It's a bit before 9 in the morning and the rain has been steadily falling for about two to two and a half hours. Thepavement, the cobblestones and the calçadas (the polished stones) of the sidewalk are thoroughly wet. As a result, the city has moved into a slow space. This is the moment where time and motion are reduced to the speed of a ball bearing dropped through the most viscous of liquids.
Looking up and down the street from my balcony not a person is moving. I can’t hear tires zinging past on wet roads as I would in an American city. One thing about America, the weather in all but the most severe cases is irrelevant to carrying out the activities of daily life. All in all, the slowness of the city in the rain has become an accepted part of life for us. Itdoesn't happen that often in the warmer months and so it is a break from the ususal, a time to recharge.
[Took a break here. Had to get the morning coffee pots going. Always brew Francie’s first. Have to grind the Costa Rican beans, make sure the carafe is clean, and then get the whole water in the pot thing in motion. Then I make myself a pot of the cheap stuff from the preground blend from our local supermercado, Pingo. Yes, I am drinking glorified dirty brown water, but decades of morning coffee rituals from back when I drank two pots of high test are not easily abandoned.]
Got to bed early last night. Awoke up early today. I heard the first thunder peal and realized I still had laundry on the line. There was a reason I left the clothing out last night but more on that below. I jumped up, opened the kitchen window and peeled the mildly damp jeans, undies and socks from the line. I took the load into our small dining room, put the dehumidifier on laundry and closed the room. I will check back in a few hours. If all works according to plan the clothing will be dry and the dehumidifier tank will need emptying.
Normally I would have had the laundry out on the line by ten on any given day and back in before dinner. Yesterday did not turn out as planned however. Francieplanned to travel with some friends to Setubal and then to the Troia Peninsula for a day’s adventure. Being unsure of where the train platform was, and whether our monthly passes covered the journey, I rode up to the Sete Rios train station with her. I wanted to see if these issues could be easily sorted. We found the platform easily and her pass covered the trip.
Before we headed out, and it was early for us when we left the house, I started the wash. Our Bosch washer on the ecocycle takes three hours. I figured I could take Francie up to the station, grab a coffee, and have a pastry. I would still have plenty of time to get home and hang the laundry.
Unfortunately Francie's group trip fell apart. Covid had touched one traveller's husband and with that the whole thing was ended by people dropping out. This is not a gripe. These people made wise and responsible choices. Covid still sucks.
However, as far as we knew we had not been exposed to the virus. And there we were at the station and the train to Setubal would pull in within ten minutes. What does a flexible, active, and serendipity-oriented retiree do? Well he says, “What the heck? Let us go to Setubal.” Off we headed.(Note: I might have used a term a bit more profane than heck.)
I had been to Setubal beforewith my family in tow. Itwas Sundayor Monday because the mercado was closed. Also, it was misty and raining (at times). We wandered around, tried a local dish of note, choco frito, fried cuttlefish typicallyserved with potato chips or fries, salad, and a lemon wedge. It was okay but not a favorite. The thing I remember most from that visit was a group of bizarre statues set up in a park as part of a temporary installation. Also, the area around the train station was torn up and made getting around difficult.
Street repairs are done. Themercado was open. The mercado was great. Lots of vendors selling meats, vegetables, and of course seafood. There was a station where you could get an oyster and a shot of liquor for twodollars. The art in the entrance was just beautiful as were the azulejos on the back wall. Walked around the market for a bit and then got a coffee. I note the Setubal market is a real market and not the cleaned-up tourist affair that is the Porto market.
We decided to have a couple of galaos, think latte served in a glass cup and cheaper. We sat out in a lovely park, a park we had seen before on our last visit. However, after our coffees were done we walked to the end of the park and to the public beach. It was a lovely walk and the beach was nice. Apparently in high tourist season they have plenty of kiosks and wagons serving everything from caipirinhas (mojito with Brazilian cane liquor) to oysters on the half shell.
