San Francisco, Portugal (1)

Our whirlwind trip to Lisbon: Part One

Two weekends ago Rebecca and I, pretty much on a whim, bought a couple of bus tickets, reserved a hostel room, and shipped ourselves off to Lisbon, just for fun. We had a long weekend due to All Saint’s Day being a national holiday in Spain. The holiday was on a Tuesday, but Monday was all but free of class too (as one professor put it: “There is class on Monday.  But, if no one comes, then there isn’t class.”). We did have to be back for classes that evening with our study abroad program, which is little less lax about days off than the university, but it meant that we could thoroughly use Saturday and Sunday without worrying about concentrating much on Monday. 

The saga started with the bus ride. Rebecca and I were sufficiently excited for the seven hours to pass relatively quickly. “We’re such elementary kids with our pack lunches,” Rebecca remarked, “but such college kids with our cheap bus tickets!” Across the aisle from us, a woman picked up on our exchanges in English and leaned over to say hi. Another American, she was teaching English in Spain for the year and was doing the same thing as us - getting away for the long weekend to Portugal. After a midway stop in the middle of nowhere, our “vehiculo longo” pulled in to Lisbon at around 8 in the evening without mishap and we set about finding our hostel. 

The Smile Hostel is a charming little place, hidden away in the great old downtown of Lisbon; the key words there, however, are “little” and “hidden.” We figured out the metro, deciphered the map, and arrived at the hostel’s building, but there was nary a Smile sign in sight. The door was ajar though, so we decided to go in. Three flights of shadowy tile stairs later, we are standing on the third floor, where our fistful of reservation papers have told us the hostel is, but all we have are four unmarked gray doors. 

Since we were both too chicken to start knocking, we decide to go back outside and make sure that this really was number twelve, on the right street. It was. As we stood around wondering what to do next, we noticed a buzzer panel on the wall: next to #3A was written, in tiny little yellow letters, “smile!”. We poked the button. No response, of course. Several more pokes proved unhelpful, so we trudged back up the stairs again to get a good look one more time. Surprise! There are still four completely unmarked gray doors, just like last time. 

I suppose we were talking relatively loudly in English, though, because one of them opened and a little old lady popped her head out. “Looking for the Smile hostel?” she asked cheerfully in accented English. “We are over here! The buzzer downstairs is broken, sorry.” After our initial mishap, we discovered that the Smile hostel was actually a great place. Colorful, clean, cozy, and blanketed in plush carpeting, the Smile was a friendly little hostel, with a fantastic included breakfast. 

After getting checked in, meeting our current roommate (another American girl teaching English in Spain), and dropping off our stuff, Rebecca and I decided to go for a walk and find some dinner. A handful of blocks away, a jovial waiter flagged us down and enthusiastically began talking to us in various languages to figure out which one we used. Once our English/Spanish preference had been established, we figured he was too much fun to leave, and so we sat and had the first of what was to be several delicious meals in Lisbon. Interesting note about restaurant culture in Portugal: you have to pay for the bread. And the butter. And the Lisbon-specialty sardine and tuna pâté spreads. We didn’t discover that until we got the bill, but we were too happy and excited to be preoccupied with the extra pair of euros. 

Following dinner we explored a little. We didn’t have to venture very far before stumbling upon the epicenter of Lisbon’s night scene, the Bairro Alto. It’s essentially a patchwork of narrow streets lined with bars and clubs, and on a Friday night it was absolutely teeming with people. Japanese trains at rush hour approximate how crowded it was, but don’t do justice to the amount of trash in the streets as well (mostly discarded bottles). During our wander, a cheerfully rotund guy stops us and asks where we’re from. He was delighted to hear that we were both Americans and both “new,” as in, from New Jersey and New York. As it turns out, he was Spanish, and his tall, sticklike friend was Portuguese. Both spoke broken English and loved talking with us. Without much ado, our curly-haired Spanish friend informed us that they were gay, and that they wanted our help warding off any suitors by pretending we were their girlfriends. We decided to play along for a short while, and ended up shooting the breeze with the pair of them for a good half an hour. Spanish Guy was certainly chatty, and lit up like a christmas tree when we told him we were studying in Seville. He insisted on teaching us the basic hand motions of Flamenco dance, relating them to the motions of picking apples and everything. I had to stop and appreciate the event.

When a wave of tiredness finally sloshed over the pair of us “new” Americans, we bid adieu to our newfound friends, much to their disappointment, and headed back to the Smile for some R&R before our first full day in Portugal.  

