We could relax this morning, since we were catching the 11:00 bus #207 to the Campanhã station, to catch the train to Lisbon.
They call it Lisboa.
I got the tickets yesterday morning. Should have looked at the tickets when I bought them. But it always works, right?
So, after a wonderful breakfast, nice goodbye to our new friends from Montreal, Norman and Maria, and hugs all around from the guesthouse owner, we got to the station on time.
The train is not on the departures board.
They are always listed, that’s how you now what track to go to.
I double check, then head to the window.
“Pardon, I can’t find our train?”
The lady studies the tickets, frowns, and says, “No wonder, they train was yesterday.”
I won’t repeat what went through my head.
Nice lady, she talked to a supervisor and they swapped out the tickets for another train today, fifteen minutes slower, but it gets to Lisboa.
“No more trades!” she warns me, and underlines the departure time.
We have an hour and a half to kill, so out of the station, across the street and we pick out a little café. Nothing special, red umbrellas was what caught our eye. We set up at a table, Gail got out her book, I started writing and we ordered two glasses of wine.
I almost fell over when the bill was €0,70 per glass.
Seventy cents.
We missed the train, hell, at €0,70 a pop, let’s celebrate. So we ordered another round.
About the time we were going to leave, the kitchen and wait staff hauled an older lady out of the restaurant, one of them talking frantically on the phone. The lady had a stroke inside, and they had called the ambulance. Gail and I cleared out right then, knowing they would need our space to take care of her.
Sad to say, I have been around for a few stroke victims, and she did not look good.
On the rain, an older couple gets on, sits across from us, huge suitcase in the middle of the aisle (they have racks for that stuff at each end of the car).
He whips out like some Sony knockoff of an iPad Mini, hooks it up to a speaker and starts blasting the car with operatic, Portuguese? Spanish? music while his wife shouts into her Almost-An-iPhone-But-Not.
Everybody, I mean the whole car, is glaring at them, kilometer after kilometer.
To his credit, he is dressed in an impeccable grey suit, she has on an elegant silk dress, and they look like they are heading to the opera. And, he did turn it off after a few, obviously touching numbers.
On one particularly touching number they sang along (Loose usage of the word “sang” here. Moaned along?) with the music. It was sort of sweet, and yet annoying at the same time. The glares turned to smiles, then back to glares.
Still.
Did you know they have invented these little speaker gizmos, that you stick in your ear, and the sound shoots direct into your brain?
Well, I have not yet mentioned the email I got two days ago.
From the guesthouse in Lisbon.
The one I reserved a room in back in March.
That was five months ago. I had my pick of rooms, not a single one was taken, so I chose the best room, for our last relaxing three night stay before flying out.
Can you see it coming?
They double booked the room, and sorry: they can’t put us up the first night.
Seriously?
They have a friend with a boutique hotel, just over a ways, they will book us there for the night.
I suggested, rather forcefully, that they move the other people out, the ones who booked after me. You see, I have a guaranteed reservation. And I was first.
But no, we will have to move. Or we can find another place of course.
But I am thinking, I don’t want to waste my hours in Porto searching for a last minute room at who knows where...
Now this bothers me on a couple levels.
First, we did have the room first. And when you book a room, it has all these conditions, right? If you cancel it costs 10%. If you don’t show you pay all of it. On and on. So I am tied into it… they should be as well.
Second, in the past six years, over 100 guesthouses and hotels and all, only one time have we had to change rooms for a day, and the owner totally covered it.
Third, I on purpose booked this room, in this guesthouse, for three days so we could unpack and pack just one last time. It is kind of a hassle always moving around.
So we are headed to a place I know nothing about yet: Lapa82. We’ll see.
-Later that same day-
When the train got to Lisboa, we walked out and grabbed a cab for the short, 4KM drive to the guesthouse. It took us 40 minutes.
Not only was it a maze to get there, but the traffic was at a standstill; utter gridlock. The cabbie sighed and fidgeted, and you could see his temper rising. I knew the ride was supposed to cost about €10 and the meter was creeping up and up.
But, when it hit €11, he turned, sighed, shrugged and then turned off the meter, and still took us the rest of the way.
I tipped him because I could see he was losing money on this one. Forty minutes. Ugh.
We walked into a peaceful little place, on a quiet side street up a hill. It looks like a residential area, with a San Francisco type electric trolly line running right outside the window. Our room has French doors, with a balcony, and on the balcony you can look left down to the water, right up the hill around a curve, and straight ahead, down the cross street is…
The American Ambassador’s Residence.
Uh-oh.
I ducked back into the room before they could see me taking photos. I have had run ins the past couple years when I tried to take a photo of an American Embassy; in Prague they greeted me at gunpoint.
The room is pretty nice, and the lady who runs it is determined that we will get out and have a great meal. We haven’t eaten since breakfast, so that sounds good to us.
We asked where she goes with her friends, she thought a little and then with a couple suggestions written down we set out.
Lisbon seems to be shaped kind of like a square, with a deep, U shaped valley running through the middle, down to the Rio Tejo. The Tejo River is really wide here, like a bay, dumping out to the Atlantic just to the west of us. So Lisbon is hilly, but it is sure not as steep or convoluted as Porto. But it is bigger, so we are walking further distances.
We head up the hill, following the trolly tracks around a curve and another to a cathedral. It is Saturday, one bride is exiting the church to cheers, as another stands to the side with her party, waiting to enter. Cut through a beautiful, lush park, straight down a long hill to the busy intersection called Rato.
This is a good landmark; several roads hit here and there is the occasional sign pointing to it. The street lights around here all have little golden ships on them, the Caravels that were sailed by the Portuguese as they conquered the world. You see this symbol everywhere in the city.
