Lisbon, November 2000
In November 2000, I spent a week in Lisbon. I did extensive advance research on the Internet; here I will mostly discuss some practical things I found out while there.
Over the Internet I reserved a stay at the Pens~ao Lar do Areeiro for under $30 U.S. a night. I saw that it was not in a particularly interesting neighborhood but on the Metro line. It was also a straight shot from the airport; I should be able to take the city bus there easily. I’d found out that it would be desirable to buy a weekly tourist pass for buses, metros, trams, elevators, and funiculars; I hadn’t determined (maybe someone on the Travelzine would have known but I didn’t ask) if I could buy this pass at the airport. I asked at the airport tourist information desk and was told no. I had been to the ATM and had my first encounter with the celebrated Portuguese friendliness when a young woman coming to work at the exchange bureau tapped me on the arm to correct me when I tried to enter my PIN by touching the keypad diagram on the screen instead of the keypad below. I remembered the bus fare as 160$ (the $ sign after the number means escudos) and the ATM had given me 5000$ notes. I had read that the buses didn’t actually require exact change, but it wouldn’t be advisable to expect change at that level. I ordered a bica (a Portuguese espresso) at the airport bar for 120$; it was a problem getting change there but I eventually did. I found my way to the bus stop and counted out 160$ in change. I paid and the driver called (the words were similar enough to Spanish) that I was 5$ short; the fare was 165$. I corrected that, and spotted my hotel stop at the first plaza.
I went into the hotel and, as could be expected at that early hour, my room wasn’t ready yet. If it hadn’t been Sunday, I could have bought the transit pass at the kiosk at that square. I thought I’d read that the pass could be bought at metro stations; I went to the station there and tried, and determined that they just offered a pass for the metro alone. I bought a single metro ticket and went to the end of the line, Cais do Sodre, where I knew the kiosk would be open. I bought the pass and had my first stroll through central Lisbon, the lower Baixa area, quiet on Sunday morning but that I would see as a bustling shopping area at other times.
I took my first bus ride to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. At the entrance there’s a stairway ahead to floors with Portuguese art of many eras. Note this: it might appear that on the ground floor behind the staircase there are only the museum shop and the bar; one should go past these to see the most important part of the collection, including Flemish and Italian art.
It got to be time for me to return to the hotel, take my room, and get some rest. The hotel room compared favorably to other low-priced singles I’ve had in Europe; it was really a double and had a bathroom with shower, albeit without a soap shelf. There was a television with an Italian channel (always appealing to me) and BBC World (good for following ongoing developments in the American elections).
Now I’ll take a thematic, rather than chronological approach. From many sources including Travelzine travelogues I learned of areas to find good choices of restaurants; one was off the Rossio along the Rua das Portas de Santo Ant~ao and Rua de S~ao Jose (my first dinner was at Verdemar there); good modest places were on the Rua dos Correiros. I had many fish dishes. My biggest disappointment was in the least tourist-oriented restaurant, a neighborhood place next door to my hotel; I had a very bland fish dish there. The lightly sparkling vinho verde wine was a good accompaniment to the meals I deemed special.
I made good use of the metro and its convenience to my hotel; in the newer cars it was nice to have the display of the name of the next station as I heard it announced. For one interested in languages and who knows the other major Romance languages, it was interesting to learn the quirks of Portuguese pronunciation that way. I also tried to use the bus to get a better look at the city, but I often missed my stops. Some stops are marked with a name, some not. I had read that sometimes no one knows a street or square by the name on the street sign, and there are other quirks like the Rossio metro station not connecting to the Rossio train station (the Restauradores metro does). I also found things like a bus stop marked Anjos over a metro entrance, so I figured I was at the Anjos metro and would get off the bus at the next metro stop. Well, no, the Anjos bus stop was at a different metro station. As a transit buff, I enjoyed spending Monday, when many sights were closed, getting an orientation to the area through many modes of transit in a tour outlined in the Luso pages at <http://www.personal.u-net.com/~luso/>. This included trams, ferries, and the double-decker suburban train that crosses the spectacular Ponte 25 de Abril suspension bridge.
