Lisbon, Portugal

After two not-so-great but not-so-terrible days in Madrid, I left on a night train and headed east towards Lisbon, the seaside capital of Portugal. The train ride was not very comfortable – I decided to save myself £20 by purchasing a seat instead of a bed in a sleeper car. I usually have no problem sleeping sitting upright, as I have loads of practice commuting between Corvallis and Bellingham, but the train car was freezing and none of the train staff seemed to know how to turn off the air conditioning. Regardless, it was the cheapest and most convenient way to travel across the Iberian peninsula, so complain I will not.

When I arrived, I jumped on the metro to go to my hostel at the city center. Lisbon’s metro system is a head above most subway systems I’ve used. It is easy to navigate, clean, and all directional signs and information appear in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Plus, I found if you just so much as furrow your eyebrow in confusion, a friendly local would come up to you and ask if you need help within seconds.

The hostel I stayed at in Lisbon, The Travelers House, is ranked as one of the top 10 hostels in Europe and for good reason. It is located right in the city centre, right after the Rua Augusta arch and Praca de Comerico, and the cobblestone street below it is a major hub for tourist and locals alike. From my hostel balcony window, I could watch street performers and a small protest march.  The hostel staff was absolutely fantastic – they helped you plan your day out, gave you insider information about where to eat, and every night would organize some group activity or event, which I took full advantage of as a solo traveler.  If I had more time, I definitely would have gone on the hostel’s day trip to Sintra (I’m kind of kicking myself now that I did not).

After checking into the hostel, I roamed the Baixa-Chicado district area, which featured some leftover remnants of the great earthquake of 1755 but was now overwhelmingly a commercial area. I did like the artists’ mercado (market), though I felt the prices were a bit too high for me and I am not a very good haggler. 

For breakfast, I stopped into a small cafe to get a pastry and some meia de leite.  I walked in and saw all these people standing around the deli counter.  I assumed this was the line, so I stood there for a good 5 minutes before feeling a bit impatient and wondering when the line would move.  Then I put on my keen travelers eye and noticed that the people at the counter were not standing in line waiting to be served, but were eating at the counter.  In Portugal, as I later confirmed with one of the hostel staff members, you eat in cafes standing up at the counter.  At first it was kind of awkward; you eat while facing the wait staff behind the counter and you feel like you have to rush because there is limited counter space and people trying to order.  Also, I have not yet mastered the art of eating a pastry without getting crumbs everywhere, so I had to keep brushing off my crumbs onto the floor so the wait staff wouldn’t notice the messy awkward American dining self-consciously at the end of the counter.  By my final day in Lisbon I was a pro at counter dining, but that first meal definitely had a learning curve.  Below is the famous pastis de Belem (a custard tart) and a picture of another popular breakfast item – pao c/ chourico (bread (croissant, I think) with sausage).  It reminded me of Aly. 

After sauntering around Baixa, I jumped on the famous yellow Tram 28.  The trams are cute, for sure, but expensive!  A one-way single ticket was €1.30.  However, since Lisbon is built on seven gargantuan hills, I suppose it was worth it.  I took the tram for the purpose of going to the Castelo de Sao Jorge, the famous castle of Lisbon, but somehow I got distracted by all the tiled buildings in the Alfama district and missed the stop.  I ended up riding the Tram to its last stop, way up north.  When I got off at the stop, I saw a path leading through an arch into what looked like a park.  I decided to explore further, only to discover it was not a park at all, but a Portuguese cemetary!  While I’m sure not a common tourist attraction, I am very glad I stumbled upon it (I always find the best things when lost).  Never in my life have I seen such ornate tombstones.  They can hardly be called tombstones at all – they were more like mausoleums.  Some had glass doors and you could look in and see the coffins (most were family mausoleums, so there would be three or four people buried inside).  Some of the tombs were in the shape of castles and ships, others had tall spires and concrete statues of the Virgin Mary and angels looming over their tall graves.  Certainly the Portuguese know how to go out in style!

