Portugal

Lagos, Portugal

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Bob was hell-bent on going to Lagos, a resort area on the south coast of Portugal thinking it would be a nice break from the cold wind and one and two star hotel rooms. I resisted-thinking it would take three precious days away from either Provence France or Italy both of which I was really looking forward to. But the tour boss-guide won out and we took the bus and spent two nights in a cold and windy tourist-town.

As we got off the bus a lady from the small town cornered Bob and off we went following her to her apartment house-Residential Samana-no breakfast but nice big room with WC, shower and bidet and french doors opening onto a large balcony and internet around the corner. I spent a whole day in a bar writing the last travelogue while Bob jogged up the coast to a lighthouse. Before we left we had our whole wardrobe laundered and bought bread, cheese, ham and apples at a market for the bus trip to Seville Spain.

European Popular Culture

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Most days in Europe you would see at least once a wonderful display of affection between two young people-playful and sensuous-mostly kissing-but never offensive. And then they walk on as if nothing had happened. Bob finds it uncomfortable…but no one else on the street seems to pay any attention to it at all. Portugal is a bit more restrained…the play, Vagina Monologues, advertised all over Britain and France but is no where to be seen in Spain and Portugal.

Fashions
In the urban centers you see beautiful people with beautiful clothes (and in Paris the women smelled wonderful as they passed you by on the street) so I caved in and made my first purchase-some perfume not exported by France. Women love sweaters. Fully 2-3 out of all people under 40 wear black leather jackets and often the women are in full length ones. Clothing is very expensive so you know these folks have a little money. In Salamanca, especially on the weekend, early evenings reveal mostly older couples strolling through the streets and in the town square dressed as if they were going to the opera-women in very expensive cloth coats and men in perfectly pressed slacks and jackets with tie-often pushing a stroller with what apparently is the grandchild. They eat dinner between 8pm and 11pm. Then the older folks disappear and the streets become filled with the young. I marveled at what appeared on the surface to be an ideal small village society focused around the family and at the center a cultural center (plaza) where everyone could go and socialize.

Many young women who have good figures seem to get up in the morning and pour themselves into their jeans (a la mons pubis) before they go out-the younger ones in faded ones with the hem rolled up six inches-jeans I mean. Levi Jeans are very popular as well as levi jackets. On the way from Paris to Bayonne we had a three hour layover in Bordeaux so we ate lunch at an outdoor cafe-four people had on levi jackets. Btw, levi material was invented by the Levi Strauss company in a small city nearby. American companies in San Francisco imported the strong material in the 1800’s to sell to workers in the gold mines and on the docks…and the material came to be associated with America.

The Proletariat
After a few days in the city centers, we go looking for the working class. In Paris, the Belleville section was the most colorful and interesting. There are also Muslim and African neighborhoods. In Paris there are no green men with green brooms in these neighborhoods. The subways are full of piss and the streets full of litter. Guess they dn’t expect the tourists to go to these
neighborhoods.

Lisbon reputedly is the gay-lesbian capital of Europe but don’t know why it would be Lisbon. People are generally very kind in Spain and Portugal. Lots of people of African extract in Portugal and they often flash big wonderful smiles!

Continuing saga of the internet: went searching for the internet in Lisbon. An Austrian woman was waiting her turn to pay a $12 deposit which gets returned to you when you are finished. I told her about my internet saga in France and she laughed and laughed. I mentioned that I thought that the French “attitude” was a big act because it was so exagerated. Surprisingly she agreed and said that the French were known all over Europe for it and that no one takes it seriously. So I guess I won’t either.

Spain and Portugal play movies with original language and add their own subtitles. Hilarious, is to see an American made movie in France with George Clooney speaking French!

United Colors of Benneton everywhere. Starbucks on every corner in London but not a one in France, Spain and Portugal-god love them! Actually it would devestate hundreds of local cafes that really are at the heart of the culture of these countries.

Even though most of the little shops and banks and restaurants close down in the afternoon 1-4 in Spain and 1-3 in Portugal, the modern shopping mall businesses stay open. Whole countries of people disappear off the streets during these hours!

Lisbon

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Roosters are symbols of Portuguese culture so we felt that it was appropriate that after staying one night in a boring part of Lisbon, Portugal in a hotel room offered to us by a “tout” at a train station we woke to a rooster crowing at 5am.

The next day we moved to a small two star hotel-Residencial Santana Pensao at Rua Luciano Cordeiro-located up a steep narrow side street on a hill at the center of the city in the Bairro Alto district. (“Lets Go” travel book says “Bairro” is the hip name for Chiado-the Portuguese word for district.) The hotel can also be reached via the Ascensor Gloria from Pr. Restauradoes-like the cable cars in San Francisco. The hotel was up one flight of stairs off street-no lift.

We have learned more history on hop-on hop-off tour buses than we did in all of high school and college put together! In Portugal there is a law against killing the bull in bullfights-and the horse plays a very important role. In 1965 my traveling companion and I saw a bullfight in Pamplona Spain when we were there for the running of the bulls (that Hemingway made famous in the US). It was a sickening thing to watch and we left in the middle before the bull died.

As Bob says, Lisbon has some degree of decay but perhaps that is the charm-by its appearance we realize that it’s hey-day was 4-5 centuries ago. Amazing to think that at one time Portugal was one of the foremost powers of the world! One of the monuments of Lisbon is a huge building that was built as a seminary and church with 15% of the profits that came from the spice trade in India. It is now called the “pepper building.”

Next day, after a lunch of very good chicken and rice and a sandwich of beef slices cooked in broth, we strolled out into an empty square in the rain. I was offered contraband from a guy selling sun glasses…sunglasses in the rain?

Was helped at internet by young woman who was fluent in English. (Very difficult to find anyone over the age of 20 that knows English. This girl, however, had had 8 years of English and told us that all children from first grade on are now taught English in school.)

Ate dinner at restaurant around the corner with Fado Music. Fado is Portuguese old style blues which is a kind of high-pitched lamenting. I had heard that Fado was very beautiful and that the singing would break your heart but I didn’t like the classical version-very loud and harsh singing and then they want to sell you their CDs afterward. Have been told the contemporary Fado is better. The next day we took a train trip to Caicais on the outskirts of Lisbon.

On the last day we took the tram up to the Alfama district-old Moorish district of town-lots of Muslim shop owners. We visited a church that was displaying “Order of Malta” artifacts and we remembered reading about the order in a college history or religion class. We trekked up a steep hill in the rain to the Castile de Jorge, an old Roman fortification, and I took a pee into a little waterfall (urinal) against the fortification wall behind a copper shield with my stand-up peeing device used by women in the US Forest Service.

Sampled port wine (the indiginous favorite in Portugal) in a shop across from the wall with a young woman proprietor who spoke very good English. When my port was finished I told her thank you in Portuguese and she said “that is Portuguese for thank you.” I said, “yes, I know, I am thanking you for the port.” She laughed and said, “oh, sorry, many people say gracias (Spanish) and we find it very insulting!” Bob and I do seem to “get into trouble” on a pretty regular basis with the locals but we were lucky that time. Bob remarked to her that he noticed that she had an American accent. She said that yes, her English teacher from Britain gave her low marks in English class because of her American accent but that she didn’t care!

On the way down the hill, soaked wet and freezing cold, we looked into a small restaurant window and saw a huge pile of crab on the counter with a table full of people eating and laughing loudly-the entire scene pulling us uncontrollably in where we participated in the festivities.