Day two started really well: with a great breakfast. We were delighted to discover that the Smile provided several kinds of cereal, hard boiled eggs, several kinds of bread, butter, jams, cheese, ham, pears, grapes, apples, pineapple, various juices, tea and coffee, chocolate cake... What made breakfast even better though was the company. At the table, and in and out of the common/dining area, were the other hostel guests, including assorted Spanish folk, an American or two, and a British-Portuguese couple. Everybody was speaking a thorough mix of Spanish, English and scattered Portuguese. The Portuguese London resident with his british girlfriend took us for Spanish girls at first glance, which was definitely exciting for us. 

When we stepped outside that morning, Rebecca and I had no real idea where on earth to go. As mentioned, this trip was pretty spur-of-the-moment, so our research on things to see essentially consisted of googling “Things to do in Lisbon” and glancing down the list of results. Fortunately, the hostel had provided us with a tourist map listing all kinds of cool things in Lisbon, which proved to be very helpful. However, our first stop was easy enough to find; standing on the Smile’s street corner, we could see down the road an enormous, important-looking gothic style building. “Let’s go there!” 

Dodging a wild yellow tram (to be discussed at length later), we hopped, skipped and jumped over to the building. It was a famous cathedral, and rather stunning inside I might add. I took roughly a gazillion photos of the place as we wandered about in hushed reverence admiring the soaring architecture and solemn artwork. I particularly liked the organ, a fancy affair with tubes and trumpeting pipes stretching elegantly every which way.  

Our handy map told us that a big square castle was just around the corner, so we thought we’d stop by. A cursory climb to the top of the entrance gate convinced us we needed to buy entrance tickets and check it out. Not only did the castle end up offering great views of Lisbon in all its red roofed glory, but it was very fun to explore. Very Game-of-Thrones-like, with curtain walls and keeps and towers and cannons... I kept thinking about how ridiculous it must have been to dash up the various flights of steep stairs in full suits of armor. The yellowing stones were ornamented with well-kept gardens and greenery, particularly the bottom floors. Street performers had taken up posts around the place, so we passed a grass weaver here, a stone carver there, and the sound of a recorder playing something Celtic followed us through the ruins. Rebecca and I easily whiled away a couple of hours there, talking at length about school, our future plans, and how awesome the view was. 

When we decided it was time for lunch, we ventured out of the castle. We noted, however, several tourists stepping through an inviting red door into some kind of courtyard, so we decided to follow suit. We hadn’t really been expecting to find this: 

Modern art, to be sure. We were musing between us about what exactly it was made of when a passing guy overheard our English conversation and said, “Looks like a giant Brill-O pad to me.” I’d say he was spot on. 

Lunch turned out to be a simple homemade affair. Rather than buy bread in a restaurant, we decided to buy it on the street: Rebecca and I stopped by a local supermarket and bought a couple baguettes, some cheese, salami, pears, and a packet of plastic knives, and made our way to a wide plaza down by the water. Sitting in the shadow of a massive bronze horseman smack dab in the center of the plaza, we went to work creating some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had (Mom’s ham-cheese-tomato is excluded). Unfortunately, a bold flock of pigeons seemed to realize this, and had a lot of fun nosing about nearby, hoping for crumbs. The bird situation wasn’t helped by the old man who sat down a few feet away from us and tossed them chunks of bread. Even seagulls joined in then.

To top off our lunch, we stopped by one of the numerous famous bakeries in the area for some custard tarts, a treat apparently native to Portugal. It’s essentially crème brûlée, with a thinner top sugar layer, cupped in a pie crust the size of a muffin. Dangerously delicious, those things are. 

Rebecca and I walked off our lunch exploring the immediate area. Checking out shops and  plazas in the Portuguese sun was really great, taking in all the people, the numerous street performers, and the smell of roasting chestnuts and bakeries. During our little meander we stumbled upon one of Lisbon’s bigger tourist attractions, the Santa Justa elevator. 

Lisbon is made up of several ridiculously steep, although not necessarily that tall, hills. I have in mind something resembling an egg crate mattress pad. The result includes various iron funiculars, elevators, and trams that sprung up around the year 1900 all over the city. The Santa Justa elevator was constructed in 1903, and has been a random wrought iron tower serving, what I think is, no real discernible purpose ever since. It works essentially to  take people straight up to the top of this one hill, but because the line to take a ride was way too long, Rebecca and I walked around and up to the top of the hill by stairs. It didn’t seem that bad to me, but apparently the walk merited an elevator. In any case, it was fun to check out, and standing on the gangplank from its upper deck gave us some great views of the city. 

