Areeiro and Parque da Bela Vista
With the stay-home orders being phased out, Lisbon is coming back to life. This is the second week of 'Phase 2' – outdoor cafes, dine-in restaurants, and museums are open with restrictions. It's the patrons at the outdoor cafe tables that really seem to signal a return to normality. We have scheduled a picnic with a few other ex-pat friends in Parque da Bela Vista.
On Google and Apple Maps satellite views, Bela Vista looks like a vast, dusty void to the west of our neighborhood of Alvalade. From the streets near our local church (São João de Brito), the Bela Vista looks like a distant, grassy bank. It does not appear to be a great place for a get together on a windy summer day.
We collect friends as we go, through the bairro of Areeiro, exploring new streets. There is a handsome church at the Praça de Londres, the Igreja de São João de Deus – two thickset campanários, exaggerated vertical windows, and a wide, gated portal. It's in a beautiful garden-like setting and we'll have to come back, soon. Walking the broad, pastel streets lined with trees and tiles, I remember why we fell in love with Lisbon.
We meet another group of friends at the Praça Francisco Sá Carneiro (top image), near the entrance to the Areeiro metro stop. This is a five-spoke round-about, with a striking steel and stone monument in the center, and tile-roofed towers all around.
We head north to the park, to the eastern end of the Roma-Areeiro train station, and on the other side of the apartment buildings, the city vanishes. The track beds open up and looking down, it seems as if the country-side is at the threshold. An unpaved path takes us uphill and into wildflowers and mounds dotted with young olive trees. Panoramas of Lisbon and the Rio Tejo appear as the path ambles. We enjoy lunch at convenient picnic tables, in the shade of a copse of pine trees.
Coming out of Bela Vista, we cross a long pedestrian bridge over the tracks further east, and arrive above an area gridded with communal vegetable gardens, and below another group of multistory blocks. The verdant contrast is unexpected, but dissolves as we pass the first layer of structures and return, suddenly, to Lisbon.
The group's journey ends at the eastern end of the Parque da Fonte Luminosa – at the far end is the Instituto Superior Técnico (the MIT of Portugal). The fountain is turned off, and the statues of the stout bathers are now easily viewed, bronzed by the rusty water, and set-off by the flowering shrubs.
Before we reach home, we happen upon a small parade of classic British cars: a Daimler V8 sedan and two Jaguar E-types, a silver coupe and a red V-12 roadster, immaculate as the day they were bought. They are loaded onto the sidewalk where we claim them as ours, but only for a second or two.
Our group splits up and we make out way home via the 'mini-me' statue of António José de Almeida and then the bull ring at Campo Pequeno, with its striking pale green domes.
Arroios
Donna's cousin, José Miguel, visits us on Friday and we plan to run a few errands together. It's another warm and breezy day. José Miguel's friend lives in Goa but owns an apartment in Arroios, recently named by TimeOut magazine as the 'coolest neighborhood in the world'. He needs to check the apartment and gather the mail.
We stroll south along the Avenida de Roma, doing some shopping, and at the crossing of the Avenida dos Estados Unidos da America, we are surprised by a memorial to the 9/11 tragedy (image above).
The Avenida de Roma is a broad, speedy boulevard, though still not as busy as before the pandemic. From Alvalade, as we approach Arroios, the scale of the architecture comes down, while the age goes up. Arroios is colorful and active, but also a bit gritty.
The way home is by the Mercado de Arroios, a low-slung, dodecagonal (twelve-sided) rotary of stalls, stores, and restaurants. Then we finish our walk through the Praça Francisco Sá Carneiro to the Praça de Alvalade. Feels great to get out and enjoy the city.
Pandemic Update
Georgia is still up around seven hundred cases per day; Portugal is still around two hundred. It's been a month since Georgia started the re-opening process, and at least there has not been a spike. For the past week, Georgia has averaged 719 cases and 32 deaths per day; Portugal has averaged 237 cases and 14 deaths. The US will count over one hundred thousand deaths in the next day or two. It's a new kind of Memorial Day.
cases: 5,436,911 global • 1,669,311 USA • 30,623 Portugal
deaths: 344,548 global • 98,740 USA • 1,316 Portugal
UPDATE: Microsoft introduces new Excel: Coronavirus Edition.
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