Lisbon revisited

An easy Uber to the Coimbra train station this morning. Other than buses running their routes, not much traffic.

We go through the routine of masking up for mass transit. Then it’s on to the train where I’ve got a window seat. We pass hill after hill thick with a profusion of greenery. Bottle brush trees and shrubbery, a fullness of foliage not found in the spare shade of the high desert. In the future will the taste of a nata bring it all back? Where in America would I be able to find a freshly baked nata? What’s with this premature panic? Definitely not healthy.(I’ve vowed to start weaning myself of pastries this week. Ella rolls her eyes, but I don’t want to wake up in Albuquerque with an insatiable craving for creamy custards nestled in a flaky crust dissolving like a communion wafer in one’s mouth.)

So, past the rolling green hills, the painted blue tile on the walls of the train stations celebrating scenes of pastoral life, the graffiti attacking all that blank structural concrete…. Tourism before graffiti, what was that like? Was it mind-numbing to pass walls without clashing color, without the scrawling insignias of rage? Or was it peaceful in a lulling way?

Then off the train and into a cab that drops us at the doorstep of our final Airbnb. Funky neighborhood, funky door.

Behind that door? Stay tuned to Ella’s post tomorrow. With outdoor cafés across the street catering to a young crowd, and a hole-in-the wall bar next door servicing a lounging street scene, it reminded me of a Columbus Avenue apartment I once lived in.

(This is the thing about travel: half of what I see calls up past memories in places outside of Albuquerque, places that are dead to me until I wake up in a strange neighborhood.)

Lisbon. Good to be back here. Lisbon no Porto, no Braga, no Coimbra! Like Manhattan, step outside and you have to be immediately alive to the pedestrian flow, and if you’re going somewhere it seems as though there are at least ten people trying to get there first. So the pace quickens, the appetite increases. Early dinner got bumped up to late lunch. A quiet alley restaurant with outdoor seating, time for some polvo à lagareiro, the traditional Portuguese octopus dish which I am particularly fond of.

After dinner, a ramble to check out the neighborhood. Although it wasn’t totally surprising given a culture that observes Easter Monday, I did a double-take, then paused to gander at a guy living the crucifixion in the middle of the traffic circle that fronts parliament.