Sometimes Time Doesn’t Matter

 31 October 2021  

So as to yesterday and the whole art and the mall thing, well stuff went sideways, sort of. By that I mean nothing negative happened but it just didn’t work out as planned. So, it goes.  The traveler’s mantra has to be something like, “Be flexible and remember acceptance is the key.” 

 

First there was the serendipity of cascading moments which occurred.  In trying to get to the National Museum of Ancient Art Google Maps showed us that there was a bus that ran from just about directly outside our front door to the museum’s front door. Cool.  When we got to the bus stop the bus in question, (the 727 and yes, I chuckled at a bus numbered after a fast jet airliner), pulled in.  Thirteen minutes later we were at the museum.  

 

Given the time, pushing 14:00 as they say here (2 PM) we decided to grab some food in the Greek tavern across from the edifice.  The food was excellent, hot and hearty, just what was needed for a day that was turning wet with a twist of chill. I had a lamb meatball dish served over rice with a wonderful sauce.  Stoked up with filling food we were off into the art.

 

When we got to the desk, we had IDs out. There were driver’s licenses to prove ages 65 and under 26 together with a European Youth Card for the 26-30.  All the searching wallets was pointless because the clerk politely informed us the ticketing computer was down and thus the museum was free for the day. A third flash of serendipity who would have thought it? But it was not over.

 

The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga as it is properly known is not one of those highlighted in the tourist guides. I mean it does get a mention here or there but it is really not emphasized.  As we entered the first exhibit was on liturgical vestments. While interesting this did not in my mind bode well for what the museum might hold.  The vestments was ornate with woven gold fibers but were faded and dimly lit.  I was worried.

But then I stepped into the room housing various nativity scenes from convents and churches and I grew amazed.  These depictions of the Christ child’s birth were over the top.  They were huge and they were intricate. One of them using my keen powers of guess-timation was eight or nine feet wide and six feet tall. You know that huge small town HO railroad towns your uncle had when you were a kid?  We these were that intricate on steroids. Just breathtaking.

 When you followed the stairs at the edge of this room down, they ended in as ornate a chapel as anything I had seen in my travels so far this fall. The room in all its gold glory just takes you back to a time of imperial splendor. Portugal was on top of the world once.

 

When you have finished visiting the chapel and start into the painting collections you suddenly discover there are works by Hieronymus Bosch, Raphael, Hans Holbein the Elder, Francisco de Zurbarán, Albrecht Dürer, Domingos Sequeira, and Giambattista Tiepolo. This palace of art is full of wonderful surprises.  I just loved the black and white paintings on the backs of the triptychs.  Truth be told I just got lost in the details of painting after painting and hours slipped away. 

 

The trip back to our base Airbnb here in Lisboa was a little different.  Francie and Loren took the 727 back.  (I make a whooshing sound here imitating what I think a jet sounds like) Their travel cards had expired and so Primus and I swapped with them.  My oldest son said the station is straight down this road, we can recharge the subway/bus cards there.  Truth is he just wanted to walk in the rain, for a mile plus.  GRRR.  I was drenched by the time we reached the station. Drenched I say.  Drenched I tell you.  And chilled.  But the young man was as happy as a clam and he was wearing shorts and carrying a flimsy umbrella.

 

By the time we got back and met up with our other two it was about 5:15 PM.  A quick look at the mall’s calendar revealed that it is not open past seven on the weekends tied most likely to Covid-19.  So, it goes. I spent a rainy day chasing eternal art instead of crass consumerisms.  Probably for the best.

 

Now I could have cut and pasted the details about the art museum, about the Greek taverna and the mall and made this way more specific and informative but would that have made it any better?  I don’t think so.  This is me, warmer and dryer now, just riffing on what the day was like.

 

 

Halloween, an Art Museum and the Mall

 

Rainy day here in Lisboa.  We are in for a stretch of about 4 ½ rainy days.  I have been slow this morning.  Did little things like emptying the dishwasher, making coffee and eating my oatmeal.  Took some time to read through e-mail.  Haven’t got to Facebook yet.  Will do that next.

 

Spent some amount of time yesterday with a banker.  Trying to pick up our debit card.  We were told it would be in Thursday, but like many things here it is late or delayed.  While talking to the banker we found out that Monday is a national holiday, All Saints Day, and the banks are closed.  It is also the anniversary of the destruction of Lisboa in 1755.

