Friday, April 16, 2010

El Grande Adventura a Espana... Ole!! Iberian Peninsula Travelogue Part II

Saturday, April 10, 2010:

Our last day in Spain. From what I had heard others say, Madrid kinda sucked. I can understand why they may say that – it's a big noise city – if they hadn't gotten to experience the city like we had in the previous two days. We were loving it, but still wanted to see a few other things.

I had heard there were creepy baby head statues at the train station there, identical to the two in Boston. So I wanted to see them and come full circle. (I hope there aren't any other baby head statues in the world or I may have to go find them, as disturbing as it may sound.) We went to the train station where I had heard they were located. I asked a security guard, who had no idea about them and thought I was certifiably insane. After wandering around, I finally asked a very nice lady at the information desk, thinking that they're never going to see me again, and knowing that I wanted to find the sculptures, I didn't have much to lose. Sure enough, she knew where they were. However, they are in an area where only ticketed passengers can go at the station. This, you see, is the very station where the Al Qaeda attack in Spain happened a few years back, killing 191 people. However, we were able to see them through the door, and I snapped a photo, even though I wasn't able to get in. As this was the site of the tragic bombing, they also had a memorial to those lost that day. It was an interesting memorial. Just inside, all the names of the victims are listed on a plaque outside of a deep-blue room with a glass pillar in the center rising above ground which acts as the only light source. In the glass column, they have a paper cover with various quotes about the attack from around the world printed on it, circling to the top of the column. It was a very somber, and sad to think of the tragedy of that day. It made me wonder why after nearly ten years, we still don't have a 9/11 memorial in New York.

After leaving the train station, we returned to the hotel, passing Madrid's answer to Times Square, to get our bags and were off to the airport to catch our flight to Lisbon. I'll tell you what…an afternoon flight with a plane full of Spaniards and Portuguese is one of the loudest things a person will ever experience in their life.

There was a distinct difference between the two cities, noticeable right outside of the airport—yes, they're two different countries, but more than that. Where Madrid seems more arid, Lisbon is a city right on the water, and what a difference water makes to beautify a city. I was in love with the place on the bus ride to our hotel. The thing that bugged me though, is that it seemed almost too welcoming to English-speakers. As a Portuguese speaker, I don't mind if everything is in their language, however, I can appreciate that they want to help. To me though, it seemed as though they tried too hard. Still, I ended up having more than enough opportunities to speak Portuguese.

We made it to our hotel, a bare-bones pensão , with very little by way of decor. The room was supposed to have a single, queen sized bed, but instead had three twin beds, a thirteen inch TV with four channels that intermittently turned off while watching, and a bidet. There were two annoying flies that seemed to just hover in place as well. We eventually took care of them with my trusty baseball cap. However, the place was decent and clean. It was in a perfect location, just off of one of the main plazas in town, Restauradores. It was also right atop of the most popular place to visit in the city, the Baixa neighborhood, providing easy access from there to nearly any place in town.

Since we got in fairly late, we decided to look around Baixa, walking down to the Tagus River, and find a restaurant nearby. The area is very charming except for the number of people on the street offering to sell me hashish, pot, whatever you wanna call it. The age and years of pollution have also made the buildings there look a little dingy, but the underlying structures made for a place that I've certainly never imagined before. At the bottom of Baixa, very near the river, there is a great plaza and an arch that marks the start of the Baixa neighborhood. While taking pictures there, we heard a small scream from a tourist walking with her husband nearby. We quickly looked over to see her legs flying into the air as she tripped over a stone bench-type thing right outside the plaza. We struggled not to laugh as she was obviously not seriously hurt, but we were reminded of the Mel Brooks quote, "Tragedy is me cutting my finger, comedy is you falling into an open sewer and dying." We wandered around looking for dinner. Still feeling a bit miffed over the cost of dinner the night before, we were looking for something cheap. Oddly, there were many Indian/Italian combo restaurants to be found. Though we were intrigued, we never actually went in to one. That evening, we walked past the window of a restaurant that had some tasty snacks I recalled from my days in Brazil, namely a coxinha, which has shredded chicken, chopped olives, and a few other things in a potato-based dough, formed into the shape of a teardrop and fried. As I pointed it out to Mel, the waiter saw us looking in the window and came out with a menu. When he spoke to me in Portuguese, and we saw the price for the place was cheap, we knew we had a winner. We ended up getting two coxinha, and salted cod with rice and vegetables, a very common local dish, to share. I never order fish in a restaurant, but I certainly didn't regret that. It was very tasty – heavy on the salt and chopped garlic -- and the garnishes were a welcome change after not having vegetables for much of the three previous days. Afterward, we looked for ice cream, which Melanie said she had seen, but whereas this was not Madrid, and places close much earlier, every place seemed to be closed or closing. Finally, however, we found a place with an Olá brand (Good Humor in the States) ice cream freezer in a bar and we got ice cream bars to eat as we returned to sleep in our not-so-comfy twin beds.

