Our final day in Lisbon...

...or so we thought.

We had a final wonder around Lisbon and went to our favourite little cafe for breakfast before wading to the airport at lunchtime.
When we arrived at the airport our flight was showing on the board and we proceeded to check in with our e-tickets. Then the confusion and frustration began. Apparently they couldn't find us in the system even though we had our tickets. Then it transpires that the whole flight had been cancelled! We weren't informed and so the race/battle began to try and get us home.

First person: your only option is to fly to Madrid and then (I didn't catch what he said) somewhere else and then back to Brussels but you can't do that until Monday evening.

Us: that is not an acceptable option. We have work on Monday.

Second person: all flights to Brussels are full today except for ' x ' airline. You can pay for new tickets. It will cost you 1770 euros.

Us: that is ridiculous and not an acceptable option for us.

Third person: (after much much complaining from us as we were not informed of the cancellation) tells us that we can lodge an official complaint with the EU and that we are eligible for compensation. She was very reluctant to give us the forms though. She now tells us that our absolutely only option is to fly to Milan tomorrow afternoon wait for four hours and then fly to Brussels returning at midnight. We were clearly upset by this stage and she gave us some vouchers for a slap up lunch while we thought about what we were going to do.

The kids were amazing throughout all of this and I found I gained strength from them to try and make the best of the situation. Over lunch we decided we seemed to have no option but to fly to Milan tomorrow which would mean we had to cancel the Halloween party that we were having tomorrow. The kids were so good about it even though they'd talked about it all holiday.

We returned to the customer service desk to find that the 'third person' had finished her shift so we had to explain the situation to someone else.

Fourth person: there is a direct flight tomorrow morning at 07:05am that I can get you on. We will put you up in the Marriott hotel this evening and organise all transport and food for you for free.

Us: !?! We'll take it!