People on the Travelzine had advised me against trying to go to Evora or Coimbra on a day trip; they’re great places that can’t be done in a day. So I did the essential day trip of Sintra. It is served by a suburban train making the 45-minute run for less than a dollar. Rather than the central starting point of Rossio, I could use the Areeiro station near my hotel. That station had many arriving passengers during the morning rush hour, but the ticket office was closed and there were none of the ticket machines ubiquitous in other stations. I rode without a ticket (and wasn’t caught) to the connecting station of Benfica, where I bought a ticket. I arrived in Sintra knowing that I should see the fascinating mix of architectural styles in the Palacio Nacional and the Palacio da Pena. My sources weren’t clear about the availability of public transportation year-round. Once I found my bearings, I walked toward the Palacio Nacional without trouble, but I saw the Palacio da Pena high atop a peak where walking was not an option. (See the first three pictures of my photo page).After seeing the Palacio Nacional, I established that there was a bus to the higher spot; the bus ticket was in fact a day pass. The bus stop at the gate to the grounds was still quite a climb to the palace; a trolley was in place to take people up, charging 300$ versus 190$ for the train from Lisbon (still a low price, I should say). The palace close up was certainly spectacular with all its eccentricities. When I took the bus back to the train station and needed to catch the return train, my timetable-reading skills were challenged. Trains were listed in minutes after every hour, and I thought I understood how to connect to a train to Areeiro; although I got the gist of most written Portuguese I read, I missed the footnotes saying that certain trains only ran in the morning rush hour. I made one wrong connection, tried to make another connection, and didn’t know which train I wanted; I finally found the way to my hotel on the metro.
In all the extensive advance research I’d done on the Internet, I had not seen that the Gulbenkian museum, which I was expecting to be a highlight of the trip, would be closed for renovation until the new year. I went there on the one day of torrential rain of the trip, to find that only a small section of modern Brazilian art was on display. This was one of many reasons to make a plan for another trip.
I followed a recommendation to use the Eyewitness guidebook; it was certainly attractive with its colorful diagrams of sights and neighborhoods, but I’m glad I also got the Time Out guide, which had more information. When the rainy day turned to a clear night, I was ready to see a performance of fado, the heart-rending traditional music. I checked the Time Out guide for a recommendation; there were negatives about most of the places in the Bairro Alto; I chose the Clube do Fado behind the Se Cathedral, which offered dinner and a good range of fadistas in succession.
Both guidebooks had detailed maps and street indexes, but I had a problem finding the cybercafes listed in the Time Out guide. There were two in the Chiado district: Ciber Chiado at Largo do Picadeiro and Cyberbica on Rua Duques de Braganca. I could find neither address in either guidebook but eventually stumbled upon them. The former is a wide spot in the (latter) street whose name probably wasn’t worth squeezing onto a map; the spot was a cozy upstairs apartment. The latter was indexed under Braganca in the Time Out guide; it’s indexed under Duques in Eyewitness but by streetlight I was probably looking under Duque. That cafe was at ground level and for me it lent itself better to quick Net checking. I had hoped I could recommend Hotvoice.com for people to receive voice messages from home while traveling. People can leave and retrieve messages by calling a toll-free number in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. and a local number in big cities in other countries. I got through to the Lisbon number once before e-mailing my parents asking them to send me a test message. They did, but I tried the number repeatedly at all hours and always got busy signals. Since I got through the one time, I don’t think I had a problem with phone procedures. I would hesitate to advise people to rely on Hotvoice for emergency contact when traveling outside North America.