 

Halloween is not celebrated here really, not with candy and costumes.  Apparently, such festivities happen in some expat communities but that is about it.  There are references to a tradition where children demanded bread.  According to the blog All Things Algarve it goes by, “different names such as ‘Dia do Bolinho’, ‘santorinho’, ‘bolinho’, or ‘fiéis de Deus’. As well as sweets, children can expect to receive cakes, chestnuts and fruit biscuits. “The most clearly Halloween things I have seen are flyers for two EDM concerts with Halloween themes.

 

All Saints’ Day is a different matter. Quoting from the same blog, 

 

“All Saints Day and Halloween are celebrated on entirely different scales, simply because All Saint’s Day is an opportunity to clean relatives’ cemetery graves and plots. It’s an extremely important day in the Portuguese calendar where cemeteries will be filled with local residents who aim to make their relatives’ resting places look squeaky clean. They use bleach in order to make the resting places spotless and the smell can be noticed from quite a distance away.

 

During the cleanup, it’s popular to find flower vendors selling flower heads for anyone looking to refresh the plants for the graves. They also offer traditional Portuguese snacks for the volunteers who are present at the cemetery. This is all happening whilst some services are taking place around the graveyards.”

 

Like most things in the modern world there is no clear agreement on such facts.  Some articles say that Halloween as celebrated in North America is being fully embraced here.  I don’t see the evidence of that being true.  There was one store in a mall with an inordinate amount of candy corn and plastic spiders.  There was another with cheesy costumes but mostly for adults.  It is not everywhere.  In actuality there are more Christmas decorations up than Halloween decorations.  But the cemeteries are already being cleaned and fresh flowers are everywhere around the graves.

 

To make the most of today we are going off to an art museum.  The facility has a triptych by Bosch. Doesn’t get more Halloween scary than that does it?  Also plan to hit another mall which claims to be the “largest on the Iberian Peninsula”.  Trust I am sure we will work some other things in.

An On the Road Meme

 

As I was scanning the FB feeds this morning, I came across a meme one a friend had posted about wanting to go on a road trip.  The kind of road trip described or implied was not the manic road trip of Neal, Jack and the boys.  The road trip described was also not the kind of road trip you would have set out on with a couple of twenty-dollar bills and a couple of pairs of clean underwear, a toothbrush and toothpaste.  No, it was more the kind of road trip Joni Mitchell sang about in Refuge of the Roads.

 

Exploration, taking pictures, sunrises, feeling the wind in one’s hair; these are the kind of things you can do when you have a little money in your pocket. Don’t get me wrong I am fully in favor of this kind of road trip, duh.  But I want to add a footnote, a caveat of sorts.

 

DON’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

SERIOUSLY, DON’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!

 

When I was about twenty a couple of the people I worked with talked about hitching up to Montreal and grabbing a flight from there to London.  Then as now airfares out of Canada were much cheaper than they are in the US. As we stood around listening to David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, we planned dreams and dreamed plans.  Only one of us made the trip back then and it wasn’t me.

 

Like so many of my “plans” born of rock and roll and a couple of Rolling Rocks my folks put the kibosh on this idle vapor of thought.  The hammer of “Well, you can do that or we can help you with paying for college,” was wielded effectively.  Still, I have always regretted not heading off to the continent when I was young.

 

Oh, don’t get me wrong I taken more than a couple of road trips over the years.  One was made in a $50 car with a thirty-dollar Coleman stove and a pup tent.  From Michigan to Oregon and points in between.  From the wilds of Idaho to the Rolling Stones in Anaheim it was a legendary trip.  But it was not the road adventure I had longed for.

 

Over the years I have more or less circled the Great Lakes.  I have travelled from Canso, Nova Scotia to Sooke, British Columbia.  I went to the Olympics in Norway.  I spent time in Paris, London and Lisbon. Right now, I am dab smack in the middle of just under 90 days in Portugal.

 

But it is not the same.  I have kids.  I have a pill minder.  I have a knee brace.  I live by a concrete rule of no more than two low alcohol beers per day and that is bending my cardiologist’s guidance just a wee bit.

 

Don’t get me wrong, it you can travel with adaptations and rules like I do, and you can afford it, GO!!!!!  There is never a point where learning about other people, other cultures, other viewpoints and other ways of living is a bad thing. But if you can do it younger when you knees work, when your voice is strong, when you don’t mind the hangovers (or you can power through them) then do it.  Go threadbare and on the cheap. But GO!!!!

 

Waking up to a sky painted red and blue is wonderful.  Sitting around drinking espressos in little cafes is divine. Gazing at a woodcarving on an altar overlaid with gold gilt that most likely took two artisans in the time of an earlier plague 10 years to complete, well it moves something inside of you.

 

Excuse me while I finish my pastry.  I need to wander down to the harbor to watch the ships come and go.