Kathleen
5/30/2013 – Lisbon
Ahhhh, Europe. It is always like coming home. Our first travels abroad way back in the mid-90s were in Europe and we loved it so much that it gave us the permanent travel bug. Lisbon – fabulous! Fabulous to look at, it is the city of seven hills, everywhere there is a beautiful city view predominated by white buildings, orange slate roofs and no less than 15 church towers plus at least part of a medieval wall, castle or aqueduct. Small, older sections with cute, narrow streets…grand, older sections with gigantic boulevards, many pedestrian ways (this was heaven to us after two weeks in Morocco). The gigantic castle of Sao Jorge presides over all with grandeur and provides probably the best views over the entire city and river to boot. If you had only one afternoon in Lisbon, this would be the place to spend it. You can wonder around and up and down the stairs to different parapets for hours (one note, the very long staircase down the opposite side from the entrance that looks like it doesn’t go anywhere, doesn’t go anywhere 🙂 without getting bored or tired (the parts of the stairs and parapets with small or no railings keep you completely alert). We whiled away the midday here and then headed back the hill just in time to head up another hill (again, seven hills) into the Barrio Alto district. I think this means something like “high village” but anyway is known as the night spot of Lisbon. We don’t really do too much “night spot” stuff (usually in bed by 11) but found it to be a fantastic place to get a LARGE, COLD, DRAFT BEER (you could understand why this was in caps if you just spent two weeks in Morocco and liked all of the above).
We also had the extreme pleasure of meeting a couple of pilgrims from Vancouver. These aren’t your regular thanksgiving type pilgrims, but two of the 10s of thousands of folks who walk to the church of Santiago de Compestela in spain every year. Apparently, there are routes from all over Europe to get you there, but they chose the route from Lisbon through Portugal and had just completed a four-week, 400 mile hike to get there. We are pretty awed by this type of traveller. I personally would love to do this type of journey sometime, but we wil l have to slow down a little bit first. Anyway, we met Lai-fung and John outside a restaurant in the Barrio Alto. It was actually a little bit drizzly that evening and I noticed that she had the exact same rain jacket as I did (hers pink, mine green) and when we saw them again later that evening we sat and shared a couple of drinks and they told us about their amazing adventure and showed us the many colored stamps they received at all of the villages along the way….it was truly inspiring. Maybe they will write something to share with you as I will be forwarding this blog address to them…….
Finally, we enjoyed some extraordinary Moroccon wine and all the Portuguese tapas our hearts desired in the Barrio Alto. Our first night in Lisbon was truly blissful and we patted ourselves on the back for having such a great time in Morocco and being smart enough to come to Lisbon afterward.
The next day we had the daunting task (which we had dreaded and attempted to prepare for for over a month) of finding a way to get the second doses that we needed (for much later travels) of Hepatitis B and Japanese Encephalitis (hope you are not in the middle of dinner). I have to say that one thing I am never afraid to do and has often (certainly in this case) proven essential in my travels is ask for help. I started with the Travel clinic in Austin TX where we received the first doses – they recommended the US consulate. The US consulate was actually very responsive, but not that helpful, they said we would have to go to a clinic and get a prescription and then go to a pharmacy where we could get the prescription and they may or may not be able to give it to us. In a last ditch effort, I contacted the hotel I had booked through hotels.com for a two night’s stay. They went to the local pharmacy, confirmed the prescription with us and found a doctor who would be ready to see us on short notice. In the end, it only took about two hours (one of them spent by the pharmacist trying to figure out why the needle wasn’t included with one of the doses – we still don’t know) to do something that quite easily could have eaten up two days and been unsuccessful….so hats off to Brown’s downtown and their staff, especially Duarte, for going above and beyond expectations and allowing us to make the most of our 1 and 1/2 days in Lisbon! In addition, for a modest price, we had a nice room, compact but with everything we needed…a desk and table for Steve to work, fabulous modern bathroom with shower door (again, just coming from Morocco) and even a very mini kitchenette with a refrigerator and, wait for it…….a french press! Woo Hoo!
Now, I don’t know what kind of travellers you all are but if you know Steve and I well and definately if you have ever stayed in the same dwelling as us…you know that we are not really morining people. This said, the best thing to make us happy in the morning is a good cup of coffee, and any cup of coffee certainly helps a whole lot. Having some experience with travelling abroad, we were aware that in-room coffee is not really something that you can expect internationally outside of big, dreary business hotels and, of course, delightful vacation rentals which have coffee-making facilites. With this knowledge I brought the following essentials as part of my limited luggage space:
a) coffee
b) instant coffee – Starbucks via’s thanks to our good friend Anne Marie
c) a baggy full of non-dairy creamer (we like milk in our coffee and it is better than nothing)
d) an REI drip coffee filter that compacts to disk size but needs a paper filter to go inside
e) paper filters
f) two fold-up REI resin all-temp cups (large)
g) most importantly, a plug-in heating element that heats water to boiling in 2 plus minutes (220 voltage, but that is what practically everyone but the US has)
Now that you can see I am serious about having coffee in my room I will tell you that the vias are good, not as good as real coffee but pretty darn good for instant, a life saver (we have two left and Starbucks in Lisbon doesn’t carry), the filter thing doesn’t really work very well, the hot water goes through extremelely quickly and leaves you with really weak coffee no matter how much you use….filtering it after the grounds sit in the boiling water for a while works a little better, but it is not great. Non-dairy creamer is ok but never as good as the real thing but milk goes bad if not refrigerated. Oh, and the resin cups are an absolute neccessity, but we also had to make soup in them a couple of times and our coffee seems just a touch chickeny now….
Anyway, I think you now understand why it was so delightful to have a kettle, french press (which really makes the best coffee), real cups AND refrigerator in our lovely little hotel room….thanks again Brown’s!
Where was I? Oh yeah, Lisbon….fabulous town, we did see some churches (one, a really cool church ruin/museum with no roof and some great old artifacts) and lots of pretty architecture in addition to the castle as well as get to ride a fanicular and see an awesome state-fairish elevator that connects the lower city to the Barrio Alto – don’t miss that if you are going to Lisbon – and wander around the wonderful streets. Although Lisbon is a bastion of culture and there are many, many museums to peruse if you have more time or worse weather (it was mostly gorgeous when we were there). Highly, highly recommeded!