Once we’d had our fill of the elevator, Rebecca and I decided to go buy a tour bus ticket. We had debated the idea for a while (“But it’s just so...touristy.”), and finally decided that the 24-hour ticket, the hop-on-hop-off tour, plus accompanying free access to the city’s buses, trams, funiculars, and elevators, was too useful to pass up. We threw together a rough plan for the rest of the day and jumped on the first big yellow double-decker bus that pulled up to the stop. The choice to sit in the uncovered top floor turned out to be a poor one, because the wind quickly got us very chilly. Nevertheless, we were whisked through some of the more modern areas of Lisbon, where we were amused by the Corte Inglés department store with snowflakes decoration like Saks Fifth Avenue, ducked under an absolutely enormous Portuguese flag, and hummed to the repeating music on the tour recording. 

We jumped out of our touristy bus at Lisbon’s famous basilica as the sun was heading home. The facade of this place is pretty impressive in itself, white marble shaped by various carvings and statues gazing calmly off into space. Ducking inside quietly, we pulled up short when we heard some kind of congregation going on. We were a little confused, this being roughly 7:00pm, but ventured silently down the aisle between empty rows of pews up towards the front to get a better look. A couple other folks, whom we assumed were also tourists (false!) edged around a small barrier and disappeared down another hallway. That looks like a good idea! Let’s do that too! When we tried a minute later, awkwardly skirting the barrier and trying not to interrupt what Rebecca told me was a rosary prayer, a man exited the door we were heading for and made several disapproving gestures when he caught sight of us. Big whoops. A couple people attending the service shot us dirty looks. Thoroughly chastised, we clumsily hurried back outside before we could disturb anything else. 

The sun was setting now, turning everything a nice shade of peach pink, and notably dropping the temperature. We tourists hadn’t brought coats with us, so we planned to swing by the Smile and grab ours before heading back out for dinner. The tram that goes right by our hostel also stopped in front of the basilica, conveniently, so we trudged over to the trolley stop to wait. 

Several trolleys, different lines from ours, came and went. We watched studiously the little sign that says when each tram is coming next. Ours had been stuck on six minutes for quite a while now. Trolley times went from 20 to 0, trams rolled by, and it steadily got darker. As we started getting particularly cold, we began to think this was a pretty long six minutes. Eventually we abandoned the trolley idea. Rebecca and I, being the cheap college kids that we are, didn’t want to take a taxi, but we didn’t exactly trust ourselves to cut across Lisbon on foot with a map the size of a postage stamp and that was missing half the street names, so we resigned ourselves to taking a slightly longer route and follow the tracks home. 

A couple blocks later, we discovered a veritable flood. We stopped and gaped for a minute. Water was absolutely gushing down to our intersection, turning to the right and surging down one of Lisbon’s ridiculously steep hills. This hill, though, just happened to be the street that the trolley tracks were on. The four trolleys, empty and dark, lined up and stationary, didn’t escape us either. This little deluge was the source of the tram interruption. Some kind of water main must have broken and it was taking some effort to fix. 

Bemused, we continued on our way, following the river and the tracks together down the hill. This caused us to be exactly within range of spray from passing cars. Why someone would drive on underwater cobblestones up or down a hill is way beyond me, but there were plenty of cars passing by, sending up sheets of water over the sidewalk. Rebecca and I started to feel like we were in some kind of cop movie, flattening ourselves against shop windows every couple of seconds to dodge incoming fire. 

When we reached the bottom of the hill, the water finally managed to disperse into various street drains. We continued on our walk along the tracks, if a little wetter than we had hoped. Along the way we came across clusters of people waiting at the tram stops, frustratedly glancing at their watches and peering down the street looking for the trolley. Rebecca and I took it upon ourselves to spread the word about the halted service (“’Scuze me, does anybody speak English? Or Spanish?”).

We eventually completed our mission and made it back to the hostel. With a quick hello to the others and after warming up briefly, we set out with a new purpose: dinner. Both of us half-ashamedly admitted that what we wanted to eat wasn’t portuguese food exactly, but pasta. We’d been craving pasta. Carmen’s food is great, but it is definitely all Spanish cuisine, all the time. Pasta was something that sounded way too good to pass up. So, in Lisbon, we two Americans studying in Spain found a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant, and ate some of the best pasta I’ve ever had. I feel like the quality (combined with the low price) justifies our culinary choice. Well, that, and the fact that there was a purely Portuguese birthday party in full swing two tables over. 

We were so comfortable there, in fact, Rebecca and I lost track of time just talking, and got up to leave when the restaurant looked like it was beginning to close around midnight (still pretty early for us seasoned Spaniards). Not exactly sure what to do next, we started out just by walking, and found ourselves standing in front of the metro station pondering our next move when a guy came up to us. 