That night I stayed in the hostel and watched the UEFA Euro 2008 semi-final match of Sweden vs. Russia.  I love being in Europe for the UEFA matches (the last time I was in the UK for the 2004 tournament) – football is obviously very popular here and so the whole city literally just stops when there is a match on.  In large public squares they set up huge screens and project the matches on the buildings and after a match there is usually always a lot of partying, either celebrating a team’s success or drinking away the sorrows of bitter defeat.  I’ve been watching most of the matches this summer and I think I’ve managed to hook a few students into the fun as well…

On my second day, I toured the Belem area of Lisbon, which I felt was the district that had the most pride in Portugal’s navigational and explorational contributions.  My first stop was the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries), a monument in the shape of a caravela boat facing over the Tagus River commemorating the 15th Century Portuguese explorers during the Age of Discovery.

After visiting the monument, I walked eastward and found the Torre de Belem, a Manueline detailed castellated battlement now-monument (since coming to Europe I have grown increasingly fascinated with architecture and different architectural styles).  The tower was build in 1515 by Dom Manuel I to guard the city and it is now a World Heritage Site.  Ordinarily it does not have the colorful buoy balls hanging from it (see picture below) so I am left to guess they were added for the Festas dos Santos Populares (Feast Days of the Popular Saints), a month-long festival in honor of the city’s patron St. Anthony.  For the festival, which took places just a few days before I arrived (boo), the people of Lisbon decorate the city with paper lanterns, streamers, lights, flags and colorful paper chains.  Most of the decorations were still up in the Alfama district when I visited, but it would have been great if I planned my trip to be in Lisbon at the climax of the festival.

My final stop in the Belem area was to Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, another Manueline masterpiece monastery.  It was built in honor of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India (Vasca da Gama is also buried inside, alongside many Portuguese royalty).  Unfortunately it was closed that afternoon, just my luck.  I did find a tour group standing outside of the monastery and I sleuthly snuck into the back of the tour group, thinking I would get a free tour, but the tour was in German.  Drat!

After a blazing hot Lisbon afternoon, I again returned to the Baixa district to watch the Portugal vs. Germany match on the big screen by my hostel.  Oh, what a match!  I watched the game with a gentleman from Portugal and his friend who was German named Klos. I was told that this was a match of technique against heart (Germany obviously being the highly technical team, Portugal being the team with the heart).  In the end, sadly, the Germans beat out Portugal 2-3 and all of Lisbon was gutted by the results (except for the German guy sitting next to me – he was quite happy but was smart enough to keep it to himself while surrounded by hundreds of mourning Lisboans).

On my third day I went up north to the Rato and Rossio districts during the day and at night went with two people I met at the hostel to a fado show.  Fado is essentially Portuguese folk music, usually very mournful in nature with common themes of lost love, despair, betrayal and patriotism.  Apparently, a fado show is only considered good if the audience is moved to tears.  I briefly studied fado (pronounced FAH-do) as part of an independent study course in music genres in undergrad so it was great to actually see it performed live and in a traditional setting.  You can find a great fado show by walking through the labrynth streets of the Alfama district (the Moorish area of Lisbon and the only part to survive the 1755 quake) – as you pass by these hole-in-the-wall restuarants, men who look like they belong to the Portuguese mafia approach you and try to persuade you to come to their show.  Some sing for you to give you a sneak peak of what you will be getting at the show and others follow you up and down the street calling to you their pitch: ”Fado is my life!  It’s my life!  Come hear me sing my life!” 

We finally picked a place that had a legit vegetarian menu (apparently, at most places in Lisbon, seafood qualifies as vegetarian).  It was a dimly lit small restaurant with beautifully tiled walls and fishing net hanging from the ceiling.  As far as I could tell, we were the only tourists in the place.

The show was amazing – when we first arrived, a younger lady was singing with two guitarists (one on the Portuguese 12-string guitar, the other on the classical guitar) supporting.  Then the lady left and then the two male guitarists then dueted for an hour together.   Towards the end of the night, the grandmother of the restaurant owner came out to sing a few Portuguese patriotic ballads.  Apparently, she used to be quite a famous fadista in her younger days in Portugal and I could easily see why.  She was highly expressive and emotive; even though she was singing in Portuguese, I felt I understood every word she was saying.  That, to me, is the testament of a good performance.

Overall, I loved Lisbon and wish I had the time and energy to see more of it.  I woke up with a terrible cold and I lost my voice my second to last day there and I am still fighting it off!  The people were very friendly and I loved the Moorish areas, cobblestone roads, and colorful tiled buildings.  I am bummed I didn’t go to Sintra, which is an enchanted little village about an hour away from Lisbon, but I don’t think will be the last time I see Portugal, so I will save it for next time.  Ombrigata, Lisboa!