Sintra

On Monday, I was flying solo in Lisboa.  My two friends caught an early morning flight back to Madrid, and my train didn’t leave until 9:45 that night.  The sky was overcast, and it soon began to rain.  And it would keep raining that whole day, sliding back and forth between mist and downpour.  After a quick breakfast, I walked around a bit more, listening to Panda Bear and taking in the way the colors popped and the rainy sheen of the sidewalks. 

I decided to investigate the possibilities a little day trip.  I first checked out the ferries, which go to places around the bay of Lisboa, but I had also heard a lot about Sintra.  I knew it was close by, so I made my way to the Estação de Caminhos de Ferro do Rossio or the Rossio train station, located in the Rossio square near the center of the city. 

Trains head to and from Sintra about once every hour, and the round trip ticket was about 4 euros.  The train ride is around 40 minutes and takes you outside of Lisboa, offering you a glimpse at life beyond the city center, to the magical little town of Sintra, located right on the edge of the large Sintra-Cascais Natural Park. 

From the train station, you can walk into the town.  Cobble stone streets, small narrow alleys, story book houses and churches combine to create a sense of skepticism, as if part of you expects to see Mickey Mouse or maybe a peasant or lord come out from around the corner. 

There are plenty of options for food and drink in the village itself, and since the main monuments of Sintra (the Castelo dos mouros, the Pena National Palace, and the Sintra National Palace) are all several kilometers away, you’ll probably want to stop for something.  I had a stellar fillet of black grouper paired with a local white wine at Restaurante Tulhas, a cozy tavern with a menu specializing in fish but also offering veal cutlets and other terrestrial treats. 

Post lunch, I decided to try and go to see some of the monuments,.  Like I said, they are outside of the town itself, so I started following signs, walking along the sidewalk when it was there and on the side of the road when it wasn’t. The whole area is extremely lush and green, from evergreens to more tropical vine-y crawlers punctuated by occasional Moorish tiled fountains. 

and dramatic Gothic architecture.

Hiking by myself in a misty forest in Portugal was exactly as good as it sounds.  At least at first.  But as the rain started to pick up, and as I was still nowhere near any of the monuments, the euphoria started to diminish, and then my shoes started to take on water and the waterproofness of my jacket reached its saturation point.  There’s nothing that can put a damper on a good time quite like literally becoming the proverbial wet blanket. 

By the time I finally got to the entrance of the Pena National Palace, the last tour had just left, and I also didn’t realize that the entrance fee was close to 15 euros.  Having spent a lot of money already on the trip (primarily on shellfish), I wasn’t trying to drop that kind of coin.  I cut my losses and called it a day, spending 5 euros to take a bus back to the train station

  

Once there, still sopping wet, I changed into slightly dryer clothes in the bathroom of the train station, a lovely experience I assure you.  I made it back to Lisboa on time to catch my train back to Madrid, but my shoes were water logged and squishy for the entirety of the 11 hour ride.

Moral of the story:

While I do encourage you to be impulsive and improvisatory in your travels, it always pays to do a little bit of research about a place before going there so you don’t end up out in the rain.  Also an extra pair of shoes (or even sandals) is never a bad idea. 

And you should definitely go to Sintra because it looks like this when it’s sunny: 

Above photo from:  Catavino

All other photos by Tyler Simnick

A Few Impressions of Lisboa

Colors and Azulejos

         Colors abound in Lisboa. Blues, greens, pinks, purples.  Rain or shine, the city can never be accused of being bland.  

One of my favorite parts of being there was wandering around, taking in the colors, along with the patterns of the azulejos or tiles that cover the vast majority of the buildings.  The ubiquity and variety of this calling card of Portgual never ceased to astound me.  

Even the sidewalks are a mosaic of carefully placed stones, enough to keep you staring at your feet while you walk, and some of the plazas or praças feature even more ornate designs. 

Lisboa is its own place!

            Lisboa and Portugal more generally, definitely have their own vibe as compared to Spain.  Lisboa seemed much older to me than Madrid, more laid back, more colorful, and yet at the same time, a bit more melancholy while still friendly and warm.  Portuguese as a language was much harder to understand than I thought it would be, sounding more in the area of French and Italian than Spanish.  Portuguese is fairly easy to read if one has a knowledge of Spanish, however.

It was the first time I felt completely ignorant of the language in a foreign country, not even knowing how to say “thank you” at first (obrigado!).  Luckily, the vast majority of locals that we interacted with spoke very good English, even better than people in Spain.  When talking to a Spaniard about this, he claimed that one of the reasons for this is that they don’t dub movies and television in Portugal with Portuguese, whereas Spain is notorious for dubbing media since Franco and still to this day.  Still, it’s never a bad idea to learn a few phrases in the local tongue!