By the time we finished at the beach we were both peckish. What would a trip to a seaside town be without a stop for seafood? We consulted Google Maps, found a place with a 4.6 rating on more than a thousand reviews. It had only two $$s next to the entry. Bothgood and cheap, my favorites. I had seafood stew. Francie had three small, mild, grilled whitefish. Both meals were good. The lunch beer was tasty too but it made the ride back on the crowded train lessenjoyable. We wanted to sleep. Everyone else wanted to talk on their phones. Such is life.
After our exploring we took the Fertargus train back. Got home about four. I immediately hung the laundry out to dry but there was not enough daylight left to get the job done. I was so tired I just left the laundry out and headed to bed about ten thirty. And that brings us back to the beginning, me taking the laundry off the line in the early morning hours.
I am not sure what I thought of Setubal after my first visit. Maybe "meh". But after this second visit I recommend taking the train down to see the beach, walk the market, eat seafood stew, and enjoy the park while exploring the area. This is if you have time.
When you stand at the edge of the upper deck of the Miradouro De Sao Pedro De Alcantara you see the red roofs of old Lisboa mixing in with the bright, shining and new. You see the old buildings colored with green, pink and yellow pastels mixing in with chrome and glass things that popularity has brought to the city. The glitzy hotels, the Hard Rock Café, these are below you wedged in among the shops that still sell Gingina or tins of sardines or cork products of all descriptions.
If you look across this valley, across this beating heart of Lisboa, you will see St. George’s Castle. It hasn’t always been called St. George’s. Pieces remain from the 6th century, when it was first fortified by the Romans and they obviously did not call it St. George’s. Eventually then they were replaced by Visgoths. Then came the Moors who used it as a royal Moorish residence. And then Portugal's first king, Afonso Henriques, captured the castelo in 1147 during the reconquista. Chances are that nobody before Alfonso Henriques thought naming the ramparts St. George’s made sense.
Looking down to the lower level of the miradouro you see busts of Greek and Roman heroes and gods. Here baking under the Iberian sun are Minerva and Ulysses. If you listen as the day draws down to sunset, you can hear leaves rustling in the trees filling this park. The evening breeze coming as it does most every night moves them. You can also hear the large beautiful white fountain running behind you as you scan the horizon in front of you.
The setting of the sun casts a warm, golden light on the scene. You really don’t have to listen hard to hear the sound of parakeets chirping, sounding to all the world like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. You can also hear conversations from the people around you and on the deck below. A majority of these conversation fragments are in Portuguese, spoken fast and indecipherable to anglophones. The smells of sausages cooking at the various pop-up market stalls assembled here waft through the air. As the sun prepared to drop below the horizon and the crowds gathered to watch the sunset, this view of the city was exactly what he needed to restore his soul.
The obvious song to insert here is Saturday in the Park by Chicago but that just doesn't work for me. I viscerally resist that song, don't know why. Maybe something happened in another life that made that song not palatable to me. Anyway I am inserting a Jimmie Dale Gilmore song because I can.
(What follows is part of the narrative that wraps around these interstitial pieces)
He came to this place and this moment at the tail end of his life. Cancer twice, heart disease, deteriorating vision, and hearing loss had all plagued him. Still, he had worked the drill for years in the legal factory. Like a child who had been promised there would be cake at the end of dinner he had expectations for his retirement. As his work calendar moved toward the last few months he truly believed he had earned a beautiful reward.
When all his friends bought houses or lots in God’s Waiting Room he knew he had to find somewhere different. His people were southern, some of his people were so far to the right he could not see their position from where he stood.,But he was long gone from them and their values. Florida was the embodiment of everything he was not. He wanted a place that would not shake him daily because he was surrounded by hate and racist vitriol.
Twenty years before he retired, he wanted to live out the end of his life in the Pacific Northwest. But the money he made would never get him a decent house up there. Ten years before retirement he dreamed of Asheville, NC. But as the world he believed in shattered, and red and blue sides were taken, he knew he was on the wrong side of most of North Carolina. This was clearly true as he read the headlines from the state. Despite the island of delicious food, laughter, art and intellectualism that is Asheville, he could not move to NC. Put simply, he didn’t like his choices because the north was too cold, the east and the west were too expensive and the south was too Trump.
