2. 23 March Lisbon

March 23, 2019

23 March 2019

Arrived in Lisbon 5AM yesterday morning on a short five and a half hour flight. A very short transcontinental trip and after checking world maps on the plane I could see Lisbon seems to be as close to Boston as anywhere in Europe. This very short trip was then lengthened by a one hour slog through passport control with hundreds and hundreds of near brain dead overnight travelers waiting to get their passports stamped by one of four agents. But compared to our 62 hour door-to-door epic journey back from Sri Lanka four years ago, five hours still seemed luxurious. Hooked up with fellow travelers Jason and Laurie Lamanna who breezed through passport control in a different terminal having arrived from Tampa.

Got to the hotel by 8AM where I’d would have preferred to nap but our rooms wouldn’t be ready until the afternoon which wasn’t a surprise. So off the four of us went to stumble around downtown Lisbon.

From our hotel, we had easy access to Avenida da Liberdade, a broad boulevard with traffic but also wide pedestrian walkways and kiosks, and made our way to Castela de San Jorge, a huge old fort high on one of the hills surrounding old Lisbon. Getting up to the castle required winding our way uphill through old neighborhoods and once walking into a grocery store to take an elevator up to the next neighborhood hill….. From the old fort there were stupendous views of Lisbon below.

My initial impression of Lisbon, a world class city, is that it’s the quietest city I’ve ever been in. Lots of traffic, lots of people, just not much noise. I should add here that one of the noisiest towns I’ve been to is, of all places, Sanibel. When the leaf blowers get going on Sanibel, midtown Manhattan can seem like a refuge.

Along the way there were plenty of disturbing pastry shops that were hard to resist. Before flying out of Boston, Maria and I had dinner at the airport, dinner on the plane and then a breakfast sandwich before landing. The only reason one eats this much when flying from one place to another is due to a lack of anything else to do. So being completely full of food we couldn’t resist another breakfast with Lisbon pasties.

I’d like to find someone in Lisbon who’s in the know and can explain to me why Portugal is so under the radar. England, France, Italy, home sweet home, and a bunch of other countries have gone somewhat haywire but I never hear anything about Portugal. How are things with the Portugal government? Is immigration the issue here that it is in the rest of Western Europe and the US? What are these people hiding? Are they too good to be true?

Had a great relaxing outdoor lunch along Rue San Jose and crawled back to our hotel, called the H10, and the name of the place makes me think they’re doubling as a spy agency for the government but H10 calls itself a “Boutique Hotel” and is, in fact very nice. Got some catnaps and met for dinner at the hotel restaurant, too tired to venture out any further.

We’re on this trip with our good friends Jason and Laurie Lamanna who we met in Sanibel, and who now live in Tampa to be near grandkids. Jason and I sang chorus together in Sanibel under the direction of our other good friend Steve Cramer. Over the years Steve tried to direct the gaggle of older people, Jason and I cut up like middle school misfits but Steve, being a former middle school music teacher, knew how to handle us. Jason may be tough to manage on this trip since he still has the mind of a middle schooler and I want this trip to be over before he reaches puberty.

Jason has done a lot of carpentry/cabinet work for Sanibel homeowners, including us, and I have the greatest respect for his terms and conditions. Once he gives his customer an estimate, you can depend on him that the cost will not increase………………unless he has to work while the customer is listening to Rush Limbaugh. In those cases, Jason will suddenly find unexpected problems that will cause costs to rise. The customer, of course, will have to pick up these unexpected costs. That’s a fine work ethic.