The Covid test required by Portugal worries me. You are supposed to need it unless you have your digital EU vaccination passport (pretty much the same throughout the EU). Well I am vaccinated, even if I don’t have the EU passport, so I figure it is time to take a stand, become an obnoxious American, and insist that my California record of vaccination be accepted. In short, I didn’t sleep so well and was up by 4:50 am. Showered and dressed I was on my way by 5:30 am, and got to the bust stop by 6:00 am ready for a long wait. Oh joy! At 6:20 the airport bus pulls in (I thought they started running at 7 am), and instead of the highway took this dinky narrow road that cut across the mountains and in 25 minutes made it to the airport. I had thus plenty of time to make a big stink about my Covid vaccination certificate.
I had pre-checked via cell phone, so I walked straight into the security line, got caught trying to smuggle my Swiss Army knife and a roll of electrical tape—which I just had to toss in the garbage—and without further ado got to my flight on way to Barcelona. No whisper of Covid, tests, or certificates.
A short layover in Barcelona reminded me of my favorite peeves about European airports. First, the departure boards do not list the flights by destination but by departure time, so I rushed to the first Lisbon flight I saw, only to find out it was with a different airline. My second peeve is that they publish the departure gate only 15 minutes ahead of the boarding time. In a small airport is no big deal, but in a huge airport like Barcelona you could be waiting at the A concourse and suddenly learn that you flight is departing from gate C23! No wonder there is a high incidence of heart attacks in European airports!
I was the first one to board the Lisbon flight (I have never been the first to board before), which got me to reflect on my third peeve: As always I got an aisle seat, so I was ready to get up and let my fellow passengers to get in. But time and again the people go past me and then say to my back “May I please get in?” So I have to stand up, push against the crush of passengers to create a small space for me to squeeze in while my fellow passenger takes the middle seat. Then the window passenger comes in and does it in exactly the same way! Arghh?
Landed in Lisbon without any trouble (again not a whisper about Covid, although I must tip my hat off to Europeans, who have taken the mask mandate to heart), rented a Fiat Panda, and despite the efforts of Google Maps to send me astray I successfully traveled to the port of Setúbal (SE of Lisbon and about an hour away from the airport) to meet my friends Maria Eugenia and Juan Ley Pozo, who I had not seen in nearly 10 years. I would normally meet them in Madrid, where they live, but they were doing a 3-day vacation here, together with Maria Eugenia’s sister and teenager niece, and I came to join the vacation party.
Got to Setúbal at about 3 pm, and they had a tasty bowl of rice and mariscos waiting for me. Then we all 5 piled into the Fiat Panda and went shopping. I had to buy a bottle of vinho verde, a tinto from the region, and a ruby porto to taste the local wines, but it may be a lot because everyone else is a water drinker. In the afternoon we went to visit the Fort of San Felipe, took a drive through the coastal boulevard, and walked along the peer. Reminds me of Veracruz. One thing I have to say about Juan is that he is a dedicated tourist, eager to make the most of every tourist moment at his disposal.
For merienda we went to a seafood restaurant that was packed, and ate a delicious dish of almejas a la casa (clams cooked with onions and garlic, and garnished with cilantro, with much of the enjoyment coming from sopping the broth with pieces of bread) and a superb plate of grilled sardinhas with olive oil and coarse sea salt. Delicious!
We have rented an apartment in Setúbal for the next three nights and it was here that I rested my head to recover from a very full day.
The family woke around 8 am, had a typically sparse breakfast (a croissant, a tostada with marmalade, and a glass of milk; I am the only coffee drinker) and by 9 am we were ready to go. We took the ferry across the bay to a mouth barrier island (basically a sand spit) that is popular for its pretty Atlantic beaches and some rather exclusive condos. We waded and walked along the beach, but honestly if you are not committed to playing in the waves it grows old real fast. I did reflect that a tattoo might be sexy if artfully displayed by some sexy outfit, but when you see middle-aged women sporting a hodge-podge of tattoos all over their bodies it is not a pretty sight. I think that new tattoos should be added only after careful consideration of the existing ones.
We had lunch at the Museo del Arroz, which is an hacienda devoted to the growth of rice. It must be a tiny production, but they sell it well to the many tourists in the form of: arroz con mariscos, arroz con pato, and any other number of dishes based on rice. The arroz con pato was excellent! Lunch in Portugal and Spain is the main meal of the day.
Back in the mainland we enjoyed the rather warm afternoon visiting churches and walking down quaint, narrow, crooked streets. The Portuguese of the XVI-XVIII were very adept to the decoration of their public buildings with azulejo tiles, in which tile by tile a very complex scene would be depicted in blue-line against a white background. Very pretty, but I felt they had the tendency to depict Mother Mary as a rather stout woman. Perhaps this was the standard of beauty in the XVII century?
