After breakfast I lead as back to the train station and made one of my most exciting (/ only) purchase of the trip: two fashion magazines - one with Taylor Swift on the cover - in PORTUGUESE!!! ^_^ So. Awesome. I bought them using Portuguese and everything! Even better, they only cost me a grand total of €3! Something like that in the US would be $10 or more per imported, foreign language magazine. Amazing! ;)
I spent the first half of our train ride reading the magazines (and being amazed at how I almost understood everything, and studying the words that were unfamiliar), and the second half listening to a song by a Brazilian singer named Charlie Brown Jr. :) There was a song of his I'd heard on the radio a lot when I was in Brazil that I really liked, and for some reason I'd thought about it last night, so I downloaded it and am now obsessed. :oP I spent two hours listening to it and writing down the lyrics as best as I could. It's an exercise I learned in my AP Spanish class Freshman year of high school and it is something I have my students do, too. It helps you to distinguish word breaks, even when you are unfamiliar with the words, which is oddly rather tricky and also a very useful thing to practice and get good at. It's also fun and sort of addicting... It's like a word treasure hunt of sorts. At least, that's how I view it, as a polyglot in love with anything linguistic. ;)
Right before we got into Lisbon, dad went over the metro info with my and so when we got off the train, I was ready to go. I found all the signs, glanced at the metro maps and knew what I was doing almost instantaneously. He, on the other hand, looked lost as ever.
"I didn't want to come down here. I want to ask if it is faster to take the bus," he said as serious and bothered as could be. He went up to a newsstand and tried to ask the girl his weird question. She didn't speak English, but he kept asking her anyway. Finally he told me to come ask her in Portuguese. o_O I already knew the answer was going to be a resounding "No!" but I did my best to ask her in Portuguese anyway - if for no other reason than to practice my Portuguese - and sure enough, got the expected incredulous negatory.
This metro ordeal continued like this for some time, as we stood in line twice at the information desk for tickets and maps. And I think it was while waiting in the line a second time that I came to the resolute conclusion that I am a very talented solo traveler. You can stick me in a brand new metro system for five minutes, and I've got it figured out enough to get to where I need to be. My style of living (and especially traveling) is to ask the LEAST amount of questions humanly possible if there is a chance that I can figure it out on my own. I enjoy the mental challenge - it's all just a lively game for me. I thrive on the notion that I would excel as a contestant on "The Amazing Race. ;)
Travel and foreign public transportation and navigation for most seems to be synonymous with anxiety and stress... But I think it's because my parents always got this way when we all traveled when I was a kid that I made certain that when I started traveling on my own that all of my solo travels would be full of relaxed curiosity and full of calm wonder. Anytime I'm traveling alone in a new airport or metro station or wherever, I always look like a kid in an enchanted forest, looking at everything around me with wide eyes and using my map as a sort of treasure map for my next journey. Demanding information from information desks or stopping to consult my map ever five seconds or getting stressed would never occur to me. The in-between part of traveling is part of the fun for me. For ME.
But put me with a person with a normal travel style and all my zen goes right out a thirty-story window. >_< I turn into one of those obnoxious Americans I can't stand and suddenly get irrationally upset. It's times like these I think I should have two kids instead of one... Maybe I needed lessons in playing well with others - ha!
Anyway, when we finally got to Lisbon proper, it was pouring. :( The forecast had said that it would be rainy in every city we went to, but we'd been pretty lucky and missed most of the showers. Lisbon was the only one where it was really a downpour situation that didn't let up. We wandered a moment in the rain before finding our hotel and getting settled in.
By this time it was the lunch hour and we were ready for some more Portuguese seafood! We walked down a street full of restaurants off one of the squares and were immediately accosted by maitre des from each restaurant! And when I say accosted, I mean ACCOSTED. They all ran into the rain to show us their menu and tell us they were the best. They tried to get us inside and they told us how all the other restaurants were awful and run by non-Portuguese people. It all felt so uncomfortable... Like we were being hounded by really persistent and shameless. prostitutes! >_<
Finally we chose the first restaurant we'd come across - nobody was running out to hound us there because their two dinning rooms were totally full! It was another good meal filled with fish, bread, veggies and beer. I would just like to say, though, that I've never had a salmon that tasted better than the one I make myself... And this salmon was no better, either. Sheesh! :)
After lunch, we stopped at a super old and adorably classic bakery for dessert and then set out to explore Lisbon. Now, this had been the city I was most excited for all trip long. I imagined it to be a cute, bustling, European capital where you would be surrounded by super sophisticated Portuguese speakers, but still be fairly close to the coast. I guess I imagined a chic Brazil meets San Francisco (because of the infamous streetcars)!
What I got was a seriously run down, tiny town that was falling apart at the seams and looked like it hadn't gotten a bath since the Tsunami of 1755 hit. :( It reminded me a lot of Brazil, in that everything looked like it was practically post-apocalyptic and decaying. Or maybe it felt like it was a few decades away from becoming a full blown haunted ghost town...
But what made it way more depressing than Brazil was that you could tell that at one point in history, this little city was really something amazing... But nobody had put any love into it in decades and decades - as if it were just left there to starve and die. :(
Their sidewalks and plazas weren't paved, but instead had beautiful patterns of black and white tiles (just like the ones famous in Rio that are certainly modeled after these!) that added an exquisite elegance (but they were all warped due to ground shifting over time). Buildings were sided in beautifully colored tiles (that were falling off and cracked). Architecture on old buildings (especially the crazy tall elevator) and cathedrals was intricate and gorgeous (but were now stained in blacks and greys that almost made them look spoiled and moldy, like they could crumble at any moment).
Being in that poor little unloved and unkempt city made me feel so depressed. :(
On top of that, Italian and French was spoken loudly and obnoxiously by tourists, who were out in such great number that it seemed they were the residents! I was hard pressed to find a Portuguese person or hear the language at all - especially with many stores being run by Indian people, it really felt like I was in some cultural melting pot that the Portuguese had not been invited to. :(
We took the streetcars all around town and took one of the funiculars up to see a great view of the city. We walked around and got caught in an umbrella-murdering downpour, so we ducked in a cafe for a cafe bombon (yummy!!) at one point. But after a few hours, we'd kinda run out of things to see, and kept circling the same plazas, as going too far from them felt a little sketchy and unsafe. :-/ Perhaps away from the center there is a lot more to Lisbon. After all, they do have a pretty cool looking castle that we had a perfect view of from our room... But overall, it all just seemed so dreary.
Dinner did nothing to help matters, as I ordered one of their "specialties" and it turned out to be WAY gross!! It was a mixture of cod fish (super famous for it in Portugal), scrambled eggs, fried onions and picnic French fries. O_o Eww. Any form of seafood in scrambled eggs is NEVER okay. I still remember those scrambled eggs Amanda's mom made us once with imitation crab meat and how I thought I was gonna puke all day long... Ugh!
At least the bottle of wine was good. ;)
XOXO
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