I’m two days in Lisbon, and I can hardly stop to write up all I’m learning.
I’m staying in a hotel the tourist board put me up in. Every time I accept the tourist board’s offer of a free room, they seem to be pushing a “design hotel” — where function follows form. Everything is clever yet impractical. The outdoor sign is knee level and tiny — I walked past the place several times. The lobby is vast, but there’s nowhere to sit. The room’s very chic, but no drawers, no hooks, no rack for towels, and not even a bar for the roll of TP. Coffee cups are V-shaped…to cool my drink ASAP. The tub comes with far-out lighting…but sits in the center of the room. Give me an old-fashioned hotel with a boring garbage can and knobs on the closet doors.
Still, I slept very well on my jet lag night. (Like I mess things up by anxiously re-clicking my mouse when things don’t happen fast enough on my laptop, I popped an extra quarter-tablet of Ambien at 4:00 a.m. after an earlier one didn’t seem to knock me out…and I slept until noon. I had to research on a tear to make up for the lost morning.)
The big question that everyone in the states seems to be asking is: How’s life over here, when Americans are spending what a guy on the plane called “the Bush peso”? Well, prices are actually pretty good (in Portugal, anyway). Here are a few examples of prices I’ve personally encountered on my first two days (with rough dollar estimates):
Getting in from the airport to my hotel by city bus — €1.50 ($2.25)
Glass of good red wine in a very characteristic pub — €1 ($1.50)
Dinner of fish, potatoes, and salad with a glass of wine — €10 ($15)
Cover for a great evening of live Fado music — €7 ($10.50)
Most expensive sight admission in town — €5 ($7.50)
Buying a new cell phone (unlocked for use anywhere in Europe, and including €10/$15 of calling time) — €40 ($60)
Ferry ride across Tagus River to leave town for a salty waterfront dinner — €1 ($1.50)
Typical taxi rides around town — €4 ($6)
Lisbon is well into its European Union upgrade. Cobbles no longer have the grit of life ground between them. Once-characteristic fish stalls are off the streets and into “more hygienic” covered shops. Widows no longer wear black. The old fishermen’s families in the characteristic Alfama (one of the places that charmed me into becoming a travel writer back in the ‘70s) are now replaced by immigrant laborers.
The traditional fisherman widow’s blues, or Fado, is still filling characteristic bars. Fado is like a musical oyster — sexy and full of the sea. While most tour groups go to big, stuffy, venerable venues, I like the amateur bars where old-timers croon and diners pay only for their sardines and green wine.
I went to the Clube de Fado, where a well-established Fado star provides a springboard to Fado stardom for a new generation of Fadistas (Fado singers).
A diminutive Norah Jones look-alike wailed soulfully, while the man next to me said, “In Portugal, the women are like sardines — the smaller, the better.”