At the beginning of July, a notification from one of my best friends popped up on my phone: the text read, “Want to go to Portugal in a few weeks?” I had never seriously considered visiting Portugal before receiving that text, but I responded like anyone offered a break from the daily grind of an office job and the almost unbearable heat of July in Florida would: “Duhhh!”
Over the next few weeks, through lots of messages and long facetime calls, my friend and I worked through the details of our upcoming trip. We wanted it to be spontaneous but being in the middle of a global pandemic made it necessary to plan a few key details.
At first, I was apprehensive about traveling abroad. However after weeks of monitoring COVID-19 cases, staying up to date on local regulations, and reaching out to other travelers who I knew had recently traveled, I felt confident about boarding a plane bound for Lisbon.
After over 10 hours of connecting flights, layover in Paris and attempts to combat the inevitable onset of jetlag, I landed in Lisbon and was taxied to the hotel to meet my friend. Checking into the hotel, the first thing I noticed about traveling during the pandemic was the difference between official regulations and how they were enforced.
In the U.S., the enforcement of COVID-19 regulations varied depending on the location, the type of establishment, and sometimes even the person enforcing them. Luckily for us, Portugal lifted many of its restrictions the day we arrived including local curfews. However we still had to navigate the sometime confusing vaccination and testing requirements.
While many hotels, restaurants and other shops and businesses advertised that customers would need to present a negative COVID-19 test to enter, in practice, our official CDC vaccination cards served as our golden ticket to pretty much everywhere we wanted to go.
Although getting around via public transportation, checking into hotels and Airbnbs and checking out the local cuisine proved to be much less stressful than I had imagined, finding and getting a COVID-19 test within 72 hours of our flight back to the U.S. was another story.
After what seemed like hours of using the one phone we had in our group with an international plan to call different testing sites near us, many of which didn’t speak or offer information in English, we finally found an online registration form for testing offered through a university in Lisbon. While there were some testing sites that presumably would have offered free testing, the promise of a 24-hour result turnaround time convinced us to pay the 60 Euro fee to give us some peace of mind.
Making sure to leave enough time for traffic, we arrived at the testing site on the day of our appointment just in time after accidentally typing the wrong address and being redirected by a kind security guard. The majority of the staff at the testing center spoke at least a little bit of English and the process was quick although highly unpleasant. The nasal swab was the most invasive swab I have had since the beginning of the pandemic – I swear the technician could have touched my brain if she’d swabbed any further.
Although we later panicked when the airline my friend was flying with denied her COVID-19 test because the test type was incorrect, we managed to sort everything out and make it back to the U.S. safe and sound, and most importantly: COVID-19 free.
Although COVID-19 restrictions may be similar across various countries, it’s important to note that my trip to Portugal reflects only my individual experience. If you intend on planning a trip abroad anytime soon, make sure to research restrictions for the country you plan to visit.
Traveling during the pandemic can seem more intimidating than it was in the past, but with a little extra planning and caution, it is still well worth it.
