On the Road Again

So much for a peaceful life in Canmore. We're off and travelling again.

At the moment I'm curled up on my bed in the cozy and friendly Hotel Principe, Lisbon, recovering from our third day of seeing the city and environs. I've taken a real liking to Lisbon. I'm prejudiced in favour of the Portuguese, anyway, after getting to know some fine specimens when we lived in Toronto. There are more of the same here.

I suppose I should catch up with what's been happening for the past week first. We left Canmore with our friend Mallory (who will be house-sitting for us when her term at Malaspina University College ends in May) a week ago, taking a day and a bit to get to Nanaimo. There we left our car, picked up some of Begum's stuff to take to Turkey, and (on Monday) tried to catch a plane to Vancouver. No luck. Nanaimo had too much fog for it to land. So off we went to the Duke Pt. ferry and then Vancouver airport, where we caught a later plane to Toronto. Tuesday afternoon we finally got to the home of Elena, Vladimir and Alexei, our son Evan's future in-laws. I think we all wanted to check each other out and see if our children had chosen a good new family. We definitely approve of Evan's choice; Anna's family will look after him extremely well indeed.

Wednesday evening we caught the plane for London. It was a pleasant enough flight, although too short for us to get enough sleep to face the hellhole that's Heathrow Airport with equanimity. We'll pass over those hours of waiting in various lineups and try to pretend they didn't exist.

Finally we were flying into Lisbon. The city makes a good impression from the air - green and clean, old and scenic with lots of new bits too. That first impression seems to have been accurate. The city is a lot like Izmir in many ways, but it's cleaner and looks much more prosperous. The EU has been good to Portugal, I suspect, although wages are still low (€700 a month, we're told). Prices seem low, too, at least for Europe. And the weather has been perfect: 22 at most, and clear with a brilliant blue sky. It helps having the Atlantic Ocean to the west acting as a giant air scrubber.

The first full day - Friday - we took our usual hop on-hop off tour. We find these a helpful way of getting acquainted with a city. We take most of the tour the first time around and get off at the furthest place we think might be interesting. After we've seen that we hop back on and go around again to the next neat sight. We do that as long as the light holds and stagger back home to recover.
So first we stopped off at the huge S. Jeronimo monastery, which now houses an archaeological museum, national library and a whole bunch of other stuff. It still has a functioning church attached, complete with the tomb of Vasco da Gama, the first European to sail around the world (using maps compiled by the Chinese earlier in the 15th century, according to this site.) Across the road was the Discoverers' Monument, celebrating the incredible achievements of the Portuguese in the Age of Exploration. Portuguese is still the 5th most spoken language in the world, and when you look around on the streets of Lisbon you can see why. There are people from all over the world in this city - many from Africa, some from Brazil or parts of Asia, all speaking Portuguese. And they seem to fit in and work together well.

Anyway... where was I? Oh yes, we caught the bus and went back into the centre of town to find the #28 tram, which our book said we mustn't miss. It goes up a steep hill towards the castle through the most ancient part of town (not destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, which wiped out most of the fashionable parts and powerful people of Lisbon and put an end to the glorious age of empire). The tram was crowded and Ron lost his wallet to a pickpocket - but some kind angel had hinted to him that he should take everything out of it except a bit of money, and carry just one credit card separately. So that was not a disaster.

We got out of the tram at the highest part of its trip to take some pictures from a viewpoint, then caught it again, found our way back to the subway, learned how it works, and found our way back to the hotel. When we were somewhat rested we went out in search of a restaurant the desk clerk recommended. Couldn't find that one but ended up in a place that claimed to be "the king of bacalhau (dried codfish)". And that's what we had. Not bad, really - way better than what I've had in Canada, which is salty and tough. This was just really chewy but flavourful.

Yesterday - Saturday - we caught the train out to Sintra, the summer home of Portugal's royalty since at least the 12th century. We poked around the town, explored the palace, and were serenaded twice: once by a drum band, and a second time by a men's singing group. They were both excellent examples of their art form.

Today we headed out quite early, trying to get downtown to catch a walking tour. But I misled us and we missed the subway entrance, so we ended up walking the whole way and getting there an hour late. It was a pleasant walk, though. We ended up catching an old tram car tour that covered much of the same territory we'd seen on Friday but more interestingly. Then we caught a minibus up to the castle, which had been staring down at us the previous couple of days, tempting us to get up there and have a look. It's a very nice castle, probably more than 1000 years old in its oldest bits. You get a fantastic view of Lisbon from its ramparts, and it's nicely restored and maintained - an example of what Izmir could do with its Kale if it had the money. Lisbon's castle is an EU restoration project.

Tonight we're planning on going downtown again to a restaurant in the old part of the city where we can hear fado, a traditional style of Portuguese singing. We'll see. We're both pretty wiped from our day on our feet in the sun. Maybe we'll try the snack bar down the street.