I Love This Town.
My experiment in Lisboa living began in mid December 2023 and ended on 13 February 2024. Generally, I’ve only recounted my new experiences. I’m hopeful through them you’ve gained growing familiarity with Portugal’s capital city. I visited Museu do Dinhero Saturday and for my remaining two days I could have been anywhere. Although slightly unstuck in time, a few tales remain. Thus, this final post.
River in the Rain – the angry Tejo.
The previous post had an overview of the weather during my two month sojourn. When I had visitors from the States, it was generally tolerable. (I recall a few times K & P approved of my “weather mojo” and, when my family visited and nice days were important, such as on the Benagil boat ride, we had it.) Most of the remaining time the weather was simply brilliant. Brilliant, that is, until my last weekend.
I went out for one of my daily walks during a break in the rain late Friday afternoon. Because the Baixa neighborhood is flat, when I turned left exiting the building (as I often did) I typically had a clear view to the river some 650 meters away. That day I saw something I’d never seen before – the apparent churning of whitewater. I thought I was mistaken until I reached a spot near the river that normally looks like this –
and it looked like this.
These stills don’t quite capture the ferocity of the river that day but I have other comparative pictures and some video that you can look at here.
Another One Rides the Bus.
I previously mentioned going to see a movie at El Corte Ingles – the large shopping mall in São Sebastião. I’d done this principally to try to improve my Portuguese reading skills. Sometime afterward, I had an idea I thought might improve my listening skills. Sunday night the fourth of February I purchased a 24 hour ticket to ride one of the Hop-on, Hop-off buses.
[Photo from city-sightseeing.]
I’d looked at the routes and knew all or most of the places the buses would stop but wasn’t planning to ride as a tourist. My idea was to ride the full circuit and listen not to the English guide but to the Portuguese recording. I thought that since I had some familiarity with most of the places, trying to understand their descriptions in Portuguese would challenge my listening ability. I succeeded in learning both how much progress I’d made and how much further I had to go.
Because the ticket was good for 24 hours, I rode a different route Tuesday morning. I mention this because when I indicated I wanted to exit the bus at the Santa Apolónia station,
[Photo from LisbonPortugalTourism.]
the puzzled driver asked if I knew this was simply a train station and wondered why I wanted to get off. My response, “Porque tenho que usar o sanitário e não posso esperar.” elicited a knowing laugh.
I’ve gotta have art.
When I travel I rarely return with either souvenirs or photos of myself. Regarding the former, I have enough stuff. Regarding the latter, I try to keep the pictures pure. I know I’ve been to the place and when my friends and family look at my photos, they know what I look like so they don’t need my face intruding on something I thought worth photographing. However, I do often bring back art and while I didn’t purchase anything on my visit to the Underdogs Gallery, I did come across Papelaria Le Petit Peintre – a loja com historia in Baixa that’s been in the same family for five generations – selling moulduras, pinturas, e material de pintura e escritório though it has papelaria in its name. Here I found two of the three paintings I brought home for myself including this one of a famous shop and statue.
You can see all the art I’ve brought home from my travels in this album.
Some People can thrive and bloom living life in the living room.
But not the people I’m about to describe. When I landed in Portugal in December, I could reasonably claim that I knew two people – Ana who you know by now and DB whom I’d met during my Vaughn Town week in Spain where we both served as English language tutors. By the time I left, I could add three people to that list. You’ve briefly met the first in some previous posts – Ana’s daughter MC. If I settle in Lisboa I hope I will be something of an avô adotivo for her. Before I introduce the other two I do need to mention the lovely visit I had from DB.
DB is some 30 years my junior and while we made a firm connection when we met in Spain,
if you had told me then that she would be my only remaining relationship from that week, I’d have been skeptical and not solely because of the generational gap. You see, she struck me then as rather untethered. And I mean this in the kindest way possible. DB has not only a generous spirit but she is also exceptionally free-spirited. She relishes her life and lives it very much on her own terms. Originally from the UK, she’s now living in a region in central Portugal.
She reached Lisboa on a late arriving train on a Friday night in late January. We talked into Saturday morning and I learned that this stop was essentially a way-station which is why she’d chosen this date to visit. She would be off to a reunion with some friends and family in the UK Saturday and from there was setting out to spend a month in Vietnam (the 53rd country she’d visit) before returning to spend the spring in Portugal. Although we spent most of the day Saturday wandering about Lisboa, as I wrote to her at the time, “It was truly lovely to see you after so many years and I sincerely hope it won’t be so long next time. The only disappointing aspect of your visit was its brevity.” Hers was the first of several sad and sentimental goodbyes.
Meeting new people.
Approaching a buffet, if the desserts look delicious, I’m not always one to save that course for last. In this instance, I feel as though I’m making a metaphorical exception because I’m ending this trip’s journal with meeting my neighbors Daryl and Mindi.
Connections between people form mysteriously. And this one certainly did. Although they lived directly across the hall from me, I didn’t meet Daryl and Mindi until 28 January when barely two weeks remained in my stay. We met in the hallway as we were all leaving the building. We started chatting and, by the time the elevator reached the ground floor, I’d learned not only that they were American ex-pats but that their principal business was the website 2foodtrippers.com. I was quite familiar with the site because I’d not only consulted it while preparing for my visitors but I’d also bookmarked it.
Having had a delicious scabbardfish at A Merendinha do Arco Bandeira –
[Photo courtesy of 2foodtrippers.com]
a neighborhood tasca recommended on their site – and having learned that they’d been in Lisboa for nearly five years, I reached out to them with an offer to buy dinner if they let me pepper them with questions about their lives and the process of establishing residency.
We met Friday and had our dinner Wednesday. (They took me to another local gem where we had rolls, three delicious mains, two desserts, and a full bottle of wine for about €35 so they certainly didn’t overtax my offer!) A few days later they invited me to their apartment where we downed cheese, some charcuterie (for them), and tremoços, accompanied by three bottles of wine. Tremoços, also known as lupini beans
are a favorite and particularly healthy Portuguese snack when prepared as Daryl had done. Our gathering was partly in celebration of their having received their language certification earlier that day.
I returned Sunday when they again generously invited me to join their Super Bowl watch party. I met two other couples, enjoyed Daryl’s chili, and returned home to go to bed at halftime. Monday would be my last full day in Lisboa and I didn’t want to sleep it away. (Keep in mind that Portugal is eight hours ahead of Las Vegas so kickoff was at 23:30 local time.)
Late Monday afternoon I knocked on their door to say a final goodbye as I’d be off to the airport at 07:00 Tuesday. Ana had stopped by Friday morning and we took our leave from one another then.
There’s also a final batch of photos from my entire stay.
With all my goodbyes said, I felt a stronger sense of bifurcation this year than last. Whether as a resident or a visitor, I have no doubt I’ll return. As DB said on her brief visit, “This city suits you.”