Lisboa is reminiscent of San Francisco!

            While Lisboa is quite different than Spain, it also reminded me a lot of another port city:  San Francisco!  Both cities feature nearly identical suspension bridges.  The Ponte 25 de Abril bears a striking resemblance to the Golden Gate Bridge, being both the same style and color of bridge, although the same company did not design them.

            Lisboa is also quite hilly, and the overall vibe is very relaxed.  Lisboa also has a tram system, dating back from the 1870s, and one of the best ways to see the city is to hop on the tram for a ride, especially if it’s raining!  They are akin to the cable cars of San Francisco, and evidently the first trams in Lisboa were imported from the USA.  

            At the same time, as a European capital, Lisboa’s streets are more winding and there’s history around every corner.  If San Francisco had 500 more years of history under its belt, it could then begin to have the quiet force of Lisboa, which was for a very long time, the last bastion of the Western world before its discovery of America. 

Nightlife aka Drinking in the Streets!

         One of the most apparent (and awesome) things about Lisboa is the complete lack of any sort of open container laws.  Even in Spain, the land of the botellón (even in the face of its current embattled legal situation), and especially in Madrid, bars are very strict about not taking alcoholic drinks out into the street.  Sure, you can buy cans of beer in the street pretty easily, but you better not take that gin tonic out of the bar. 

            In Lisboa, however, it was almost like you were encouraged to take your drink out to the streets.  When we went out in Bairro Alto, the streets were filled with people hanging out, many with big plastic cups of mojitos or caipirinhas in their hands.  These drinks are also very cheap, with an XXXXL drink costing you no more than 6 €.  Generally, prices are cheap in Lisboa, and it makes for a fun and lively nighttime scene.  There are plenty of cool bars and discos, and the atmosphere makes barhopping (with breaks in between) your best bet. And of course, many of the streets are gorgeous, in and of themselves.

Lisboa

Lisboa was one of those places that I knew I should go to on some level, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why.  I’ve learned to trust these sorts of feelings w/r/t travel, so when I texted my friend the Wednesday after I had gotten back from Paris and he told me that he and one of my other good friends were going to Lisboa, I hopped on the train.  Quite literally.  Plane tickets were very expensive with only two days to go, so I decided to take the night train to Lisboa, leaving Madrid at 9:45 PM Friday night and arriving 7 AM Saturday morning to meet up with my friends. 

Instead of paying 170 € for a plane ticket, I spent 90 € both ways for the train, but ten to eleven hours on a train is a long haul. I sipped on a Super Bock around midnight at the bar in the cafeteria car, looking out at the moonlit terrain, somewhere in Castilla y León.  Back in my seat, cramped legs and a stiff neck did an excellent job keeping the Sandman at bay for most of the night, as I faded in and out of a half-sleep.   

I had heard that Lisboa was supposed to have good seafood, and I assumed it was pretty similar to Spain, both temperamentally and linguistically, having had very little exposure to Portuguese.  I also knew that one of my favorite artists Panda Bear had left the states to live in the Portuguese capital, where he had made several albums that are among my all-time favorites.  It was a half-joke amongst my friends that we were going to find Panda Bear and hang out with him in his adopted city.  I wanted to see how my relationship to his music would change after I had spent some time in the place where he had created it. 

I watched the sunrise as the train approached the Portuguese capital, the growing light revealing a new country to my sleep deprived eyes.  Moving through the outskirts towards the station I felt like I was in Latin America even though I’ve never been to Latin America.  Large palm trees dotted the landscape, and the vegetation was much more lush than in Madrid.  Many of the buildings were pastel, and a lot of them looked like they had seen better days.  Spain was hit hard by the economic crisis, but Portugal took it even harder and that was palpable at points during my visits. 

I arrived at the station at 7 AM, which is an hour behind CEST.  I was going to try and walk to the Air B&B, but a light rain started to fall as I stepped outside, so I decided to take to the metro.   My friends had a different Air B&B originally, but evidently in less than ideal conditions, with a young couple and child as part of the accommodations.  They found another one right in the middle of Bairro Alto, one of the hipper and happening places in Lisbon. 

This was my first experience with Air B&B, and it was really great.  There were three of us, and we had three beds, including one king, a very well-equipped kitchen, shower, living room, etc.  Hostels are nice if you’re looking to meet people, but if you have a group already, it’s great to have some privacy, the ability to cook if you want, and something slightly more formidable than a 3 inch pad to sleep on.  Obviously, you’re in a new place to eat their food, but it’s good to be able to have the option to cook.  We ended up making brunch and dinner during our stay. 

The next few posts will deal with Lisboa, its food, its sights, its charms, its sounds. Bom dia!