Leesh-bo-ah

Unfortunately I did not take great notes nor did I even take my camera with me, (totally by acccident) so I will have to rely on my memory (god help us all...) to write about my trip to Lisbon. To begin with, it was a long 5 hour trip to Lisbon from Salamanca... but it was a very interesting trip because 1. we were watching Man In the Iron Mask in Spanish and 2. the scenery is just unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I made sketches of some of beautiful sights we saw along the way including gorgeous arching bridges across the mountain-sides and the seemingly fictional sight of the old side by side with the new. It seemed like most of the trip was through mountains and from the sides of mountains we could see other little hill tops in the distance. Besides the luscious (unbelievably so in the cold weather) leafery and innumerable treetops there were perfectly white plastered houses with red tile rooftops bunched on the tops of these hillsides with the inevitable cathedral or big church close to the top. To the sides of the villages, it was interestingly commong to have huge wind turbines reaping precious energy from the ferocious winds that at times threatened to topple our precariously speeding bus. Sometimes there would even be a castle-like structure in the middle of the clay-topped homes... it looked absolutely like a disney movie, there ought to be a dragon flying in at any moment. Alas, not it was not a disney movie and we carried on our trip for several more hours before arriving in Lison, which reminded me of a non-sketchy version of Richmond, VA.

A large flat surface surrounded by mountains, Lisbon, being the capital of Portugal, was very business like with many buses, many people, and many shops. There were also lots of absolutely gorgeous sites to visit, which I will describe shortly. When we arrived at the hotel, it was less than expected and it was a lot of work to check in 25 people since they had to take all our passport info down as a government ordered measure of all hotels and the only portuguese speaker in our group was taking care of all of it. Poor Filipe worked hard but eventually we all got it done. The hotel looked like kind of a hole in the wall, red brick front expanding vertically with a rather narrow entrance in the front. Once you go in there’s a pleasant reception area and on each floor is a number of rooms and on the top floor there is a lovely breakfasting area which in the morning hosted a juice machine, fresh soft rolls, hard crusty rolls, ham, cheese, fruit spreads, butter (delicious on the crusty rolls) and a coffee machine. After briefly planning and talking to the very nice man at the front desk who seemed to appreciate the little bits of Portuguese that we knew, we decided to use a tour bus to visit the sights we knew we were interested in. I was skeptical about the cost of the tour bus but we went on our way out to the nearest bus stop and waited. And waited. It took a good 15 minutes of standing around a giant very interesting statue in the middle of a traffic circle before the double decker open top blue tour bus pulled up.
The tour bus as it turns out had a closed top but lots of windows so we could look out at every but not get cold, and furthermore it had a multilingual free tour guide audio thing that played Portuguese music in between narrations. Katie, Kristin and I (K cubed, if you will) made our first stop by the seashore where sat the Torre de Belém. Hundreds of years old and functioning as a lookout tower and prison at various times, it is a formidibal fortress, dominated by a large castle-like tower. More important than the tower though was the view and surroundings. Again I tasted the bitter saltiness and cleanliness of the wind and felt peace. Open sea... which means fresh fish! We walked up that tall tower for a spectacular view which was hopefully encapsulated in my Oktograph, or whatever that awesome 8-pictures/exposure camera my sister gave me is named. After seeing that and a short walk, we found the Monasterio de los Jerónimos which is HUGE. The first thing we came across was the nice garden in front of it, which sported a giant pool-sized fountain and several quarters of a nicely pruned and arranged garden. The first part we walked into was the cathedral part of the monastery what was a good example of European cathedrals: giant picturesque stone structures studded by incredibly ornate carvings and surrounded by reverent enclaves decorated and dedicated towards some particular saint with candles, paintings and other beautiful artwork. Another factor of European cathedrals that it exemplified was the usage as a sort of mausoleum, whereas this particular cathedral was the resting place of Portugal’s famous navigator: Vasco de Gama. The structure of the monastery was similar to the Louvre with the center and two long arms stretching out. In the middle, though it had cloister gardens instead of a big glass pyramid. In the building there was also an archaelogical museum with old pots, graves, and stone structures, and also a maritime museum with all kinds of old maritime equipment, clothes, weapons, paintings and ultimately ships! It was very interesting and best described in pictures which one will have to check on the Facebooks of Katie Reed or Kristin McNamara.

