All of the above were strutting their stuff in the Jardim de Cristo Palacio this morning. The Palacio is a circular dome that serves as an events arena.
The Jardim is a gathering of gardens terraced into the steep hillside overlooking the Douro River. Paths lead up and down and all around with medieval turrets poking out of the trees in various places.
Fortunately, for the sake of my sanity, for the sake of Ella’s sanity in putting up with my haphazard selection of trails, there was a cafe outside the Palacio that served Delta coffee. We relaxed with our cappuccinos and pastry to people watch.
Since we’ve been in Portugal I’ve been struck by the noticeable absence of Asians. Maybe a few Japanese tourists in the Gulbenkian last week, but other than that sighting, zero. Considering the trips we’ve taken to Europe over the last seven years this is indeed strange. Whether it was looking up at Botocelli’s “Primavera” at the Uffizi, Raphael’s “School of Athens” at the Vatican, or El Greco’s “Burial of the Count of Orgaz” in Toledo, I was always peering over the shoulders of an Asian group of usually no less than thirty people. They seemed to have a knack for clustering as close to the paintings as was allowed, but since they were shorter than I was, I began to accept them as a necessary foreground to any masterpiece. Observing a painting without standing on my toes has thrown me a little bit.
Needless to say, there is also an absence of Russians. This wasn’t the case with our last trips to Spain and Croatia. Nevertheless, the Easter holiday has provided plenty of visitors from Europe. It’s obvious from the cafes we’ve stopped at, whether they’re German, French, or Italian, they are happy to be freed from Covid entrapment. Perhaps it’s because of the Easter break from school and the swarms of young people, but celebration is in the air.
This afternoon we skipped across the street from our Airbnb and visited “Frieda Kahlo Life of an Icon”. It was an immersive bio adventure with virtual reality headsets and a projected mural light show in the cavernous basement of an old tram station. It was like walking through a documentary that surrounded us with images that inspired her artwork without picturing her art. Any time an artist is represented minus her art it’s strange, but we’d already visited the Casa Azul in Mexico City, and seen an exhaustive Kahlo retrospective in San Francisco, so wending our way through a tabloid version of Kahlo’s traumatic life projected on the dark cellar walls of a Portuguese tram depot was like submersing ourselves in one of her nightmares, especially since the accident that led to her early death took place on a tram.
I imagine the lack of Chinese and Japanese tourists is COVID related. The Chinese are definitely not allowed out, and the Japanese are definitely skittish.
That was our thought as well.