Volcano and the Pope

It seems odd to have these two in the same sentence but they both caused major problems for my return from Portugal back to Paris. Luckily I was still able to catch my flight out of Lisbon but it was iffy for awhile there. As of Sunday all flights out of Lisbon were cancelled. So I started looking into other options. Basically at the time, my only option was to take a train to the French border then catch another train up to Paris. Might I just add that it was going to cost me 67 euros from Lisbon, all through Portugal and Spain to the French border. Then it was going to cost another 97 euros from the French border to Paris. I knew the French were greedy but really?? I can cross 2 other countries for 2/3 of the price to not even cross the whole of France. Anyways back to the travels themselves. So this 2hour train ride left Lisbon everyday at 4pm. I had to work on Wednesday so I was going to need to take the Monday train. Unfortunately it was already full as of Sunday morning (which actually ended up being a good thing). So I booked a ticket for the Tuesday train, which meant I was going to miss work on Wednesday. However, Tuesday morning, as of 8am, my flight was scheduled to go so I headed to the train station to try and return my train ticket. It took FOREVER for me to get there since with my luck, the Pope was arriving that day to give mass in the main square. Of course, most of the buses weren’t running in the area I needed to go and neither were the metro, thus I walked for almost 45 minutes to get to the train station. Luckily, when I got there I was able to return my ticket. As I was doing so, a lady at another window was looking to buy a train ticket to Paris. So instead of me being charged the 10% administration fee, I got a full 163,20 Euros refund. But they wouldn’t put the money back on my credit card, he just gave me cash, it was a little odd. However, I then had to walk another 45 minutes just to get back to the hostel. I then noticed that people were starting to line up along a street near the hostel. When I asked the guy at the hostel why, he said because the Pope was going to be driving down the road next to the hostel. Great, what did that mean for the buses? I.e. how do I get to the airport? Luckily I gave myself some extra time. I waited for 30 minutes for a bus. The cool thing though is that I got to see the Pope, well his Pope-mobile anyways, as there were a lot of people between me and him and he definitely didn’t go slowly at all. I feel bad for all those people who lined up for at least an hour because it literally took 3 seconds for him to pass by.
However, once at the airport things weren’t over yet. I got to check-in with an hour before it closed but hadn’t paid for my checked bag so I was checked-in but had to go to the ticket office to pay. Unfortunately the ticket office only had 2 windows open and was the same place where people were transferring their missed flights due to the volcano the previous day. Needless to say I waited for about 45 minutes then finally I went to the window (simply to ask if I was actually in the right place) and the lady saw the baggage voucher I had and since I was paying in cash she took me right away. Sweet!!! So I returned to the check-in desk, got my boarding pass, headed to the long line at security and finally made it to my gate as they were calling for final boarding. So in the end it all worked out. Plus, despite the ticket office telling people the flight was full I had an entire 3 seat row to myself!!! Another wild adventure!