After we visited the Cathedral, it was time for lunch, which was then followed by the archaelogical and maritime museums. For lunch, I had looked in my handy-dandy Michelín Guide and found a delicious-looking inexpensive restaurant to visit. Unfortunately when we found it, inexpensive to Michelín translates to way out of the price range of students. So after a short search we found a nice looking eat-in café with Portuguese people eating there, and we figured it was a nice place to find lunch. On the menú of this restuarant by the shore was indeed fish, and lots of it. I decided on roasted Salmon, while Katie got bacalão (cod, the Iberian staple) and Kristin got a roasted golden fish. While waiting, I decided while in Portugal to try the Portuguese wine, so I got a cup of the house Porto. I have by now tried a reasonable variety of wine from Virginia and I have tried to have a little Spanish wine by now, but I have never had anything like that porto. Very dark with strong tannins and bite that would have a dog running, it was unique and addictive. It had a very nice fruity aftertaste that has otherwise been difficult to find, but boy was it strong. I guess that’s why they served it in tiny little goblets - almost like a round double-shot. Since I could by no means drink it outright, it was a sipping wine and lasted me the whole meal. When our meal arrived, my salmon was served as a steak more or less sliced straight off the body with large potatoes, cooked spinach and a small salad. The salmon was moist, fresh and just as tender as it could be, helped by the delicious garlic oil served with Katie’s very salty fillet of bacalão. Kristin seemed confused by her plate, as it was a whole roasted golden fish. Whole... eyes and gills and skin and fins and all. I thought it looked beautiful and so happily filleted it for her in return for a taste of its white and fresh moist meat. Something interesting that I’m not sure I’ve noted yet is that in Iberia one does not get a glass of water, one only gets bottled water. Waiters and bartenders are confused and skeptical if you dare to ask for ‘un vaso de agua’, because it’s only ever served bottled. Since there is never free water or water fountains, it is somewhat expensive to keep hydrated, but we manage and I do my best to keep with me my water bottle. Unfortunately I did not have my water bottle with me either on this trip and so we went through many a bottle in there. The girls decided to get some dessert as well: Katie found a really interesting marshmallow meets cheesecake pie with a delicious crust, and Kristin had a chocolate slightly dry (not meaning alcoholic) cake. Both delicious, though that was a very unique marshmallow-ish pie.

While we were in the maritime museum, I really enjoyed looking at the old maps. I’m not sure why exactly that I like them, maybe it has something to do with my fascination with the old way of writing things, much like illuminated manuscripts. I think that style is incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing that a person actually did all that work by hand, paying such incredibly attention to the detailing and reasoning. To see that kind of attention on an international basis on a world map of the 1600s is fascinating to me mostly on the errors made and the extranneous notes made, for example pictures of sail-ships and monsters and random little islands. The colors are incredibly and surprising, given the difficulty of long distance commerce in those times to get materials to make inks and pastes of those incredibly colors. Anyways, my point of mentioning this is that I bought a print of one of the really old maps on show in the maritime museum, so now I have my own map of the world that can help me keep track.

From there we took the tour bus back to the end of the bus’ route, which ended up carrying OTHER students from the University, also international students from the US on a weekend trip. What are the odds that US students attending the same university in another country would be meeting us on a tour bus in Lisbon, Portugal? Very curious indeed. From St. John’s I believe (a private Christian college at any rate) they walked off with us as we walked off the bus in a brilliantly large plaza reminiscent of Paris because of the 1800s horse-borne statue person in the centre, with lots of buildings and facades all visible from the edge. We didn’t know how we were going to return back to the hotel from there, so we asked the St. John’s students who happily told us that there was indeed a very close subway system that works very well and is very cheap. We said our goodbyes and took the very clean and spacious subway back close to our hotel.

That night I thought to myself, why not, I’ll go out and have a good time. Invited by many people, we decided it would be a good night to find something fun and enjoy ourselves with some Portuguese drinks and perhaps find some good company. It was difficult at first since we were taking a subway to a place we didn’t know until others from the group came along and told us that we weren’t in fact going straight to a club but going to some bars beforehand for some unique Portuguese drinks. Excellent, I would enjoy myself at the bars and head back to the hotel. Well we arrived in these very narrow streets, many having already pregamed to a heavy buzz if not a little drunkenness. I must say though this caused a very interesting situation in the subway. There were some 15-20 of us, trying to move together in the subway… drunk… in another country… where we don’t speak the language. Personally I found it embarrassing to be with some of the people since they were unabashedly loud drunk Americans, while of course there were some others interested in peacefully moving from one place to another. On the subway I heard one or two other passengers speaking accented English, and so in a kind of Portu-glish I apologized to them for the loud and obnoxious actions of my friends for being stupid Americans. Very nicely and curiously he responded with the question, ‘Why are you ashamed of your nationality? Don’t apologize.’ It was not angry, it was not even annoyed, just very matter of fact and curious. That really caught me off guard, and I really had no response. I suppose I have the assumption that all Europeans think in the back of their minds whenever they see us ´hey look, stupid Americans, let’s see what they do next’ or I suppose ‘hé le regard, Américains stupides, voit qu'ils font prochain’ or 'Mira, Americanos estúpidos, mira que hacen'. Perhaps not? A question for me to ponder.

