Tuesday 11.2.2010

Lisboa

The weather is perfect today. Bright blue sky, sunshine, a cool morning and a predicted high of about 74. Wow. We’re ready for the day and at breakfast at 9:30. Luis is entertaining fellow guests Susan and Dominick from New Mexico. There is a vast array of cold meats, cheeses, cereal, pastries, juices and coffee and Luis offers eggs of any style. It is energized conversation all around with Susan and Dominick sharing their recent Spain experiences and Luis offering his widely traveled worldview. He was born in former Portuguese colony Mozambique, raised in this house in Lisbon, works with a Brazilian company that he now visits every other month, has other properties inherited from his Grandmother and has traveled the world.

Susan and Dominick take off and we are now joined by Sylvia and Sandra, a couple of Dutch ladies Luis had dubbed the "Happy Sisters". More chat about places to visit and things to do. We get our dinner recommendation for tonight and a promised 8:00 reservation and we reluctantly leave the party at about 10:30.

We do the Rick Steves Lisbon walking tour today which starts at the church in the square at the top of our stairs. The Church of San Roque is an exquisite Jesuit building with gilded carvings and a false domed ceiling that is an artist’s rendering of multiple dimensions. Unfortunately we encounter the first of our tour groups here, a theme that will be repeated throughout the day. We escape uphill a block to a great overlook of the city. It isn’t better than the view from our room but a slightly different perspective including a view of our building.

We follow the sights in the book down and around until we actually come to the square where our car is parked. We know there is an elevator down to the Baixa neighborhood, next on our agenda, right around the corner so we get in line for the ride. We have a run-in with a mini-dictator tour guide who is trying to shepherd a too-big group onto the two operating elevators, pushing her way in front of John, but behind Mary. The result is that Mary is on and John is off and when this is pointed out to her, she tells Mary that she has to get off. Oh oh, here we go. There is much shouting directed at the dictator among the group behind us, first in English since that seems to be the language of the argument, and then when the tour guide plays the Portuguese card, the shouts get angrier in Portuguese. Finally John coaxes Mary off the elevator, and we, along with the twenty people behind us, decide we will not give a nickel to these obnoxious oafs and we all leave to walk down the hill. We’ll show them!


We cheat a bit when we find a multi story department store/mall that also has an elevator getting us down to the same place we had in mind. The Baixa neighborhood is bordered by the Tejo River on one end, the new sterile business district on the other and the hills of Alfama and Bairro Alto on either side. We start this walk on the river end at the “Praca do Commercio,” a square surrounded by government buildings and then go inland up the pedestrian friendly Rua Augusta. This is all shops and restaurants with tables defining the center of the street and the walkers finding their way around the sides. On a day like this, it is packed with sun-worshipping lunchers.


By mid-afternoon we have found our way to Rossio, the city's main square, and beyond onto the grand Avenue Liberdade, Lisbon's answer to Paris' Champs-Elysees. We loop back to Rossio where we find a shady sidewalk table for lunch (Mary a turkey and scrambled egg sandwich and John a tuna salad) and a cold beer. We have waiter issues (there seems to be a shift change) and it takes a long time to get anything, but that gets worse when we try to get our check. Our current waiter, a Portu-geezer, is now slammed with about eight tables seated at once, so he takes all eight orders and disappears for twenty minutes. We had waved at him before this but he immediately averted his eyes and kept going. After much ado and waving our money at a cashier inside, the issue is resolved and we are on our way. Don't get us started on the advantages of the American system.

We walk for another couple hours up some back streets of Bairro Alta and eventually back down the steps to our current home. At 7:00 we are relaxing when Luis calls to tell us that he, Dominick, Susan and Debbie from Australia are moving out to a wine bar and please meet them there. We walk in to a table full of nibbly things, bottles of wine being passed around, meet Debbie and Luis' friend, also Luis, and enjoy much more conversation and laughter. We have to hustle to make our 8:00 reservation two blocks away, especially after we were seated at another restaurant that we thought looked like ours.


The restaurant, Sinal, is busy but they have saved our table in the back. Mary has a traditional shrimp/tomato rice dish, John has a traditional shrimp and bread mixture that has the consistency of turkey stuffing and we share a salad. Our waiter, Mauro, is a linguist and is switching languages easily as he moves from table to table. There is an Aussie couple from Brisbane seated at the next table (2 inches away) who we chat with for a while after dinner. As we get ready to leave at 10:00, Luis, Luis and Debbie from Australia all arrive with a flourish for dinner, they all meet our friends from Brisbane along with Mauro. We avoid further trouble by making a clean getaway and strolling through the crowds back to our stairs and bed.

Today's picture: Rossio, Lisbon's Main Square. To honor Portugal's seafaring history, the square is paved with "ocean waves" of tile that make you a little woozy when you walk over them.