Portugal 2017; Day 3

Day 7, March 29^th, 2017

I get the car and head north.  I would be so, so, so screwed trying to get out of Lisbon if I didn’t have the built-in GPS in the car. How did people attempt this before GPS?  The Portuguese are like the French in that the signs are put in the perfect places if you already know how to get where you’re going.

The landscape becomes hillier along the drive and finally, they get proper trees, instead of the scrub brush looking sad little things pretending to be trees. I think these proper ones are cork trees.

Getting into Porto is Chaos, but I get parked and to the hostel, right in the downtown area.  I have time to sign up for a walking tour, dinner at the hostel, and a port tour tomorrow and then I’m off for the walking tour.  The guide, Nuno, is gregarious and he takes us through the various sites of the more modern part of the city (the morning tour does the medieval part, the afternoon does the 19^th century forward).  He explains how Portugal has had legal abortion for 80 years (ever since their dictatorship took over) and gay marriage since 2001 and decriminalization of drugs for twenty years or some such.

I’ve not mentioned it so far, but I’ve been hassled about “smoke? Marijuana? Cocaine?” throughout being here.  Nuno says that those people are selling fake crap, and then offhandedly mentions that the park we’re in, The Plaza of Virtue, is where people get the real stuff. Ha.

Then he finishes the tour by showing us a statue of Henry the Navigator and revealing that history books don’t tell the full truth, but that Henry was openly homosexual.  Then the tour is over and Nuno insists on a hug. Real progressive place they got here.

I wander a bit, but I saw a doner kebap shop on the main square, and even though I’m doing the hostel dinner at 9pm, I say hell with it and get a doner and a beer and enjoy sunset.  I had a doner kebap stand around the corner of my flat in Germany (Doner by Klaus!). Life has its moments.

Then it’s back to the hostel and they have draft beer in the lobby and I have some pints and chat with folks and then the dinner happens and there are more pints and a group is going out on a pub crawl, but I have no interest in feeling like hell tomorrow when I know I have a lot of walking, so I wander back to my bunk and sleep, blessed sleep.

Portugal 2017; Day 2

Day 6, March 28^th, 2017

I got up and I got after it. My plan was to attempt to get to eight or nine different sites that require twelve miles of hiking to get to in the shortest route.  There’s not a lot to say other than that I ended up walking maybe half of that and taking buses, subway and a taxi to get to seven of them.  

It was a big day, to the point that when I got back to the hostel at 6:30pm, I cracked open a few beers and spent time contemplating my throbbing feet and wondering if they hurt because of the leg injury from a couple years ago, the weight I’ve carried the past couple years after the injury, or that I’m just getting old and the miles are piling up.  I suspect all three.

No fado for me. I crawled into my bunk relatively early and sleep, blessed sleep

Portugal 2017; Day 1

Day 5 of trip: March 27^th, 2017

Ireland was literally cool.  I land in Faro, in the south of Portugal, and it is warm. Not as warm as Charleston, but nice.  I pick up the cherry red hatchback from the car rental place and I’m off.

This is country 34.  This is the largest of the western countries that I’ve not been to (other than Scandinavia).  I became sorta fascinated with Portugal years ago.  Even started reading their epic poem Os Lusiadas, about De Gama’s voyage to India.  I’d heard that Portuguese has a verb tense that doesn’t exist in English (the future subjunctive, whereby you say what you will do if something happens, but it might not).

But that was all back before I got on the ground and into a car and got right into the middle of it. I know some Spanish, Italian, French and German.  I have a damn degree in Latin. I have no idea what’s going on with Portuguese. 

Portuguese is what happens when Spanish and Gibberish have a baby with down syndrome and then that down syndrome baby has a stroke. 

My little rental car is a Renault, which I figured would be crap, but it’s surprisingly peppy and it’s got all the amenities save for leather seats.  I Bluetooth music from my phone as I barrel along the A2 highway.  Driving in Portugal is easy; even if I don’t know what the words are. Street signs are the same all over Europe.

And then I get to Lisbon and Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.  There’s construction everywhere and the roads are one way and the ones that aren’t don’t necessarily have hard and fast lanes and pedestrians do whatever they want and streets change names every few feet and everything curves and it’s all on hills and I have no idea where I’m going and Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.

     (Yes, I'm filming and driving; I waited until it wasn't bad to even try)

I finally pull over and wander around with my phone out, hoping to find some fool’s open wi-fi.  I have a 15 year old Lonely Planet Guidebook that has a couple of useless maps of Lisbon in it. I’m trying to find the main thoroughfare, the Avenida de Liberdade and I have no idea where I am.  I can’t get the wifi to work.  I get back in the car, trusting that I’ll somehow get a vibe and miraculously find my way.

But before I trust my instinct, I hit the nav button on the car.  I didn’t pay for GPS when they offered it to me, so I figure it won’t work, but I’ve learned my lesson after tahat Carrick on Shannon screw-up.  Low and behold, they tried to sell me a GPS when the car had nav built in.  Boom! I enter the address I’m trying to get to and I’m there in under five minutes.

I was looking for a hostel from an old guidebook, so when I saw a different hostel in the same area and the guy working the counter told me the price, I said, “Sold!”

I could stay at a hotel; I’ve got the money for it (sorta; I have much less after my Irish mistake). But I didn’t come to Lisbon to see the four walls of a hotel room. I plan on being out and about for 12 to 14 hours each day. It’s getting late by the time I get all my stuff put up and then out I go.

I talked to an Australian girl and an English girl in the hostel kitchen and they said that a place called The Pink Road is where the night life is supposedly.  I’ve seen my fair share of night life at this point, but I don’t feel like staying in the hostel. I want to explore.  I plug Rua Rosa into my phone and off I go.

Lisbon is enchanting. The sidewalks are mosaic tile.  The street lights bounce a warm glow off of the stone buildings.  The streets are wonderful as a pedestrian, though, having driven, I’m wary of some silly tourist running me over.

I say it’s enchanting, and it is, but I also am wary about these tight, windy corridors. I feel like here, I might fall in love or get mugged and stabbed and left in some corner somewhere.  It’s hard to tell which feeling is stronger.

I find The Pink Road and it’s a tiny walking street they literally painted pink. It’s got a strip club and an assortment of bars.  I go into one called Espumantaria and order some sort of wine/liquor drink that’s their specialty.

My friend Jason shoots me a message about a hidden gem of a Fado music place that I absolutely must go to.  I ditch the Pink Road to find it.  After a mile’s winding walk through the narrow corridors of the old city, I find it and discover it’s closed until Thursday.  Alas.

However, along the walk back, I hear Fado playing in another restaurant.  If I want to enter, I have to spend 15 euro. Fine.

Fado music is fantastic.

I could get rowdy, but I have a full day of hiking and sightseeing tomorrow, so I get back to the hostel and crawl into my bunk and sleep, blessed sleep.