Lisbon. Another day, another hill.
Conventional wisdom holds that you should build your city - or your house - on top of a hill. This is poor advice, and Lisbon taught me why. Our first hostel was on top of a hill. A rather large one. Thus, to get anywhere, we had to walk DOWN the big hill, which wasn't really a big deal. But the Portuguese being who they are, every other locale of note is also on a hill - A DIFFERENT HILL - so, this entailed going down the first hill, up the second hill to discover you'd chosen the wrong hill, back down the second hill, up a third hill to see a sight you were then too exhausted to enjoy, back down the third hill, and just when you're about to fall over from fatigue, you go back up the first hill to your bed.
They do make for awfully pretty scenery though!
A view of "Alfama", the old Moorish district of Lisbon, full of tangled, cobbled streets that go everywhere but where you think they'll go. :)
The main gateway to this city that has seen millions of sailors, mercenaries, armies, immigrants, and more faded glory than most. It has a gritty charm. Not to mention a lot of yellow.
When 'no' means 'yes', and other language problems for Czechs.
It took me about 6-½ months to get used to saying “no” when I meant yes. You see, in Czech, “yes” is “ano”. Shortened in informal situations to either “no” or “jo” (yo).
It took a few days of ordering more coffees and beers than I wanted to get my “no’s” straight!
Those nice old men at train stations.
Enter a new travelling guideline. Better yet, make it a rule. When nice old men at train stations offer to take you to their pension and assure you that you can do no better price or quality-wise, be assured that you can do better. Both price-wise and quality-wise.
Not that he wasn’t nice. And not that we paid too much. And we did get a free ride from the airport to the city. But the supposed 10-minute walk to the center took 35 minutes. And 1200 feet of elevation change.
We found a new hostel in Lisbon the next day. It was cute, in the center, and the same price.
A year of misunderstanding menus, or, how poor people can't afford to eat in places with English-language menus.
Clark Kent spoke English, and was able to explain that the dish we were about to order was squid. He didn’t explain that it was whole squid, but that was okay.
Yet it occurs to me, after 8 months of ordering food that I don’t exactly understand on the menu, that even eating is something of an adventure. And frankly, even when you can read the menu, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You might as well close your eyes and point.
It also occurs to me that this is probably safer, if not nearly as interesting, in America, where you’re unlikely to end up with things on your plate that look back at you.
When it's snowing in Lisbon, go to Faro
"Sim, sim," said the man excitedly, trying to restrain his dog from eating the remnants of our bread and cheese picnic on the battlements of old town Faro.
"It is first time snow for 52 years," he continued. He looked up. "Tonight, maybe here," he said ominously.
Brilliant, we thought. We'd left Prague only 3 days before, enduring torrential rain in Sevilla, one day of moderately windy sunshine, and now this. Perfect.
But this wasn't Lisbon. It wasn't even Porto, where it snowed on the beach. It was Faro, the south of the country. We didn't see any snow, nor did we feel any snow. Beautiful hills, a predilection for yellow buildings, and a superb little pension were all that awaited us in this charming little town on the Algarve. It may not have been balmy, but we did eat great squid, drink delicious wine, and have both of them brought to us by the Portuguese version of Clark Kent.
Is anyone here a sommelier?
It was thrilling to find that Navarra red wine for E1.49 (1.49 Euro). And it only took us 2 hours and 31 minutes, 4 stores and one café to find a corkscrew to open it with.
But the picnic it helped make, down by the river, in the sun, with spanish guitar music playing in the background, made it all worthwhile. And when the wind picked up, that bottle came in mighty handy!
Our first fantastic picnic locale.
Day 2 - Can I eat the oranges?
My first favorite thing about Sevilla was the orange trees. EVERYWHERE. And full of delicious-looking, brightly-colored oranges.
After having survived our night in the "hanger" hostal, things were looking up. The sun was out, we saw a rooster just walking around, and found a new hostal about 50m from the old one. We proceeded to have a fantastic time in this city that is far more befitted to sun than rain. Palm trees were everywhere, we had to watch our step so as not to step on the freshly-fallen oranges, the sun was bright, the air cool, and the buildings pretty and unlike anything I'd ever seen. We saw a proper castle, drank cafe con leche and ate seafood tapas, and I thought that was pretty fantastic.
The "proper castle", actually the cathedral in Sevilla! And a few of those delicous-looking oranges.
A little of that incredible architecture, not to mention fashionable colors!
Later on we tried the oranges, fresh from the tree. They were awful.
Day 1 - The Rain in Spain
Apparently it also falls in the south of Spain, as our first night in Sevilla was completely sopping. Dropped off near a roundabout with at least 17 streets pinwheeling out from it, our tattered paper map seemed to indicate we were approximately nowhere near our hostal. The hostal which we found, an hour later, only to wish we had given up earlier and stayed somewhere nicer...
There's a reason it's a "Lonely Planet" here - and it’s because people who listen to this guide book end up lost in residencial districts of cities, staying in awful hostals where no one speaks English! Ahh…. Our first night in Sevilla. The “Hanger” hostal. Why “Hanger”? The only thing good about this hostal was that it did have hangers for our clothes. No, thank YOU, Lonely Planet!
Don't worry. It gets better!
Spain and Portugal - Warning Labels
The sunburn on my face has mostly faded now, sadly, but I’m proud to say I had one, after returning from two weeks travelling in Spain and Portugal! Erica and I took the trip because I was on term break from school, and well, she quit her job before we left. So it was a fantastic, relatively stress-free journey.
Instead of rambling on about where we went on the second day, and what we ate for dinner, I’m going to blog a series of sketches … short blogs about funny or interesting (at least, to me) things about our holiday. I’ll try to post at least one a day, maybe more. And at the end, if you’re lucky, I might be induced to make a city ranking (for those who remember the old road-trip blogs). So, let’s begin!
Read to the music of “The Empire Strikes Back”
Time to play a little catchup.Vienna is an impressive city. Perhaps Michael, my fellow teacher, said it best when he summed up the city as “imperial”. It reeks of history, of grandeur, of not-quite-faded glory and a past that imposes itself upon the present with a subtle arrogance. Actually, it’s pretty cool.
And for all the impressive buildings, beautifully framed by the 6 inches of snow that fell while we were there, there were also cute cafés selling fancy pastries and fashionable coffee, quiet corner pubs with friendly, chatty staff, and enough wiener schnitzel to feed the German army. Believe it or not, wiener schnitzel has nothing to do with weiners (or, as you may say, hot dogs or sausages). This is something we Americans have made a gross and frankly embarrassing error about. Wiener, from Wien, means something from Vienna. Think of it like Viennese Schnitzel. Then you won’t be so surprised when you order it and end up with a large, breaded and fried slab of pork.
Vienna was quite a change from Prague. Some people would dare to compare the two cities, but I think it’s something like comparing your grandfather to your older brother. They just aren’t the same. But both will impress you.
More Evidence.
Some posts just are not the same without a few pictures to back up the stories.
told you so.