Sunday, April 11, 2010:

Sunday started off great. We left our hotel and ventured to the bottom of the Baixa area to catch a bus to the Belém neighborhood of Lisbon. This was more difficult than we would have imagined as the system of busses and trolleys overlaps and led to some confusion for us. After asking a shopkeeper for some directions, we found the bus stop/trolley stop and got the first mode of transport to Belém. Sunday is a great day for tourism in Lisbon as many museums are free of charge. Historically, Belém was a different city, which served as a port in the time of the explorers and huge Portuguese shipping trade. It makes sense, then, that they would put the Discoveries Monument there. We first went to the monument, walking down the riverfront and passing many joggers as well as many fishermen trying to catch a tasty lunch from the river. However, based on the smell from there, I wouldn't knowingly eat anything that came directly from the Tagus. After the Monument, we went to the Torre de Belém (tower of Belém), which served as a sort of lookout in the shipping days. It was huge, and as it was free of charge, we were all over that place. We climbed clear to the top and took lots and lots of pictures. From the tower you could get a great view of the river, the suspension bridge nearby, and could see many sailboats that were heading out from the nearby marinas for a day of fun. After the tower, we went to the Jeronimos monastery and cathedral, built in celebration of Portugal's successful expeditions. It was housed on beautifully maintained grounds with nice fountains and gardens. After a wait for the end of the early mass, we were able to go into the church, where we saw the burial site of explorer, Vasco da Gama. The church itself was nice, but due to church services, much of it was closed so we didn't get much time to look around. Later, we went to find the Casa Pastéis de Belém, where we got their famous Pasteis de Belém, a tasty little cream tart. It's like flan but good in my opinion.

Rejuvenated from the tarts, we continued on, swinging by the Coach Museum, which sounded really lame to me until I saw a picture of the inside. And as it was free, I thought we should go in. Mel wanted to anyway, but thought I wouldn't like it. There, they have all sorts of coaches and carriages that had been used by Portuguese royalty. They were very ornate in detail, and the oldest dated back to 1619. The last coach in the museum was the one being used by the royal family in 1908 when the king and his oldest son were gunned down while his wife attempted to fight off the assassins. The coach still showed two bullet holes from the attack. Leaving the Coach Museum, we hiked up a very long hill to get to the Royal Palace in the Ajuda neighborhood. This palace was apparently only half-finished; from the outside you can see it ends rather abruptly, but given the dozens of sumptuous rooms, what more did they need? I wish we could have taken pictures inside, because it was quite a treat. It was just amazing to see how the other half lived there. The Newport Mansions in Rhode Island are amazing, but this was something else all together. By this time we were pooped, but we still had half of the day left. We were determined, though, to not walk much to get back to Baixa. We hopped on a trolley from the top of the hill near the palace, and caught a bus from where it dropped us off back to the hotel. Since we didn't want to get anything big to eat at that point, we swung by the local grocery store to get some apples, bananas, and some cookies. Also, I might note, that a bottle of water there was only 5 cents as opposed to the $1.50 it would be in a store here; a bottle of water in a restaurant would be much more, though – over $2 sometimes.

After a few minutes at the hotel, we were off to a neighboring area, Bairro Alto, to see some things there. Baixa, which means low, down, or bottom in Portuguese, is aptly named as it sits between two hills to the east and west. Bairro Alto sits on top of the western hill. There is an insane incline that takes you to the top. Luckily, they have a cable car/elevator that gets you there without all the effort. The director was a jovial chap, joking with many of the boarding passengers, many of whom were tourists. While climbing the hill in the car, he honked and motioned a runner who got pooped out mid-way to the top to get going—kind of a "you had to be there" thing. Once on top, we hurried to the Igreja São Roque, which was the earliest Jesuit church in the Portuguese world. The chapels in the church were very beautiful, and the most admired is the chapel of John the Baptist. I did find it funny, though, that the pictures in that chapel showed him pouring water on Jesus, which isn't quite what I remember the Bible telling me about the baptism, but I digress. We left, and next went to the ruins of a church which partially collapsed during the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon. While walking around and taking pictures, we were approached by some dude from Senegal. It was unfortunate because we were in a corner, and there was no real easy way to avoid him, so we made the small talk, and I knew that it was a manner of time before he would hit us up for money. He did, however, have a different approach. He said it was his birthday, and that they give presents on their birthday. He tried to "give" me a bracelet and Melanie a necklace, but asked that we give him money. We continued to refuse, and only were able to rid ourselves of him after we told him we didn't want the jewelry and that we were going to leave it on the ledge right above a big drop to the bottom of the neighborhood below.

After that, we walked to a few nearby plazas, did some people watching, and took in the great views of the city below. While at one plaza, we saw an older couple walk by. Shortly after passing us, we heard a familiar squawk from the woman. We looked over as she was falling face first into the plaza beneath her. We hear a thud and saw the crowd react. This one looked like it hurt more than the night before—that and the fact that she was an older woman. Now we were wondering if we had some adverse influence on people strolling around us in Lisbon. We left shortly after and saw the offending storm drain that caused the fall. We wandered a little more, and by this time, my camera was telling me that I was out of room on my memory card. So I spent time clearing off duplicates and blurry pictures;by the time that was done, the battery on the camera had been drained. I knew picture taking would need to be limited, and unfortunately our best day was supposedly ahead.

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