At any rate, eventually we reached several streets absolutely packed with our-age students and young adults, all with drinks and cigarettes talking with each other in a large variety of languages. We somehow went straight for a bar that seemed to have reasonable prices and standard Portuguese drinks. Our guide of sorts, Felipe, helped many girls order drinks and furthermore initiated many conversations, probing for Spanish speakers or I suppose for him, interesting Portuguese speakers. Looking at the bar’s menu, I saw lots of drinks including the very Portuguese ingredient – cachaça. Caiparinha, caipamiel and many others. I shot for caiparinha first since it was a familiar cocktail name and caipamiel to hand to some friend I meet or one of our companions who did not have a drink. I honestly don’t know what’s in a caiparinha, but it was a very very strong drink with lime and sugar. The cachaça tastes kind of like a mulled rum, brunt and very strong, with the Caribbean cane-based flavor. The malt-liquor of Brazil, it tasted very strong but very interesting, I’m glad to have tried it. While we were talking, I just happened to have met some very interesting Spaniards from Galicia! We talked about politics and regional idiosyncrasies, El Camino de Santiago and so on and so forth. I was really really excited to be speaking Spanish in a useful way and I must say that was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had so far in Spain! I really must spend more time with Spaniards, particularly of my age group. To get home we did the one thing I have been hesitant to do anywhere, particularly in a foreign country renowned to have the worst drivers in the world: we took a cab. I think we may have been as lucky as we could have been to get a reasonably safe an d sensible drive who was also friendly. Not overly so, in fact he didn’t really say more than a sentence, but he smiled in what I thought to be a genuinely warm and friendly way as we managed to say goodnight and take care in Portuguese. The whole ride back costs all 4 of us in the car €5. For a safe ride back from perhaps the one safe cab driver in all of Portugal, I’d say €1.20 is a steal.

The next day we got up early, ate some more of the delicious breakfast and set off for our daytrip, but we made a short stop on the way there. It seemed like very randomly we paused and stopped at the side of the road after passing some beaches. In a very democratic manner, our bus driver, Antonio, asked in his very southern and heavily accented (and therefore difficult to understand) Spanish if we were interested in spending some time at the beach. Predominantly beach bums, our answer was resoundingly affirmative. I asked him where we were, he shrugged his shoulders and told me 'En ningúna parte - el campo,' or 'nowhere - the countryside'. It seemed almost aimless how we meandered off the bus, as if there were in fact something wrong and we had to get out to fix the problem. Luckily there was no problem and after a short paseo (walk, as in to take a walk) we arrived at a semi-deserted beach. Several people were playing with large triangular kites in the brisk wind, and several people were playing with their undeniably cute dogs, but other than that the beach was like a small private enclave. In the space of a football field the little beach was surrounded on both sides by rocky cliffs, sharp and heavily angular stretching into the distance. Smelling heavily of salt and somewhat sadly cool and windy, the beach was sort of an awkward escape. Of course there were JMU kids all around, but I felt like I was sitting alone on a sort of purgatory beach. Strong, windy and wave-driven silence flooded my ears with the peace they had sought for some time. I felt as if I should sit down and resolve my life. With the white crests and rocks as my counsellors, I wanted to grab pawful after pawful of solitary peace. The white noise silence was relaxing and haunting. As I had wanted to so many times in Paris and London and even Salamanca, I wanted to have my eternal companion at my side to point and say 'Look, the sound of beauty and sadness!'. But there was no one to see the noise, all eyes were pointed inside, transfixed by the crisis of feeling as a fish out of water. But the sound was beautiful and sad no matter if anyone was watching it - indeed, this tree in the forest made a haunting and wonderful sound perhaps if anything because no one was listening.
After a short while, we were told it was time to leave and though I did not listen the water waved goodbye at us sadly as we left. You may be asking how can someone look at a sound or listen to a someone waving? I would argue this is a matter of faith, but that is for another day.

