Wake up and smell the cheese

Sheep cheese.

Or what was left of the creamy delight after last night’s snack. I told Ella that if she could smell it, she didn’t have to worry about stressing over the rapid antigen test we were to take later in the morning. My reasoning wasn’t comforting. As she pointed out, whether I was right or not, United Airlines didn’t accept the smell test.

So until the test, a lot of anxiety. Will the Uber pick us up on this side of Dom Carlos I, or on the other side? Wait, are we sure we have the cross street right? What’s it say on the corner of the building? Nothing? We’re on the corner of Dom Carlos I and nothing? Ella peers at her phone. “I can’t read in this sunlight!” She moves to the shade. “He’s six minutes away.” She pivots, peers again. “Now it says three minutes.” One more pivot and I expect our driver to materialize right in front of us. As it is, Ella alerts me to be looking for a gray Fiat coming up from the river. Thirty seconds later a gray Fiat pulls up coming from the opposite direction down the hill. That’s our driver!

Traffic is thick. Something is happening in Bélem that is slowing the flow. Even though we’ve both smelled the cheese, this not a mellow ride. The clinic is located on the outskirts in a neighborhood that has no relation to the airport. It’s as if we were trying to get tested in Albuquerque before flying out and had to find a clinic in Rio Rancho.

And then the woman checking people in at the clinic starts asking us questions in Portuguese…. (Take it away, Ella!)

From the clinic we decide to give up on surface roads and take the metro. We execute a nimble underground Orange to Azul transfer between trains, and get off at the Restauradores stop where we calm our nerves with cappuccinos and pastry. From there I suggest we go to the Fado Museum since we’ve been told our test results won’t be available for another couple of hours.

I thought that learning about the history of Fado music and listening to some licks would be a good escape from test result anxiety. Anybody who knows Fado will get a laugh out of this. Solo singing accompanied by a mandolin-looking guitar, Fado is plaintively meant to move us with sad lyrics that speak to the soul. Fado, which developed out of the working class Lisbon ghettos of the early 19th century, was popularized in cafés and bars where patrons could soak up the mournful tunes and cry into their beer.

It’s like listening to operatic blues, and I could have spent a good portion of the day dialing into recordings of Amália Rodrigues, Ercilia Costa, and the other faces pictured on this wall, but Ella was anxious to get back to the Airbnb to see if our test results were in and go through the hassle of completing United’s check-in check list.