tomleslie.ca

Friday, March 15, 2002, 09:20 am

Weather: high clouds, sprinkling rain

Location: Evora town square coffee shop

I have a bit of a sore throat this morning, as if I´m coming down with something, and I know exactly why. After doing some shopping and walking around downtown Lisbon yesterday I was ready to leave, so I picked up my pack and headed over to Barreiro. I got there a good two hours before my train was scheduled to depart, and sat for most of that time on a bench by the side of track 3 with a cold wind blowing off the water all around me. I guess I should have put up with the secondhand smoke in the waiting room after all.

The trip to Evora was fast and comfortable, with a quick change of trains at Casa Branca onto a local, just one car behind an engine, for the last half hour of the trip. Then I had the pleasure of tussling with the railway agent for the privilege of a reservation on the train back, which I´ll take at the end of the day on my way to Madrid.

I walked up a slight grade into Evora, past a national guard base, and arrived in cool wet weather at about 5:30. After checking into the guest house, a nap, and a quick but excellent dinner at a local restaurant, I called it a day.

This morning I again woke early, but in the interests of nursing my cold took my time to get up and move out. As a result I have the pleasure to be sharing the coffee shop with a group of about 15 with their faces painted blue, red and orange. I can only guess that these are probably party hacks drumming up support for the Portugese election on Sunday. (Interestingly, I read yesterday that the election is being watched carefully across Europe as Portugal may be a bellweather for elections in other countries. The incumbent left-of-centre parties are under pressure from the right, which may shift the E.U.´s policy direction over time.)

Well, it´s pouring rain outside again now, so I´ll linger over my coffee a few more minutes before heading to the town´s museum and the Temple of Diana, a roman ruin still preserved in the middle of the town. Don´t want to catch a cold out in that rain…

Wednesday, March 13, 2002. 17.10 GMT

Weather: rained all day on and off — now sunny

Location: coffee show outside Baixa-Chiado station

I got another early start today, making it down to the Praça do Comércio by 8:40, which gave me twenty minutes to kill before the tourist office with its precious net terminals was open. I spent the time sitting in the sun writing postcards, but by the time I was ready to jump into the post office and mail them the clouds were already rolling in. I´m getting used to their tactics now: a bright early morning to confuse the tourists, followed by sharp downpours and grey skies for the rest of the day.

Postcards posted, I hit the net and again spent longer than planned catching up with the rest of the world. My well-laid plans to be in the museum district of Bélem by the time the doors opened at 10am was therefore thoroughly sabotaged, and with a stop for picnic supplies en route I wasn´t at the Monastery of the Jeronimos much before 11:30.

The Monastery building appears massive from the outside, but the tourable areas are limited to the wonderful cloister, magnificent church, and a few banal secondary rooms, stripped of furniture but with elaborate wall treatments. Much of the rest of the Monastery complex is taken up with the Museum of Archaeology, which has two very small exhibits open at the moment. I wouldn´t have stopped except that the skies chose that time to open and it seemed like a reasonable way to stay dry. I ended up standing in the entranceway next to a small group of French tourists, commiserating about the miserable weather and watching the rain bounce higher and higher off the road outside as the wind picked up.

Eventually it slowed to a steady downpour and as it looked like it might keep it up for a while I sprinted across the road and 100m down to the Bélem Cultural Centre, where I found a large sheltered area to sit and eat my lunch. As I did, the rain stopped.

I made my way through the complex and crossed over the highway to the riverside park, aiming for the Tower of Bélem, one of Lisbon´s most famous sights. This tower is actually positioned in the estuary, connected to the land by a metal pedestrian bridge. The tower has a commanding view of the entrance to the harbour, and wonderfully craggy Manueline architecture. At this point it was almost 2pm, and I was falling further behind schedule, so I set off back to the tram.

I almost missed it as I went by, but I jumped off the tram at the next stop and walked back to the pastry shop where the Patries de Bélem–little custard tarts, very tasty–were invented in 1837. Once this important detour was complete, I set off again by bus and subway up to São Sebastião station, next to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation complex. This is the site of the modern art museum and the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, housing the massive and impressive collection donated to Lisbon by the oil tycoon.

After a quick stop in the box office to pick up a ticket for the ballet, I started around the museum. Itºs housed in an elegant low profile building, with two courtyards in the middle containing deceptively natural-looking trees and plants. Most of the rooms have large windows looking into the courtyard or out to the park surrounding the building, screened with dark sheer panels to temper the light and protect the collection.

I skppped quickly through the Roman, Greek, Middle and Far Eastern collections, but lingered with the paintings, statuary and antique furniture in the European art wing, some truly exquisite works. Though I was initially concerned with running out of time, I ended up finishing at about 5pm, which was just as well as my feet were starting to feel very tired.

I headed back to the subway and “home” to the Pensão for a rest before dinner, stopping only for a coffee and a diary update.

Tuesday, 12 March 2002. 09.10 GMT

Location: Tourist office, Sintra

Weather: Sunshine? Hah! More rain.

