During the five days I have been in Lisboa, I have seen the Castelo Sao Jorge (Castle of St. George), the Aqueducto Aguas Livres (Roman aqueduct), many plazas with grand statues, public art everywhere, a few ornate churches, an assortment of towers and other monuments, a few interesting historic neighborhoods, and enough cobblestone to cover New Mexico. Not a single museum in the lot. I have intentionally been avoiding museums in order to avoid tourist trail burnout. I like museums; I just have wanted to soak up the local culture as much as possible first.
The Castelo Sao Jorge is on a hill right in the middle of town in the labyrinth of the Alfama neighborhood. Some of the nameless alleyways are so small that you cannot see them until you are standing in front of them. If it wasn’t a sunny day, allowing me to keep a sense of direction, I am sure I would have gotten lost. It was sunny when I was there and if there had been a wind to blow some of the smog in the distance away, the view would have been spectacular. The castle is surrounded by what is now a graceful meandering park filled with shady trees, benches, and of course, cannons. It is a lovely place to spend a few hours relaxing. Up at the castle itself, I wandered around the high walls and watched a group of small preschool children, all with matching red hats and pink smocks, play in the courtyard, climbing trees and frequently alarming their guardians by fearlessly scaling the crumbling stone walls.
In one of the castle towers is a camera obscura installation that is very cool. It is a dark room with what looks like a nine foot (3m) white bowl in the middle. When the guide operates the mirror and lenses in the top of the tower, it projects a live view of the city into the bowl. As he pulls or turns some hanging levers, he can turn and aim the mirror to see all the way around the city. I wasn’t supposed to take this picture, but I did anyway and was promptly told not to do it again. I figured it was without flash and didn’t hurt anything so I would gladly take a mild scolding so I could get the shot.
I was also a little bad at the Roman aqueduct. It is impressively large but not much to see once you get on it. You walk about half a kilometer across the top to the other side of the valley and there is a locked gate with a park on the other side. I wanted to get the two feet to the park without spending 40 minutes walking all the way back and taking a bus to get there,. I figured that since they have built everything for shorter people, like the metal hand holds at my forehead height in the metro (bumped my head five frickin’ times so far!), I should take advantage of my long arms and legs so I quite easily swung off the side of the walkway and around the barbed barricade. So there!
I was going to go out with a group of people here to see some Fado last night, which is the Portuguese performance art of heart wrenching singing and narrative poetry, but after some inexplicable delays we ended up spending the evening playing pool and talking in the hostel bar. Maybe it is for the best because I was told we wouldn’t get back until 8 or 9 in the morning! When they go out here, they go out late.
The parking laws here are very strict; they say that if you can only park if your car fully fits in the space. If it doesn’t fit, you have to park on the sidewalk, or double or triple park, or park perpendicular in a parallel space with half your car sticking out into the street, or in the middle of the street, or anywhere else you happen to stop. If you can’t park in any of those places, you absolutely cannot park. Actually, the only real rule is that you have to leave just enough room on the street for another car to squeeze past you or everyone will honk and yell.
