Lisboa

Lisboa

April 26, 2015

We arrived as scheduled yesterday at 7 am.  Had to be out of the cabin at 8:30 and off the ship by 9:30.  Actually we had breakfast for only the second time on the entire cruise.  We had a marvelous time crossing the pond and would do it again, but we were happy to be getting off and to be anticipating a reunion with our friends Ed and Carole.

Yesterday was a national holiday and the roads were either blocked for a grand parade or clogged with traffic.  Our taxi driver seemed oblivious to everything and everyone as he whipped across Lisbon and deposited us at our hotel.  Since it was only 10 am our room wasn’t ready and we had to sit around for about four hours.  Why sit when there is a beautiful park right across the street you ask?  The reason has to do with Cindy’s knee, which she hurt the day before. Not in the torture room where she did elliptical every day, not walking the decks, certainly not dancing, but rather moving it the wrong way getting out of bed!  Poor baby is hobbled in one of the best walking cities in Europe.   So she sat while I scoured the neighborhood for a pharmacy to get an ace bandage.

The first one I spotted was closed; did I mention it was a national holiday?  I wandered around for an hour until I found one open and I got on the end of the line waiting my turn.  When I finally got towards the front and could see what was going on, I noticed that they were calling numbers and everyone except me had a little piece of paper with a number which you were meant to get from a machine as you entered the door.  Great system if you know how it works.  I was about to leave the line and go get a number when the woman behind me told me in perfect English to just stay put and not to worry. I fell in love with Lisbon all over again then and there! 

Ace bandage in hand I headed back to the hotel and performed minor surgery on Cindy’s knee using a knife from the hotel restaurant to cut the ace bandage.  She is walking much better now.  We had a lovely lunch and by three our room was ready and we were ready for a nap.  Awake and refreshed by five, we cleaned up and went to the lounge to await our guests who arrived a six.  We caught up over drinks and snacks and by eight we were bundled in a cab in a pouring rain storm, heading to a market area that was said to have great restaurants.

We found a down and dirty spot that had great cloth napkins and fantastic food all grilled on charcoal. With a mixture of Portuguese, English and Spanish, we ordered wine and food that was served by the most affable of young men.  Four little slices of different local cheeses, a plate of moist scrambled eggs with pork, and a sizzling platter of blistered little Padron peppers with coarse salt.  The wine was still flowing and we were a bit hungry so we ordered two small plates of homemade grilled sausage and some fried sardines.  So we thought.  The sausage plate came and there were seven of the loveliest looking things I’d seen in a while, but seven seemed a bit over the top as an appetizer for four, particularly since they were the size of brats rather than the size of breakfast sausages. Suddenly out came another waiter with a huge mound of fresh thick-cut fried potatoes and a plate with four fried eggs.  He quickly arranged a sausage on each plate, heaps of potatoes and then slipped an egg onto the fries.  Wow, what a healthy looking meal.  We were now full to the gills and still had two links we couldn’t touch when out came a platter of eight sardines, not the little ones we expected but the size of a trout.  We couldn’t even think about eating them but did our best to make it look like we tried. 

The waiters understood and brought out a miniature replica of a refinery tank that held homemade white lightening. This was supposed to give us our appetite back.  It was horrible so I opted for the tawny port and just as we were about to make our escape, the waiter came to pour more wine to send us on our way. The bill for all of this?  53 Euros!!  Portugal is a miracle.  Cindy and Wm