Our day trip was to a tiny little town nested in the mountains called Sintra. Before I describe the city I think it’s important to note how insane our bus drivers are, how impossibly close they can make it through tiny mountain roads, bending around curves as if by magic, narrowly avoiding running straight into hundred year old walls or falling off huge cliffs or even hitting all the cars around us. It is still a mystery to me how our driver managed those roads. Sintra is very exactly a town on the side of a mountain. Everything is steep and at the very top of the huge hill was a castle which was incredibly difficult to reach, particularly by foot into the forest surrounding it. Within the city it seemed like all they had were houses, restaurants and touristy shops. Without a tour guide or any such thing, we were more or less floundering about without rhyme or reason. While I was walking with Katie, though, we did come across something very interesting to me. As we approached, I saw a little enclave with kind of a 3 foot high guarding stone wall. Within the enclave were many people with groups of large water bottles and further inside was something that appeared like a little tiled bath, with two taps continuously flowing with water onto rocks whichj seemed to act as disseminators of some sort, to deflect the water into a kind of fountain whenever people weren’t gathering the (one assumes) fresh water into their water bottles (easily 3-4 gallons per bottle). The tiles were white and blue and yellow and very few reds. It did not seem to be in any particular arrangement except on the back wall which made Romanesque portraits of who knows whom. This was interesting to me, but as the people appeared bothered by our curious approach, we moved on quickly. Later we attempted to ascend the mountain to find the castle at the top, but it was a long hike, curiously obstructed by caution tape in various places, cutting us off to the point that we simply gave up. Along the way I found a cork tree, which I took a sample from with my awesome little multi-tool I got in my Christmas stocking. I have used that multi-tool for a million and one things, from peeling all the fantastically 3000x better than the US oranges that I’ve been eating, for cutting just about anything, and for just about anything every day that takes specialized tools to do right. Except for a wine bottle opener, it does not have that. I shall have to remedy that sometime.

Anyways, it was a curious lost day with lots of walking and eventually I found a vendor as I have seen in all of the past cities: London, Paris, Madrid - roasted chestnuts. They seem to be a really big deal. The vendors always have a little plume of smoke ascending from their little carts. With a collection of paper serving cones to the side, the form of their carts are always similar to that of a New York hot dog stand, but instead of a griddle and hot dogs, they have pots full of burning embers and holding lots of chestnuts roasting away. Their hands appear blackened and calloused from many hours tending and serving charred and fiery chestnuts and coals. Their faces look tired and blackened from some sort of surrender to the fact that their hands are covered with soot all day, so to 'pick, scratch wipe' as Mr. Webb my high school band director used to say during hot marching band practices, these vendors spread the soot all over. To be fair, it was a hefty €3 or 4 for a cone of maybe 5 or 6 chestnuts, so they’re making pretty reasonable profits. But on appearance it seems like one might say a demeaning task to be covered in cinders tending embers all day. Perhaps it is less so than our beloved story of Cinderella because of the economic benefit, but I can’t even imagine how satisfying a cool shower and perhaps a nice dinner must be to one such grime-grabber. But the chestnuts, they were certainly a memorable taste. First of all it was fun to peel off the singed shell as a sort of game, perhaps playing again with my multi-tool. Second it was such a strong starchy but sweet stone of the chestnut. It seemed to me very much like hard sweetened gnocchi… perhaps a little larger. Anyways I enjoyed it and enjoyed sharing it with those around me. I don’t care to elaborate more on the day-trip, but I must say it was an interesting place, Sintra, as was the escape of our bus through those tiny winding roads.

The day following was the day that we were to leave. Everyone was interested in getting assistance from the bus driver to find places around town, and so he drove us to the city center where the stock exchange of Lisbon sat, as well as the ‘LOVE’ statues. So we got out and walked down and down and down and down. It felt like a mile long descending track, but sunny and New York-like. I must say this was the type of city I imagined Salamanca to be – a place of business and suits and shoe shiners and monuments. Alas, not it is perhaps more similar to a monastery – solemn and drowsy. Anyways, we enjoyed walked down the large sidewalks, looking at all the interesting stores with the (I thought) easy to read but unintelligible to hear Portuguese signs etc. I thought about the fact that I hadn’t found anything yet to bring back to my family, so what would be one thing that my family would like? The answer of course is a Hardrock Café pilsner glass. We have many of them. Not many, a museum of them. What best than to add to the collection? So Katie, Kristin and I shared a very strong and delicious cocktail from the drink before taking one along with me. Before we left, we also took some time to look at the big ‘LOVE’ monuments in some deep central plaza, although not as much as I’d like and unfortunately not enough to write a real description. I guess you’ll have to ask Caroline about that.