Juan is a regular paparazzi so while he continued down the street, taking pictures left and right, I silently glided into the tiny Museum of the Baroque (one room really) and an ingenious extra display of marine navigation instruments.
We got back home around 7 pm, with plenty of time to sit around the table and just chat. Maria Eugenia’s sister Beatriz and 20-year old niece Itziar are the other members of the jolly group. In a very Spanish/Latin way the 20-yeard old woman is always referred to as “la niňa”, and obvious indication that we all others are becoming old, old.
The following day we arose to the news that Juan had planned a full day of hard core tourist activities: First we visited the Mercado de Livramento, in downtown, which besides delicious displays of fruits and vegetables, has a full section devoted to fish and shellfish of every type found in the Atlantic, including skinny fish, long fish, fat fish, colorful fish, clams, octopus, a special type of eel that they call pez espada because it looks like the silvery blade of a medieval sword, squid or choco, …
Then we drove out of town to the estuary of the Sado River, to visit the Molino de Maré, a tide-operated mill that has been beautifully reconstructed by a non-profit. Just like I described for Neda in La Coruňa, they capture the high-tide behind a dam built across the mouth of a small muddy bay, and then let the water out during the ebb through four or five small openings, where it spins as many mill stones. The is tidal flats all around are big mires of mud, so the people there had to live in palaphite towns (or cidade palafita de marisqueros), where all of the tiny hovels were built atop poles, and where the different habitational units were connected by rickety walk-throughs where the kids would play (I wonder how many babies fell head down in the muck?).
An extra drive brought us up the sharp hill of Palmela, to visit its well kept and very impressive fort. I took the time to sip on a glass of chilled muscatel, a local product. By the way, I have also tasted vinho verde, a ruby port, and tonight will enjoy a regional red made of Syrah, Aragonés, Castelão and Alicante Bouschet grapes. With that I will complete my enologic tour of Portugal!
We headed southwest, toward remote Cape Espichel, but before reaching it decided to have lunch in Sesimbra, which Juan had described to us out of a tourist guide as a “pueblito de Pescadores”. Ha! It was a vibrant tourist trap, with giant hotels and thousands of sun seekers. We were looking for a small restaurant mentioned in in Trip Advisor, the Cantinho de Regina, as the best value for lunch. And it was! Regina is the owner, cook, and general factotum, and instead of offering the standard fare offers has her own menu of gourmet creations. We tried the Bacalauh o Cantinho and the spaghetti with clams and found them excellent and very reasonably priced.
Getting to cabo Espichel was a bit of a drive, and in the way there we passed a couple of pretty chapels, a dinosaur display, a couple of tasty-looking restaurants, and a lot of sparse forest. One we got to the cape we had spectacular views of the lighthouse, and precipitous cliffs that angled down to the ocean. The rocks exposed were a tilted sequence of tidal silts, limestones, and sandstones, and they reminded me of a photo I had seen a long time ago of the K-T sequence in Spain. So I took my professorial stance and explained what I was seeing to the others. The significance of the K-T boundary fell flat among my audience, but Juan was really intrigued by the 3-D geometry of the cliff, so I went ahead and explained about original horizontality, tectonic uplift and tilting, and coastal erosion. To help with the explanation I pointed to a particular dip-slope outcrop (a huge outcrop extending the full vertical extent of the cliff) and explained that the tilted surface we were seeing had been, in the geologic past, the surface of the tidal marsh that had occupied this part of Portugal at the time. We were a good 200 m across the cove, but I noticed a peculiar pattern of “tracks” on the dip slope, and on a lark I pointed them out to the others as possible dinosaur tracks formed maybe 80 million years ago. They were duly impressed.
The other attraction here in Cape Espichel is a small church, Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo, notorious because this tiny church has a huge annex of two wings that were used until not so long ago to receive hundreds upon hundreds of pilgrims. We were in presence of one of the holiest places in Portugal, maybe in par with Fatima or Lourdes! So we read the display with care and learned that, according to the testimony of two separate witnesses, the Virgin Mary came out of the sea, riding a white mule, and that the mule had trudged up the slope leaving its footprints along the muddy slope. Imagine my surprise when I read that the tracks had been the object of veneration for well over four centuries, until they were finally examined by scientists who concluded they were dinosaur tracks! Man, am I good or what?
On the way back Juan wanted to visit the hermitage of the Convento de Arrábida, which is perched on the coastal slope of the Parque Natural de Arrábida, but it was closed. Pity, because it looked beautiful from the road. The return to Setúbal was spectacular given that the road climbs to the top of the limestone cliffs of the Sierra de Azeitao before dropping back down into the port.