Overall I had a great time in this week in Lisbon, with day trips to Sintra and Cascais, a seaside resort that was still lively on a drizzly November day. It was great to get a sense of Lisbon’s varied neighborhoods (decorated for Christmas)--the broad boulevards and the varied central neighborhoods. There was a contrast between the two hilly areas flanking the Baixa: the Chiado and Bairro Alto on the one hand, with smart shopping and a gentrified feeling; and the Alfama on the other, with a decidedly working-class flavor. In my photo page, the views across town are from the top of the Elevador da Gloria across the Baixa to the Alfama, with the Castelo S~ao Jorge on top. I’ve mostly traveled in places where I speak the language; I learned basic phrases in Portuguese, which is similar to the other languages I know. While I don’t advise people to travel expecting to use only English, every time things got at all complicated, it turned out that the person spoke English. I agree with the general feeling that the Portuguese are very friendly people. I look forward to a future trip combining some more of Lisbon with other places in Portugal.
I always need to say something about my air travel. This was my father’s frequent flyer award on TWA; I hesitated to accept it but I eventually did. TWA had a very limited choice of European destinations; I might not have thought of Lisbon if there had been a bigger choice, nor would I have thought of buying a trip there, but I’m certainly glad I chose Lisbon. After I booked the trip, TWA announced it would end service to Lisbon in January; having taken TWA so often on transatlantic flights while growing up, I found it sad that they were becoming such marginal players, even if their service was often far from perfect. As I finally get this written, we see that the TWA name is about to leave the scene entirely.
For my trip from Kansas City to Lisbon, I needed to change in St. Louis and New York JFK. They originally proposed giving me about 45 minutes to make the international connection at JFK; I objected to that, so they had me leave KC at 7 a.m. and have six hours at JFK. I took that and went into Manhattan for a look at the Metropolitan Museum during that layover. With construction in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the subway, I just felt comfortable spending an hour in the museum. In the outbound journey, all three flights arrived early; I also noted what a long bus ride there was from the plane to the terminal upon arrival; it seemed the plane stopped on separate grounds.
For the return, they started boarding the flight from Lisbon by bus an hour early, but it took off 45 minutes late. TAP, the Portuguese airline, was having a strike, contributing to a chaotic atmosphere at the airport, but it looked like their New York flight was still on, and it was raining; I don't know how much either of those contributed to the delay of my TWA flight, but they were loading passengers right up to the late departure. The schedules usually have delay time built in, but they said there would be a long flight plan, 12 min. more than the scheduled 8 hrs. because of headwinds and bypassing a storm. Right on deboarding at JFK, I heard the last call for my St. Louis connection; I don't know if I could have made it even with carry-ons only. I got right through formalities, but waited 40 minutes for the first bags from my flight. I was scheduled to be on a 2.40 flight, got rebooked for 5.25. That meant a much shorter layover at St. Louis, so I was to get to Kansas City just an hour later than previously scheduled, which wouldn’t be too bad. When I boarded, they checked the passes down the hall from the computers; I was e-ticketed, but the new passes they gave me said "Not valid without ticket attached." I had to go back to the computer counter and the agent was not skilled at straightening it out; it took complex maneuvers to reissue this as a paper ticket so I could board. I finally did; this was a 767 where they were showing Ricky Martin videos and there was a festive atmosphere. When we were ready to leave on time, the captain announced that a service vehicle had "impacted" the plane and it probably wouldn't be cleared to go. They served a snack and drinks, then had us leave as another plane was prepared. We got onto this one, which was a 767 with a different configuration; my row 17 was now a bulkhead, and there were no rows 10-15. People in these rows hovered in the space between classes until it was decided there were extra rows in back. So we left at 8 and I again missed my connection; luckily there was an 11 p.m. flight to KC that I made; many people missed the last connection and got put up for the night. This was the Saturday after Thanksgiving; getting rebooked on Sunday, the biggest air travel day of the year, was probably going to be a hassle. It was a long day for the return, but it was a great trip to a place I look forward to revisiting.