There are four main neighborhood areas in Lisbon we are interested in: the Bairro Alto, the Baixa Chiado, and the Alfama are the older, tangled street type districts that twist and turn their way down the U valley sides, heading to the waterfront. Then there is the Anjos, with newer buildings, monuments, and a grand boulevard like the Champs Élysées, called Avenida da Liberdad.
We are heading into the Bairro Alto tonight, looking for a little square, the Praça Luis Camões and a small tapas bar. Part way down we come across a park, on a balcony hanging out over the lower city of Lisbon. There is a nice view down and across and back up at the castle perched on the far side. The waterfront is at the mouth of the valley, out to our right side. It is pretty, but none of the rough and tumble steepness and mess of Porto. It looks newer, more tame.
Visually, I prefer Porto.
The Taberna da Rue Das Flores. The Tavern on Flores Street. We walk in almost right at 7:00 and are the second couple seated in a small, very intimate, almost dark little bar. There are ten tables, the wine list and menu are written on chalkboards, which they carry over to the table and explain what they have tonight. Every dish is small sized, and there are a dozen selections, and the terrible news is that they all sound wonderful.
I choose two and Gail chooses two, we ask for a wine recommendation and, after listening to what we like, the waiter makes a suggestion of a local bottle that turns out to be very good.
Well, within five minutes of sitting down, the place was packed full and there were people standing outside, waiting to get in. I will skip ahead and tell you we sat and ate and drank for two and a half hours, and the line never left, and people stood and waited and waited for a table to open up.
But here is the secret, if you ever want to eat here and there is a line: offer to sit and eat on the staircase. They will let you, and so OK, it is not a table, but you do get to eat.
So here is what we had, and you will have to look at the photos for the presentation:
Mackerel (raw) on seaweed with a sesame teriyaki sauce, little salty shrimps and tomatoes. The seaweed was excellent with the fish, not so good alone. Interesting taste combination, almost like raw tuna.
Sweet shrimps. They were sweet and spicy.
Codfish cakes, which is a local specialty called Pastes de Bacalhau. Everybody has them. They were very light in taste, battered almost like crispy, panko bread crumbs.
Figs with warm goat cheese. I liked them, more on the cheese part and less on the fig part.
About now I was thinking to myself, thank god I have been starving all day, because this food is great and I am really hungry.
So we ordered more:
Green Beans, breaded and fried, with chili dipping sauce. Kind of like crunchy french fries, but beans. Gail loved these the best, saying “Oh my god” about ten times after each one.
Spare ribs in red wine and garlic. So tender. Gail enjoyed this as well, and we both thought Jeff would really like it.
People are standing outside, wanting our table. Most of the people who came in after us have eaten and left. We look at our waiter, he smiles and brings the board over again. “Take your time” says he.
Spicy chicken and it was a spicy sauce, and they were kind of like chicken wings. Gail had one nibble then ordered more water.
For dessert we had a Crème Brûlée made with the local almond liquor.
We finally rolled out the door. Boy, was that a fun meal.
It was almost ten by now, the night was very busy, and we figured we should probably walk off a little of the meal, so we started to wander the streets of the Bairro. There are a million restaurants tucked in here and there, most are small places with lines of people waiting outside. We felt lucky to have a recommendation for one, because it would have been really hard to just choose one from all the selection.
The streets have little fuzzy colored rope-banners hanging over them so it looks really festive, most of the boutique stores are open, and so it is a nice walk. Fado singers, who sing sad songs about the tragedy of the ocean and sailors, their voices waft out from the bars, echoing in the alleys.
Up, down, back, forth, eventually we are dumped back out near our entrance point.
I lead us over a ways, and we stumble across a famous old coffee shop the Café A Brasileira. I stop in for a €0,70 cup of espresso at the bar.
We head off, down the hill, down a main street and now we are on the Avenida da Liberdad. This is where the huge white marble buildings stand shoulder to shoulder, the monuments rise down the middle of the grassy park, fountains shoot water. Big name, rich type fancy stores are here, full of glittery stuff, most of them have a guard by the door. Straight down the street, we are at the very bottom of the wide valley, the city rises on the hills on either side of us.
We come across the Hard Rock Café. I like to stop at the Hard Rock when we find one, because each one has a shirt that is unique to its city. The Paris Hard Rock has a logo shirt with the Eiffel Tower made out of a guitar, the Amsterdam Hard Rock shirt has a guitar windmill.
This is the only Hard Rock in Portugal, and there were none in our part of Spain or Morocco. So I head in the door...
As we entered the Hard Rock, something happened that was a first for us ever, in the United States or Europe: a pick pocket tried to get into Gail’s backpack.
We usually walk with her just to the side and a little ahead of me, but this time I was already in the door when she felt a tug on her pack. She turned and stared at the guy behind her, who just stared straight ahead. The security guy told Gail to zip up her pack; she looked and the middle compartment was partially unzipped but nothing was gone. She turned back, but the guy was gone.
After she told me what happened, I stepped back out with her, and we looked for the guy. I was going to start photographing him. But he was gone.
We bought the shirt, and started home. I wanted to walk more, but Gail was a little jumpy now, so we decided to pretty well head straight home.
We head over to go up, out of the valley. There is a funicular (a cog train that climbs a track up steep hills) but I look at the cost and we walk up instead. It takes us five minutes, and the funicular never moves the entire time. What a waste of €4 that would have been. Along the way we pas a series of painted murals depicting the 1974 Revolution to overthrow the dictator.
We are up by the view balcony from earlier, and now it is just a matter of retracing our route home.
We make it by midnight:30, and tonight Gail falls right asleep while I stay up a little, thinking and staring out from the balcony.