My arrival in Lisboa in December 2023 is my third visit here (and to Portugal) since May 2022. Since you can read about those trips here and here, I’ll mainly limit my reporting in this journal to new experiences and places. This means, for example, that you can find posts about visiting Sintra in the first link above and I won’t describe this year’s visit there with my family.
My first Lisboa Christmas Eve
When I came to Lisboa in December 2022, I arrived two days after Christmas. This year my visit began nearly two weeks before that holiday. Clearly, Christmas is, for me, a meaningless holiday and, while I don’t know the centrality of the holiday’s religious aspect for the Portuguese, it’s certainly an important cultural touchstone. One element of that is a special Christmas Eve dinner called consoada. It’s typically a big family event but as someone flying solo I had to adjust.
The crucial ingredients in a typical consoada are salted cod, cabbage, onions, carrots, potatoes, and hard cooked eggs. (I learned from Ana that it often includes chickpeas but none of the internet recipes I found listed that.) After soaking the cod for 36-48 hours (with periodic water changes) it, along with everything else is essentially boiled in various stages. It’s then dressed with a mixture of sauteed garlic, olive oil, and vinegar. It’s served with some good red wine and among the traditional desserts is the bolo rei or King’s Cake. Here’s what my finished dinner looked like:
(I bought the single sized bolo rei and my host provided the wine but I prepared the central dish.) Based on this photo, Ana deemed it a success.
With my family by my side
As I noted in the previous post I spent much of my first two weeks preparing for my family’s arrival on 27 December and part of that preparation was securing five tickets to a futbol game in the Primeira Liga so my soccer mad grandnephews could attend their first European game. Initially, I thought I’d have a chance to take them to a game at each of Lisbon’s Primeira teams – Benfica and Sporting. The teams make up two of La Liga’s Big Three and have a strong rivalry. (FC Porto is the third. Combined, as I write this, these three have won all but two of the league’s nearly 90 championships. Benfica leads with 38 followed by Porto with 30 and Sporting with 19.) Even their stadiums are quite close (separated by less than three kilometers) as you can see on this Google maps capture:
However, either I misread the schedule or the Sporting game I thought we might be able to attend was rescheduled to a date that took that game off the table so Benfica against Famalicão on the twenty-ninth – soon after their arrival – was my lone option. This proved to be more challenging than I expected because the game was essentially a sellout and I had to get tickets on the secondary market.
After an early dinner, we crammed into a Metro train that grew increasingly crowded as we neared the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica. I’d ridden the train to the stadium stop to see where to walk and how far but, to be honest, I was happy we had a crowd to follow because I done my exploration in daylight and we arrived in early evening darkness.
The pregame activities enchanted everyone culminating with the appearance of Benfica’s mascot Águia Vitória – a bald eagle that circles the stadium before alighting on a post bearing the club’s crest.
Though high up, the seats weren’t far from the press area and quite close to the center of the pitch. The home team scored late in the first half
and added two more goals late in the second to secure a comfortable win. (As I edit this draft on 5 March, Sporting leads Benfica by a single point with Porto third.) As we exited the stadium, the boys engaged in a heated debate over who had played well for the victors and who had not. The Metro was even more crowded leaving the stadium than it had been when we arrived.
One final note about the evening is that upon our return to Baixa, my sister, grandnephews and I stepped out for pasteis de nata. Although I noted that I’d be limiting my writing to things I hadn’t done – and this was far from my first pastel de nata – it was a first for the others. You could reasonably say that everything Portuguese was the first experience for my family and that would be true. However, I had to note this particular event because I regret not having a video of their individual and collective reactions to their first taste of that treat from Manteigaria. I’ll describe it as one of intense pleasure on everyone’s part and that my brother-in-law – who was tired from the day and didn’t join us in this excursion – had a similar reaction when he had his first pastel de nata a day or two later.
New Year’s Eve
Okay. I was in Lisboa on New Year’s Eve when 2022 turned into 2023 so technically, this, too, isn’t a first for me. However, the circumstances surrounding the two dates were so different that I think it counts as something new.
Last year I was alone. This year I have five family members visiting from the U.S. Last year I was in Terreiro do Paço with tens of thousands of other people. This year, I was on a private motorized sailboat with my family and two crew members.
Last year I spent a few hours wandering the square drinking Sagres after Sagres while listening to Paulo Gonzo entertain the crowd for the hour or so leading up to midnight. This year I had one small glass of champagne before midnight.
Last year, perhaps aided by having had too much beer, I let a young woman entice me into sharing the traditional 12 raisins at midnight in a way I will only describe as out of character for me. This year I had a second sip of champagne with my raisins and wished my shipmates, “Feliz ano novo,” and “Comece com o pé direito.”
Last year I saw the fireworks from this angle
This year, I had quite a different viewpoint:
Last year I got frustrated when the police forced the crowd in a direction far from where I wanted to go and I had to march from Cais do Sodré up to the high point of Chiado before trudging back down to my flat on Rua da prata. This year we had a calm ride down the river back to Belém past the Tower
where we had a driver waiting to take us on an adventurous ride through the city as he tried to circumvent traffic as much as he could though even his best efforts left us with a short half kilometer walk to our respective flats.
So, yes both nights were New Year’s Eve but the experiences were quite different.
Here are all my photos from Benfica and New Year’s Eve.