Usually, when I return home from a trip, I take a few weeks to decompress, let my body adjust to the time, and synthesize my thoughts about the trip just ended to establish the overall theme of these posts. In this instance, I’ve been home for a few days shy of a week but haven’t been able to get enough clarity to fully construct any armature to sculpt this narrative.
I think this is, in part, because this isn’t my first trip to Lisbon and I recently finished writing about the days I spent there in the spring of 2022. However, although I did some sightseeing this time around as well, that wasn’t the principal focus of this trip. Thus, the composition of the clay I’m working with to add flesh to the skeleton is quite different from the material I’d normally use and I suspect, that this journal will be a bit more personal and reflective and less about the externalities of the place than my typical posts. With that, let’s get started.
Come Fly with Me.
After a commuter flight from Baltimore to New York, I got on a big jet airliner to fly away – or perhaps fly home – to spend two winter weeks in Lisbon. I stated above that this wasn’t a mere sightseeing trip. The motive for this trip was taking the first tentative steps to possibly making the Portuguese capital my second home. Philosophically, I believe that as attractive as you might think a place is on your first visit,
(which is likely to be when the weather is most favorable to that place) if you plan to live there, you should spend time in the season when its weather will be the least appealing to you. For me, that would be cold with the skies a hazy shade of winter.
(Dark and hazy but not at all cold.)
As is my new inclination, I flew business class and chose KLM because I like their service, I wanted to avoid passing through Charles de Gaulle, and they are an international partner with my domestic frequent flyer airline. Why this newfound insistence on business (or first) class? For me, there are the following advantages:
- On international flights you have access to the airline or airport flight lounge and while some lounges are more basic than others you always have a quiet place to relax before your flight. In the nicer lounges,
the food can be quite good. (The picture is one I sent to my buddy JF who gave me this bag to replace an old one of mine that had gone to seed.) - You’re always in the first (or at most) second boarding group. This means,
- You have no carry-on issues. In fact, many business class sections on the overseas flights effectively have an assigned bin for each seat. I’ve learned to travel lightly and combining my Global Entry with carry-on luggage means that on my return I’m usually out of the airport before most people on the same flight have passed through immigration and retrieved their luggage.
- If you want privacy and your flight has a 1-2-1 configuration, the window seats provide as near total privacy as one can get on an airplane.
- While there’s often not a substantial difference on shorter flights, on the overseas segment, the seat fully reclines to a flat position. It’s not a mattress but it’s considerably more comfortable than standard seating.
- There’s better food and drink and it’s all included in your fare.
- It’s quieter on two levels. First, the seats are a bit forward of the engines and that dampens the sound a bit. Second, because of the cost, babies and young children are rare.
I’m fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to afford the additional cost and, as long as that remains the case, I intend to continue the practice.
Of course, flying without some degree of complication in the third decade of the 21st century is becoming increasingly rare and this trip was no exception. It started at JFK where someone who had checked luggage didn’t board the plane. This delayed the flight until the baggage crew located and removed the now offending items. We pulled away a bit more than an hour late but must have picked up a particularly strong tailwind because we approached the Netherlands at sunrise
and surprisingly touched down at Schiphol in Amsterdam long enough ahead of schedule that we had to wait on the tarmac until our gate cleared.
But the fun wasn’t quite over. You see, that morning, Lisbon had become London and awoke to such a foggy day that visibility was less than 100 meters meaning air traffic control had to slow all arrivals and departures. Ultimately, we left Amsterdam about two hours late. This flight didn’t make up any of the lost time. Fortunately, I was able to keep my VRBO host, Sérgio, apprised of the situation using WhatsApp.
I’d initially planned to use the Metro from the airport but, given the lateness of the hour, opted for a taxi. The driver used the excuse of emergency construction on the street in front of the flat to deposit me about two blocks farther from the door than he could have. However, Baixa is one of the few flat areas of Lisbon and, having been confined for most of the past 15 hours, I didn’t mind the walk.
Sérgio met me outside and provided an orientation to the apartment
and the immediate neighborhood including, most importantly, the two main grocery stores I’d use – Meu Super Franqueiros just a little more than one block away and the much larger Pingo Doce that was both a bit farther and required a ride up the Elevador do Castelo.
After he left and I confirmed connection to his Wi-Fi, I walked around the neighborhood mainly to familiarize myself with the area but also for a bit of exercise – something I felt I sorely needed. I’d eaten plenty on my travels but did walk myself into a little hunger. The flip side was that I was tired enough to not want to go into a sit down restaurant (almost all of which were quite crowded) so I popped into a nearby CPPB (Casa Portuguesa do Pastel do Bacalhau) – a local chain that serves up mediocre cheese stuffed cod fritters. A not inexpensive 10 euros buys you one fritter accompanied by a glass of port wine. but, it was quick and all that I needed at the moment.
The dining highlight of the night came when I stopped at il Gelatone Vitória for two scoops of relatively expensive but delicious gelado – one of which was a particularly tasty pistachio – that I ate on my way back to the apartment where I soon collapsed into bed.
From this point forward in the blog, unless I’m using the possessive form, I will use the local spelling of Portugal’s capital city, Lisboa, rather than the English Lisbon.
Note: Read the entries closely. Musical references will be pervasive. I’ll reveal them all in a final post. Identifying the songs is a contest. I’ll award prizes to the readers who identify the most songs. There’s a parenthetical number at the end of each post’s title to alert you to the number of music references in that post. Here are the rules:
References to 59 pieces of music are embedded through the 18 posts that comprise the series “Two weeks in Lisbon 2022-2023.” Identify as many as you can.Â
FIRST PRIZE: $5 for each correct answer plus a $5 bonus made as a contribution in your honor to the 501(c)(3) charity of your choice. This makes the maximum prize $300 ((59*5)+5.)
SECOND PRIZE: $2.50 for each correct answer plus a $2.50 bonus made as a contribution in your honor to the 501(c)(3) charity of your choice. Maximum: $150.
THIRD PRIZE: $1.25 for each correct answer plus a $1.25 bonus made as a contribution in your honor to the 501(c)(3) charity of your choice. Maximum: $75.
Submit your entry after the final post on 24 March, by email or Twitter DM. Please do not submit entries prior to 8:00 on the 24th. The deadline for entry is 24:00 on 30 March and I’ll announce the winners on 3 April. (If you don’t know my email and prefer that method of entry, you can request it via a comment on any post or by Twitter DM.)
RULE UPDATE EXTRA CREDIT: If you identify more song references in any post than I have listed, I will grant extra credit under the following conditions: (1) You must have correctly identified all the other references; (2) You need to explain its connection to the subject of the post.
RULE UPDATE TIEBREAKER: In reviewing the correct answers I spotted some references that could point to more than one song with the same title. I will accept those as correct but will give a bonus point if you also identify the song I had in mind.Â
In the event of a tie, prizes will be combined and divided evenly.