The following morning we packed and tidied down the apartment, played a game of Tetris with people and luggage to make sure everything fit in my little car, and headed back to Lisbon. On the way we stopped to take a few pictures of the Lisboa Cristo Rei, who looks a lot like his counterpart the Cristo del Corcobado on the hills overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
The Ley family was staying at the Hotel Canada, in downtown Lisbon, so I dropped them down before heading down to Loures, a small toen north of Lisbon but presumably close to the airport, where I found that the “hotel” I had booked was a scam. The address given was that of a supermarket. Fuming I drove to the airport, where I dropped off the rental car, and used Booking.com to secure a bunk in a local hostel. I walked 20 minutes there (it was hot!) and found out that I needed a numerical code from the owner, who lives in Porto, to get in. I called her using my European cell phone, and she wanted me to send her copy of my passport and vaccination certificate to give me the code. The problem is that my WhatsApp only works when I am connected to wi-fi, and the caretaker didn’t have the password for the wi-fi. Arghh! Grumbling I had to make my way back to the airport to use their wi-fi but on the way there spotted a restaurant where I managed to get an excellent lunch and use their wi-fi. At the end all was well, but I have to say that all this double checking and double authentication procedures are a royal pain for the international traveler.
I went back to Lisbon to say goodbye to Maria Eugenia, Beatriz, and Itziar in downtown (Juan had promptly taken the tourist opportunity to visit the Museum of the Impressionists). We had an ice cream together, and I visited the “Oldest Bookstore in the World”, established sometime in the 1700’s, to buy a birthday present for my young friend Lucas, in Paris. I am sure there were bookstores before the 1700’s, but they are no longer operating so the lonely one still standing gets to claim the honor. Later I went back to the Hotel Canada to have a last drink with my dear Juan, to exchange the promise that we will see each other again sometime or another. We are all approaching retirement at about the same time, so who knows what the future has in store for us.
After a hot sleep at my barebones hostel I walked back to the airport for my early flight to Paris-Orly, where after a few false starts I finally found Géraldine and her son Lucas waiting for me. I was very happy to see them 😊 Both Faby and I met Géraldine in Germany, 34 years ago, and even if we don’t see each other very often I am always delighted to spend time with her and her family. It was a bit of a drive, but eventually we got to their beautiful house in Treil-sur-Seine, which as the name implies is one of the many ancient towns that border the Seine River upstream of Paris.
Dad Nicolas and older brother Theo were there waiting for us, and after the traditional round of hugs and double kisses we sat down to a delicious lunch in the veranda. Nicolas grilled and made sure to include a few of the local sausages (marguez (?) that are as famous as the Graf Voelsinger sausages of Frankfurt). Géraldine and Nicolas have a very large ancient house, on what used to be carriage house of the retirement home of the nanny of the king—grandiose as any other Royal gift would be expected to be—with a long wooded backyard that extends almost to the promenade along the Seine.
In the afternoon we made the promenade along the Seine! What a gorgeous place to live! Géraldine surprised me with her deep knowledge of the medicinal plants that grow along the shore, while Nicolas proved to be a bit of an amateur historian who had many stories to tell about the distinguished authors and philosophers who lived in Treil-sur-Seine.
Theo is now 18, and he is getting ready to go to college, a few hours drive to the east, to study computer science. He can’t wait to get out of the house. Like his Dad he is “Mediterranean” in aspect, with dark hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. He is a very handsome, tall, young man, so I prognosticate that he will break many hearts in his new college town. Lucas, who just turned 15 years old (and got from me Asterix Gladiateur, in French, as a present) is very different. He is blond and blue-eyed like Mom, and loves helping around the house. I suspect that moving out to college is very far from his mind right now.
On Sunday I didn’t have any plans, so even though they had just come back from holiday the previous Friday, Géraldine and Lucas offered to take me to Paris for a walk around. Paris in a day! Well, not quite, I was not going to go for a full tour, but thought it would be nice to visit Montmartre, walk along the Seine looking at what the Bouquinists had to offer (I don’t know why since I cannot carry an extra book), and walk around the Ile de la Cité to take a look at the renovation work of Notre Dame. Poor Géraldine. With her very chic shoes (she always dresses and looks very chic) the walk was a bit more than she had bargained for. For me and Lucas it was a great day.
Monday morning Géraldine and I once again took the train
back to Paris, she to work and me to Gare St. Lazare. I was heading for
Frankfurt using the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse), which at 250 km/hr delivered
me to Hanau (via Karlsruhe and Frankfurt) in less than 4 hours. Toll!
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