madrid – was very good, overall. Very new, very clean with a nice bar and restaurant and a spectacular 12-story atrium. The only significant knock on it was the lack of USB ports. It would have been nice to be able to recharge our phones without getting a 220V/110V adapter. The shower, which was superb, offered only some weird combo shampoo/body wash substance. Adequate but not ideal.
But, overall, a very fine hotel. And WAY better than the Travelodge in Barcelona. Surprisingly, the two hotels were priced similarly at about $190 per night.
We took a bus to the Metro then added the 3-euro supplement to our tickets to get to the airport. The Metro got us to the airport in under 30 minutes. But finding the check-in counter was difficult. We followed signs to Terminal 2, but discovered that the Madrid airport is odd in that the check-in and boarding areas are separated. We had to retrace our steps and try again. When we found the check-in we showed our passports and Marlene showed her duplicate naturalization certificate and they scratched their heads a bit but said everything would be ok and we should come back in a couple of hours because we were too early to check in.
The duplicate naturalization certificate. Marlene, who is a naturalized American citizen, has never had a US passport. She applied for one on Feb 28 and the estimated processing time then was 6 to 9 weeks. Well, 6 weeks was the start of the TC2 and 9 weeks was the end of the TC2. Either way it seemed pertty certain that there would be a passport in existence when we needed to return to the states. When the post office guy who took the application told Marlene that the original of the naturalization certificate needed to be attached to the application, she balked, saying that not having the original could be a problem. Oh, no, said the postal guy. No problem. I didn’t think it would be an issue because I was certain that the US passport would be issued before we returned.
Well, I was wrong on all counts. A check on the status of the passport application, on the evening of Day 19, showed that it was “in progress” and the processing estimate had been changed to 10 to 12 weeks due to “high demand.” So we had to get back to the US using a duplicate naturalization certificate that the postal guy had promised would not be a problem.
It was a problem.
We went to a cafe, had a bite to eat (a local staple – an Iberian-ham-on-baguette sandwich – good bread, mediocre ham), played some rummy, then headed back to the check-in counter expecting a smooth check-in.
Wrong. The attendant called a supervisor over, she looked at the copy of the naturalization certificate, started calling and texting and informed us that Marlene would need a visa. Yeah – a visa to return to her own country! We objected, of course, but she said that it was US immigration service that was demanding the visa and she could do nothing about it. Our options were to go to the American embassy to obtain said visa (which couldn’t be done until Wednesday because Tuesday was still a national holiday) or to get an online “ESTA” visa for $21. We opted for the ESTA (though Marlene was in favor of the embassy, on the general principle that she should not have to pay to get a visa to get home). I prevailed and we applied for the ESTA. And was informed that it might take up to 72 hours to be approved. That was not what we wanted to hear, but the TAP people said it usually took just an hour. So we cooled our heels for a very anxious 90 minutes and got approved.
Back to the check-in counter and presented the ESTA. We were then informed that we would also need to purchase a return ticket for Marlene, to be used if she was denied entry into the US. Our outrage fell on deaf ears (though the guy that bore the brunt of Marlene’s outrage was not deaf and came within an inch of banning her from ANY TAP flight). I was able to get Marlene calmed down then started looking for flights. The cheapest flight back to Lisbon was about $550, non-refundable. But a non-refundable ticket would be a waste as it wouldn’t be used. How much was a refundable ticket? OVER $3,000! The limit on Marlene’s credit card – the only one available since the loss of my wallet – was $2,000 so that was not an option. So I bought a non-refundable ticket, remembering that a ticket can always be cancelled within 24 hours. So get on the plane, get to Lisbon then cancel the ticket. Stupid, but necessary to get on the plane.
After booking the ticket – for a flight that left just an hour after we were scheduled to arrive and was therefore infeasible in practical terms – I asked the check-in supervisor what the requirements were for this required return ticket. She said “within 80 days”. I asked if she got a ticket for two months in the future and was denied entry whether she would be able to stay in the airport for 2 months. They looked at me like I had 2 heads. Apparently it was a question they had never heard before. They also looked at the ticket and started questioning whether a return flight that left an hour after arrival was adequate. I got angry at that point, saying that I had asked specifically what the requirements were and was told only “within 80 days” and “not to Canada or Mexico”. I said if there was a requirement as to how soon the flight could leave they should have mentioned it before I booked it. The supervisor got back on the phone, talked for about 10 minutes and finally said, reluctantly, that the ticket was acceptable.
There was also the issue that we had missed our original flight to Lisbon. At one point it was suggested that we would have to purchase two more tickets. I got pretty angry at that, too, as the airline was the one that made us miss the flight. But that threat turned out to be false. They did have to call the central TAP office to get approval to move us to a later flight without a charge, but that was approved.
We were given boarding passes for a 10:15pm flight, just 5 hours later than the 5pm flight we expected to be on. When I booked the trip home originally I was concerned about the VERY long layover in Lisbon – nearly 17 hours. But after all the delays in Madrid I was glad that the layover was so long as I didn’t have to worry about missing the flight to Miami. After the mess in Madrid the layover was down to 12 hours.
Even though we had boarding passes, I was relieved when we were on the plane and it started moving. I felt like we were being evacuated from Saigon.
We had a long, mostly sleepless night in the airport in Lisbon. All thoughts of leaving the terminal had vanished by the time we arrived, so we hunkered down in chairs that had USB ports so we could recharge our phones. In the morning, an hour before boarding the Miami flight, I cancelled the return ticket.
We had to go through passport control again, but that was no problem as they were just keeping track of who was leaving the EU. When we got to the gate the people who heard our story were puzzled. They were in agreement that the visa and the ticket were both unnecessary. But when we got to the final checkpoint – processing our boarding passes – the guy asked if we had shown the return ticket to “the guy up front”, meaning, I think, the guy who had told us that no return ticket was needed. We lied and said we had (even though no ticket existed at that point) and they let us on the plane.
It seems that NO ONE really knew how to handle Marlene’s odd situation.
The 9-hour flight to Miami was very smooth. We passed the time by playing rummy, eating the 2 meals that we were given and watching movies (a choice of about 100 on demand). We also had a “hunky” (in Marlene’s view) flight attendant who kept her distracted.
I figured that once Marlene was back in the US there was zero chance that she would be deported. But it wasn’t easy, either. We were escorted into a secure area (which angered Marlene as she felt she was being treated like a criminal) and made to wait 30 minutes while they checked her fingerprints against those they had on file from her naturalization. They matched and we were let go.
We were never asked to produce either a visa or a return ticket. So the claim by TAP that those requirements came from US immigration seems to have been pure hogwash.
We called her brother Mike then spent an hour in Au Bon Pain having good coffee (which we had been unable to find in Spain). He picked us up and drove us to his place where my Toyota was waiting. We socialized for an hour, then drove 2 hours home.
A VERY long, stress-filled end to TC2.