He was about my height, with dark brown hair shoulder-length held back by a headband. With a heavy accent, he asked, “We hear you speaking English. Where from?” We’re a little surprised, but we tell him we’re Americans, and get caught up in a conversation with the guy. His name was Mart, and he was from Turkey. He and his friends were all studying in Spain too, doing the same thing as us, taking advantage of the long weekend in Lisbon. He beckoned over the people he was with after a couple seconds: a tall blond guy with a hook nose - Hugo, from France - and a round-faced guy with light brown hair and a slight case of buck teeth - Simon, from Britain. They were all really nice and friendly. Simon of course had perfect English and turned out to be rather charming (although, Rebecca and I have both agreed on this, british accents by themselves are fantastic). He also spoke perfect French, with which he would converse with Hugo on occasion, although Hugo spoke medium English as well. Rebecca tried her hand at French too with the two of them, although it was reportedly a bit difficult; for both of us, when it comes to foreign languages at this point, it’s Spanish or bust. 

Mart invited us to join them for the evening, where their plans so far consisted of meeting up with the rest of their group. Feeling adventurous, Rebecca and I agreed. We tagged along with Hugo, Simon and Mart, heading back towards the nightlife neighborhood. The five of us stopped in a plaza familiar to us, but not to them; it was full of young people standing around drinking, chatting, petting their dogs they had brought with them to the party, and two guys playing didgeridoos. Rather eclectic. While Simon coaxed his go-phone (exactly the same as mine, but of course purchased for less than what I paid at The Phone House) into texting the missing friends, Hugo, Rebecca and I had a laugh watching outgoing Mart walk up to the didgeridoo players and ask them about their trade. He even had a go playing one, but no sound came out despite his best efforts. 

To try to meet up with the others, we moved into the maze of narrow streets of the Bairro Alto, and promptly got ourselves lost. We peered at crumpled maps and squinted up at street signs in the middle of Portuguese nighttime revelries in full swing. Eventually we picked a direction and ended up at another plaza. This one was a little calmer and overlooked the bay. 

It was also lined with roughly twelve parked police vans. One of the cramped streets leading on to the plaza from the bar neighborhood was choked with people and police. We looked on, with mild consternation and much curiosity, as policemen let people out one by one, holding back the rest. We pitched ideas back and forth about what could possibly be going on before Mart decided to walk up to a policeman and ask him. Simon read a new text with a rueful smile and told us their friends were, of course, stuck in the mess. Apparently, the police were letting any women out, but all men had to present ID to the police before they were let out of the street. We were thinking drug raid, male suspect. Rebecca and I felt like we’d put back on our Mission Impossible caps. Mart, however, returned and told us the police had simply called it “routine.” 

Eventually, a pack of people squeezed out of the mess and made its way over to us. Our group immediately doubled in size. Handshakes were passed around, introductions were made, but it was harder for Rebecca and I to remember names and talk to everyone now that there were so many of us and we were on the move. Two new additions that we did get to know pretty well by the end of the night though were Spencer, from Alaska - a stocky, dark-haired guy with narrow brown eyes and a friendly face - and Natalie, a French American - pointy nose, big smile, and masses of blond ringlets. 

We shifted the party to one bar of many and sat down to talk and exchange stories. Natalie  is American born and bred, but her father is French, and she is a full-time student at a French university. Very chatty and open, she was the life of the party for sure, talking to everybody seemingly at once. Spencer, on the other hand, is pure Alaskan. He grew up on some island up there, learning to gut a fish before handling long division, and in the summers he now works on a fishing boat while the season lasts. When the last boat comes in and the work for the year is done, he takes his pay and travels the world, until the season begins again or he runs out of money, at which point he returns to Alaska and starts again. He’d met the others, all a group of students from Spain, at the hostel. One other girl was from Wales, and I was very excited to discover she knew Crickhowell, the tiny town outside Cardiff where I’d visited a friend before coming to Spain. Mart, our original Turkish friend, was actually the oldest of the group - 28 I think it was. He’s a small-time journalist aspiring to take on an international post with his paper; he and I somehow ended up in a deep conversation about hopes and dreams, one of which for him is to visit the US. While all this was going on, one table over, three boisterous german guys in impeccable suits were having quite a good time. Beers in hand, smiles on their faces, the three were singing and dancing in their chairs. One of them grinned boozily around a pipe towards our table. We watched, amused, as his equally indisposed friends eventually hoisted him up and left, waving to us and walking out with an air of much practice. 

Eventually, everyone called an end to the evening and dispersed towards their respective hostels. Our group dwindled down to the original five, and Hugo, Mart, Simon, Rebecca and I moseyed back down to the spot where we’d met. Several goodbyes, handshakes, and European kisses later, we parted ways so that we could all get some sleep. 

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See Part Two for the next half of our Lisbon adventure!