I returned to the Pensão for a nap. All that walking is tiring! When I emerged, I planned to go out for a leisurely dinner before the concert. However, I was intercepted by the guest house keeper, Fernando. We conversed with some difficulty, having no common language, but I communicated that I was 32, from Canada, and travelling across Europe on my own for two months. I showed him one of the Toronto postcards I had brought, and at his request wrote my name and address on it and gave it to him. I guess I made a friend! He invited me to share his meal, which I was slightly embarrassed but pleased to do, a filling cod stew soaked up with bread, full of flavour.

After the meal, we had a very strange conversation, with even more misunderstandings. If I understood correctly, he was concerned for my sex life and wanted to assure me that it was ok to have a lady visitor in the guest house overnight. (He vigourously mimed this when I showed my confusion at this strange message.) Not feeling fully comfortable with this conversation (I wasn´t fully sure that he didn´t have other objectives) I took my leave to go to the concert.

As it turned out, this made me very early. I arrived just before 8, when I had been told the doors would open, but in fact we were not let into the hall until 8:30. The Coliseu is a large, round concert hall with a stage at one side, two levels of box seats, several rows of stands, and a large slightly tilted open central standing area covered in taped-down black cloth. The concert was not full, although people continued to arrive for the next hour. Weezer was schedule to start at 9pm, but the first signs of movement were their stage hands bringing out guitars to check at 10:15, and finally the show got started at 10:25.

It was pretty good, though the vocals were totally indistinct. (Very poor diction, and the mikes weren´t great.) As I only knew a couple of the songs this made things a bit frustrating. Still, the audience was into it, and sang along with some of their favorites. I ducked out early into their second set in order to get back to the Pensão by 11:30. (Guests aren´t given a front door key, so arriving back late means keeping one of the owners up.)

This morning dawned clear and sunny, at last! I headed out quickly and hopped on a commuter train to Sintra, about 40 minutes west of Lisbon. Sintra is a small medaeval town with several palaces and a ruined Moorish castle. Shortly after I arrived at the information centre it started pouring rain, so I decided to catch up on the diary while waiting for it to stop.

Which it seems to have done! Time to explore…

Location: Rossio station coffee shop

Weather: high cloud with tiny sunny holes

After the coffee yesterday evening I returned to the restaurant I´d seen earlier. Now, it didn´t seem like such a draw: while its sign promised Fado (the local mournful singing that is apparently the window to Portugal´s soul but is more likely now a sappy tourist entrapment), there was no music in evidence, nor any other guests, which I took to be a worrying sign. Fortunately, I was right across the street from a tiny restaurant, whose closed door had failed to catch my eye earlier in the day. Now, the door was wide open and the room inside packed with people. Two more, obviously locals in the know, where waiting outside for their chance at a table. I joined the queue.

What I ended up with, after a forty minute wait, was a delicious pork loin in herbed butter, with tasty french fries, some fresh lettuce and tomato, fresh rolls with butter, and a small personal pitcher of “vino tinto” – red wine. This feast (for the portions were massive and the wine generous and very tasty) put me back €12.75, or about C$18. Not at all bad!

By the end of my meal I was falling over with fatigue. I walked back to the Pensão, and was very shortly in bed, where I fell fast asleep for about three hours. I woke to a rumbling streetcar and the Pensão´s doorbell down the hall. It was 12:30. I slept fitfully for the rest of the night. When my alarm went off this morning (6:30) my body was finally ready for a deep sleep again, but in the interests of beating jet lag I forced myself up, into the shower, and out the door. Breakfast turned out to be right next door, a little café that served me an almond croissant and café com leite which got me on my way.

Stop number 2 was the Rossio train station. It took some hunting: it´s on the side of the hill above an ornate but poorly labelled entrance. The trains are quite out of sight from the street level, and I went past the building twice before deciding I´d found the right place. Once I located the ticket office I ran into a further difficulty: the only office open is for local trains out of this station only, and the other office to which I was directed is firmly shut.

Since I´m in no particular hurry, I decided this was a good time for another coffee and a pause to fill in the diary.

Location: Pensão Prata, Lisbon

Weather: cool, grey, overcast

I just finished unpacking and I´m sitting on the bed looking out at a tiled rooftop of the building next to me. The Pensão Prata is a small guest house in the heart of Lisbon, and the traffic noises coming through the open window make me wonder how much sleep I´m going to get tonight. Immediately below the window is a trolleycar line, which fills the air with hissing, clanking and scraping, familiar noises to anyone who´s lived near Toronto´s streetcars.

My gear all made it through the trip intact, except the wash kit which suffered from an open-capped shampoo bottle. Classic mistake. It didn´t make it out to the clothes, but the goop seems very difficult to expunge from the wash kit itself. Dousing it with water just produced an endless supply of bubbles. I suppose this is hardly a crisis, although it does seem silly that after all the travelling I´ve done I can still make this kind of basic error.

Tomorrow I´m going to check out the city. Apparently many of the museums are closed on Mondays, but I´ll sort out the transit system, get a sense of the layout, maybe book my next stop (Evora), and take a look around a sight or two. It´s supposed to rain later in the week so I want to have my bearings and my plans in place to minimize drenchings.