Xmas in Portugal - Day 3: Low Culture and High Culture

With rain in the forecast in the upcoming days, we plan a day of wandering around in Lisbon. We want to start in the Alfama, the old neighborhood. It's Saturday, so we can check out the Feira da Ladra, the thieves market. We first have to go up into the old town, and then down to the Campo da Santa Clara, near the monastery of Sao Vicente de Fora.

 

 

 

We arrive just after noon time, and the market has filled the Campo, and spilled into all the adjoining streets. So much junk – how did they manage to get it all in here? It's the collective attic of the entire city on display, neatly arranged on blankets. It's shockingly big and crowded. And it's wonderful to just see it all: books, matchboxes, buttons, forks and spoons, clocks, lamps, new clothes and old clothes, trinkets, toys, and just about anything else you could imagine.

 

 

 

As we pass through the Campo, and down the streets toward the river, the market thins. We take a car to the Gulbenkian Museum to see another kind of attic on display, the Founders Collection. Fascinating and beautiful, the collection has bit of everything, from Egyptian reliefs and Roman coins, to early impressionist paintings. It includes an enormous collection of decorative arts as well (photos are not allowed; these images are from the Gulbenkian web site). There are cases full of place settings, but instead of being laid out in blankets, these are in glass cases.

 

We have dinner at 1300 Taverna, were we had lunch last summer. I have an outstanding meal: a grilled octopus salad, and a (quite large) steak with fries. The decor of the restaurant is a fitting coda to our theme today – it looks like the designers might have gathered most of the trinkets and chairs from the flea market.

We finish the night with a festive walk back from the Praca do Comercio, with holiday lights twinkling.

Xmas in Portugal - Day 2: Good Food and Conversations

Our Lisbon adventure continues on another bright, crisp day. After breakfast we walk up to the shopping district of the Avenida da Liberdade. 

We reconnect with our friends Bruna and Antonio, who we met last summer, over lunch at Pinoquio, a well-established seafood place near the Rossio train station. Rekindling a friendship requires some good meals and some good stories, and today should be full of both.

The place is busy, and all the servers seem to be older gentlemen in well-worn maroon sweaters. We have peel and eat shrimp, clams in broth, prawns in garlic butter, and a seafood rice dish – all fresh and wonderful. We talk about what we've been up to lately and our plans for Christmas, and we talk about the food.

Then we take a walk for coffee and tea at the cafe of the Verride Palacio Santa Catarina, a recently updated boutique hotel. The hotel is gorgeous; the cafe is in the new penthouse atop the old palacio. The coffee is very strong, and and views of the Tagus are stunning. We discuss ideas for the future and what we might be doing in a few years, and we talk about other restaurants in the area with views (like Tagide).

We stay to catch the sunset from the Miradouro de Santa Catarina.

We gather again for dinner is at Ao 26, a lively vegan spot down a quiet street near the Museu do Chiado, where we are joined by Ieda and Miguel. Though not the first place I might think to eat, the vegan plates are inventive and truly tasty: a colorful cheese and paté plate, mushrooms in broth, a vegan burger with awesome sweet potato fries, polenta with pumpkin and mushrooms, and a rich risotto. Antonio asks each of us to share a memory of something bad that we did as children that angered our parents. We talk about the line between good and bad behavior, how those things can change over time or with perspective, and what kinds of lesson we can take from our stories. It's heartening to meet such generous and energetic people.

Xmas in Portugal - Day 1: from Berkeley to Belém

After an amazing visit this summer, we are spending Christmas in Portugal, too. First, we'll stop in Lisbon, and then after Christmas Day, we'll travel by train to Porto.

 

My flight from Berkeley to Lisbon (SFO to LIS) takes twenty fours on the clock – I depart at about ten in the morning and land at about ten in the morning. But California is eight hours behind, so it is really a 16 hour trip. But then I decide I better make a day of it, so proceed to plan a day of sight-seeing. So now if I go to bed at ten o'clock, I'll still have to be awake for almost forty hours. But, though I am not able to sleep on the plane, the trip is super smooth; I make may flight and my connecting, and pass quickly through security and customs. I arrive in Lisbon and my suitcase is one of the first ones down the chute. I order an Uber (for the first time), and the driver is awesome and gets me to the Lisboa Carmo Hotel at about eleven. I plan to drop off my suitcase, but my room is ready, so they let me check-in. I have a coffee in my room, and Donna arrives a few minutes later (the first image above is the view from our hotel window).

 

We walk down to the Cais do Sodre train station and take the tramway to Belém. Last summer when we were in Lisbon, about halfway down the hill. we stumbled into a tile shop, d'Orey Tiles (Azulejaria Portuguesa); this trip we make our way back there (though they did not have the type of tiles Donna had remembered and had hoped to purchase). They have reclaimed, antique tiles and stone; some tiles are several hundred dollars each. This time the shopkeeper allows us into the back rooms, which look like a conservator's shop at a museum.

At the bottom of the hill is the station, and we buy our tickets for the tram to Belém. Our plan is to visit the church and monastery there, then the Belém Tower and the Discovery Monument. So our first stop is the Mosterio dos Jeronimos, an amazing late Gothic (Manueline) monastery that is now joined to an archeological museum as well as a maritime museum. 

The scale of the building is in it's length, lots of spires and other vertical moments creating a number of different rhythms, but it goes on and on down the avenue (that's where the museums are). The entrance to the church is encrusted with sculptures of figures in the round, making for a lumpy, cascading, slightly Gaudi-like exterior, but the effect spills out only just at the entrance. Similarly, the inside is a combination of lumpiness and laciness, lots of contrasts in lines and form, things moving visually up and down, and between light and dark.

 

 

 

Behind the church is the sacristy, which is two bays square. This, oddly, creates a space that has a single column in the middle. Along the walls are cabinets full of relics (old bones and teeth of important old and dead catholic people) along with documents and paintings which, I assume relate to Saint Jerome.

The Church is free to enter, the Sacristy cost 1,5 euro, but the Cloisters costs 10 euros. It's now almost four, and the place closes at five, but how often are we going to be here? Plus our plans to go to the Tower and the Monument are gone, so we'll make the most of the Cloisters and then get some tea.

Well, with the thin, almost non-existent, late crowd, and the setting sun providing some amazing color, we spend the next hour or so just marveling at the artistry of the stonework and the architecture. It's a stunning treat.

 

From the upper level of the Cloister, we gain access to the High Choir, with a view down to the Church. There is a particularly gruesome sculpture of Christ on the cross, which I enjoy very much; it does not face into the church, but is turned to the choir space.

 

As the low, winter sun sets, the stone lights up with fiery color, and the whole space begins to warm and glow. The lacy arches cast bright shadows, and the aisles seems to double in size from their mirrored reflections. What were spirally, melty, soft-serve tops are now torches. What was a dark, still pool in the center of the courtyard is now a pan with flambé.

 

 

On the way back, we stop at Pastéis de Belém for some tea and egg tarts, before the tram ride back to Cais do Sodre. We walk back up the hill to the hotel for a quick rest stop before an amazing dinner at Restaurante Tagide: a scallop carpaccio with caviar and balsamic for starter, artistically presented, with slow braised lamb and chestnut puree for mains. The lamb is served with a cabbage roll stuffed with mushrooms and leeks, and other minced vegetables, but it's a hint of something smokey and meaty, as if there's some prosciutto in there.

On the walk back to the hotel, we take in the Christmas decoration along the Rua Garrett. It's now almost eleven, and I'm exhausted. My head is buzzing from lack of sleep, and I'm seeing stars.