I got shaken awake at 2 a.m. last Thursday, alerted by my spouse that we needed to rush to the airport, pay any price for a ticket home and immediately evacuate Portugal — canceling half our vacation after a year of hoarding pennies.

Either that or get stranded in Europe for 30 days.

By morning, with clearer heads, we realized this news wasn’t so dire. So we decided to risk staying five more days in a foreign country despite a nonstop news barrage warning of travel bans, lockdowns, CDC screenings, canceled flights, jam-packed airports and general chaos.

We were right, and we were lucky. We made it home through all of that.

I’ll tell you how from the safety of my living room in Raleigh, where I am now under quarantine with my wife, teenage son, beagle and overweight cat. We survived airport security in three countries, made it through customs, got our temperatures taken by strangers at midnight and got clearance to come home together — provided we stay put for 14 days.

We’ll manage. Neighbors keep dropping bread and soup at the front door.

Europe not panicked

One big reason for staying is that Europe did not freak out — at least not last week. The tuk-tuk drivers in Lisbon apologized for not shaking hands, and many restaurant tables sat empty in the Algarve beach towns.

But the Portuguese we met did not spend all day scanning their iPhones for updates, and the waiters all dished out grilled octopus and vinho verde like any other Wednesday. We saw the Portuguese president on television, urging calm and demonstrating how to use hand sanitizer.

We figured: Why join the panic? We’re here. Maybe we’ll get stuck. Let’s walk on the beach at low tide and have barnacles for lunch. We’ll freak out later.

Then on Monday morning, we said a last goodbye to Lisbon’s tiled sidewalks, yellow trolleys, 12th-century cathedral and Fado singers, walking into the maelstrom of international travel.

Expecting delays

We braced for hell, but we didn’t need to.

We knew in advance that we’d need to fly to one of 13 airports nationwide where CDC screeners are working, and Dulles International in northern Virginia seemed the best and closest bet. This was easily changed at no cost with a call to the airline — our first surprise.

But news stories about Dulles estimated getting past those screeners would take four to six hours, so we expected to be standing in line overnight.

We breezed through the Lisbon airport, where about half the travelers wore masks and the restaurants required all customers to sit at least one table apart.

London was trickier. The electronic passport reader was rejected many passengers, including my whole family, because of a computer glitch. That sent us into a second long line. Also, Heathrow Airport is the biggest and most confusing I’ve ever experienced. We got lost twice.

But still, the pubs were packed with people gorging themselves on fish and chips, washing it all down with pints of ale.

Where was the chaos? We figured it waited for us in America.

The only moment of European panic came on the runway flying out of London, where the captain explained we were delayed by an “operational issue.” He later explained that issue was a passenger on-board who was too sick to travel, and the passengers around us all set down their free glasses of wine.

For the first time on the whole trip, we put on our masks.

But, we later learned from plane scuttlebutt, the traveler in question had a stomach bug seemingly unrelated to the virus.

The health screening

Even in normal times, passing through customs can be a formidable chore. But in the middle of an international pandemic, it’s like running a marathon on a broken toe.

We were lucky to arrive at midnight on a Monday. Had we joined the panic and rushed home on Thursday, we’d have been crushed by a moving wall of anxious vacationers.

Only about 300 people waited in our customs line, but only two agents were working. And for all of our 90-minute wait, we stood just inches apart. Social distance is impossible in a customs line. If any of us caught coronavirus, I’d wager we caught it there.

We cleared customs near 1 a.m., but learned to our immense disappointment that another line awaited for CDC screening. Luckily again, most of our fellow passengers were flying on to other cities, so this took no time at all.

The screenings themselves don’t provide much of a barrier to the virus spreading. Five workers sat at a table, and they asked us if we had encountered any sick people — no — or if we felt sick ourselves — no again. Then they held a thermometer to our foreheads and took our temperatures with just a click.

All normal.

Free to go.

Next.

So by my reckoning, this screening can catch only obviously sick people. Unless I’m wrong, nobody knows yet how long it takes symptoms to show up. So if we caught the virus yesterday, or especially on the plane, nobody would know.

Thus the quarantine.

We were worried it would be so strictly enforced that we wouldn’t even be able to drive back to Raleigh, stopping at gas stations and such, or that we would be unable to fill our empty refrigerators.

But they told us all to “try” and self-quarantine, so we grabbed a motel room in northern Virginia, fetched our car and beagle from Baltimore in the morning and drove home Tuesday.

Here we shall remain, fridge filled with whatever Food Lion had left.

Again, we’ll be fine.

While we work from home, we’ll have fresh dreams of octopus and wine, of Moorish castles and Vasco de Gama sailing around the horn of Africa, and of being unafraid to venture out into the dangerous world.

Josh Shaffer

The News & Observer

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Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.