We left Salema with a bit of regret, thinking it would have been nice to spend a few more days. After one last morning walk along the beach though, we were excited about our next stop in Lisbon. Anxious to see how the city compared to Madrid and Sevilla, we drove 3 hours on the A2 tollway and a €20/$30 toll later (yup folks the tolls are quite a bit steeper than what we are used to in the US!!) we arrived and began the search for parking. Apparently Lisbon’s homeless have a monopoly on blackmail parking. What does this mean? The way the system works is that the homeless stand in empty spots and wave you down towards the spot, if you pull in, expect to hand over a 50 cents to €1 as a “thanks.” Interestingly even the locals pay these guys since it's better to give a bit of change rather than have your car messed up… We have a similar scam in Chicago where the guy will flag down a cab or open the door when you stop, but it’s easy to blow off the guy when he’s not camped out next to your car!
Eventually we found a parking lot that didn’t charge €40/$60 a day and made our way to our host’s beautiful central apartment on Rua Augusta in central Lisbon, where we were greeted by Sandra, our host and Lisbon's resident "plastics" artist, and two co-travelers - a Russian mom and her daughter who currently live in Seattle. They quickly suggested we walk over to a historic cafe for a taste of Lisbon’s famous tarts (crème brule like tarte with cinnamon - yummy, yes Lee got a tad addicted) and a cup of coffee, followed by a short walk up the street and an outdoor Elevator for a stop at Santini’s gelato (gelati) house, touted to be the world's best. It was definitely amazing but the best in the world? We'll be better able to compare after the trip is done :), so stay tuned. To make room in our stomachs a bit, we followed up with a shot of Ginjinha, a traditional Lisbon drink made from sour cherries (including a sour cherry at the bottom which just about knocked Lee over, but just about made Jazz's day). For dinner Sandra took us to a small local place where with your meal (mostly fish) you get a rousing performance of Fado (the local singing and dancing of Lisbon - played with two acoustic guitars - a pear shaped one and regular one). Quite a nice experience for us, and on the way home we even got to see the "glowing" sidewalks of Lisbon (reflections off the tile from the street lamps).
Sunday we took it a bit slow on the "Yellow" city tour bus (one of those double-decker tourist sardine cans - honestly not worth it, we should have just taken the Tram 28) with a drive around town and visit to the Jeronimos Monastary and National Carriage Museum west of Lisbon in Belém. That evening we shopped for groceries and made JP's Famous Pasta dish (yup, JP your meal has once again crossed country lines) for dinner for Sandra and ourselves. We completed our evening by seeing the final Harry Potter movie (wohoo!!) with Portuguese subtitles (lucky us, otherwise we'd have had questions). It was a nice way to feel "back at home" while traveling, and we even dragged along Sandra (who hadn't seen any of the movies before).
On Monday, we got up early to move the car into a sketchy “construction area” monitored by the local homeless community so we wouldn't have to pay the weekday rates of €40. We figured there was a pretty small chance of the car getting towed, keyed, broken into, slept in and / or stolen (which of these things our insurance would have covered was also up for grabs). From there we walked criss-cross through the Barrio Alto and Chiado neighborhoods in the central area of town for most of the hot day. We even found a nice local neighborhood cafe with a great view where we cooled our heels a bit.
That evening we made our way to the Castle of São Jorge at the very top of a huge hill (45° angle streets leading up, winding streets and countless, countless stair steps). Along the way we joined a few other lost tourists until we had walked what must have been around the entire castle before finding the entrance. The castle used to be home to the counts of Santiago and its towers and fortified walls still remain. You can literally climb all over them in search for the best view of the city. We also saw an archaeological dig within the castle area, which shows remains of houses not only from the 12th century, but also the Muslim Moors, and even a few foundations of buildings from the iron age (Jazz found it very impressive, Lee thought the modern structures housing the ruins were more interesting - typical engineer).
After sunset, the castle shutdown and we walked for roughly 45 minutes along the semi-abandoned waterfront to an awesome pizza place next to Club Lux (owned by John Malcovich and supposedly world famous, so we were told - shows you how much we party - sorry Levi!). The place is cool because it serves great pizza (we had delicious "Funghi and Rustica" pizza), the kitchen is in a glass “box,” when you want your waiter you simply turn on a red light-bulb hanging above your table, and above all, the price was right too for a full meal (€35 for two people).
So a few impressions of Lisbon: It is a modern, world-class European city with rough but interesting edges. In many ways we found it more elegant and charming than other European cities because of the tiled sidewalks, cafes, chic but relaxed fashion, mix of modern and traditional restaurants and the San Francisco-like waterfront and sea breeze (heck, they even have their own Golden Gate Bridge). That said, there are a ton of unoccupied and dilapidated buildings covered in graffiti. Lots of this is due to the cost and bureaucracy of restoration, which frankly is a common problem that we've also seen in former East German areas, so while it's not picture perfect it didn't seem indicative of a city in decline. We were also blown away by the amount and variety of high-end shopping (i.e. $1,000 shoes, $2,000 cotton jacket, etc.). It pretty much made Chicago's Michigan Avenue look like a joke. Sadly there are a lot of homeless, but for the most part they aren't pushy (again, roughly similar to San Francisco). One of the strangest things we noticed were the "gypsy" men selling weed, cocaine, etc. While it is illegal to sell in Lisbon, they do so quite openly and the police look the other way. Once we took stock of the good and bad of the city, we felt like it is actually one of the more livable cities we've seen, at least for a young couple that likes cafes, restaurants and a relaxed lifestyle. Next Up: Port Wine, Cold Streams and Sardines in northern Portugal.
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