Often I walk the streets of this ancient city to see new things, new places and new spaces. I am serious about Lisboa being an ancient place. According to the Wiki on the city Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world, and certainly the oldest in Western Europe. Lisboa predates other modern European capitals such as London, Paris and Rome by centuries. Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia, adding to the name Olissipo. The origins of the word Olissipo are murky; it may come from the Phoenician word for the Targus river.
One day I walked my neighborhood in a grid and came upon a new fountain. The font was tucked away in the shade of a courtyard next to a large four or five story building. In the middle of the fountain was a kiln. A posting by the fountain says that the kiln, and maybe it is just an oven, was a remnant of an old brick factory that used to be located at that site.
The fountain and the pool surrounding it are expansive and stretch for some distance, about half a city block. Located in a shady place (something at a premium in Lisboa), the fountain is a bit of an urban oasis. Alongside the fountain are statuary of people, almost life sized. Near the edge of the fountain are tables and chairs hard fixed into the grounds. Given the fountain is part of the Caixa Geral de Depositos complex (the largest financial institution in Portugal according to Wiki) my guess is that the tables and chairs are for people to enjoy breaks from the office, be it lunch or otherwise. This is just one of many squares with fountains in the city. Interesting note the oldest still functioning fountain here dates from the 13th century.
There was a song, or maybe an album title, from Elvis Costello called All This Needless Beauty. Instead of Needless the word might have been Useless. This city is a center of needless beauty and nowhere is that more on display than in its fountain squares. Lisbon is filled with little courtyard spaces of fountains and trees. As often as not there is a small coffee shop or kiosk adjacent.
In a hard-edged capitalistic world run according to the harsh principles of the free market, these places would not exist. In America these spaces after debates had been held and commissions appointed would have been deemed irrelevant and redundant and sold on the sly, out of the public eye, on the cheap to a developer. Up would pop a five-story building with “retail” on the ground floor. The retail would sit empty for years until a variance was given to turn the spaces into market priced rentals.
A good guess as to reasons why these spaces still exist in this corner of Iberia would bring two factors to the fore, i.e., weather and history. Lisboa is for the majority of the year warm, lacking in in rain but often very humid. Back 85 years ago, back before the metro and wide ownership of automobiles, back before the wide adoption of air conditioning in commercial spaces, a day in an office, factory or walking to or from a job was a sweaty thing. Cooling oases were needed. Courtyards with trees and fountains were necessary.
The Romans who one held this land knew the benefits of courtyards, trees and fountain. You can find courtyards designed 2,000 years ago all over what was the Roman world surprisingly similar to the little pocket parks of Lisboa and the smaller cities that fill this country. According to a Wiki post Rome in the 3rd century CE had 1,423 drinking fountains. Today Rome has 50 monumental fountains and more than 2,000 fountains overall. While Roman courtyards were smaller the principles used there are the same as those used in Lisbon’s squares.
Until I began to write this and began to research the history of Roman courtyard use I had never heard of the courtyard effect. The gist of the concept is during the dark hours cooler night air sinks into the courtyard and flows into the surrounding rooms thus cooling them. The rooms and surfaces are cooled until about noon the next day. Until noon the courtyard provides storage of cold air and cold air exchange with surrounding rooms. At noon, when the sun strikes the courtyard floor the temperature of air inside the courtyard increases gradually, causing the hot air to move up. This draws air from surrounding rooms into the courtyard, resulting in cooling for the rooms. Finally, as the courtyard and the surrounding rooms get warmer, all the cool air leaks out, preparing the system for a new cycle in the next day.
When you throw trees and fountains into the mix the cooling of the courtyard is enhanced. Trees in a courtyard give off cooling oxygen and facilitate the air exchange of the courtyard effect. They also provide shade drawing out the period the courtyard stores cooler air. Fountains assist in the cooling process the water temperature being usually below the air temperature.
People in Lisboa love their past. They love the fact that the city is so very old and that it has a past extending far longer than most major European cities. They love it was once mighty and its people opened the age of discovery. With that passion they are loath to see ancient spaces disappear. They fight for their parks. You have got to love a place where they have not allowed the lust for money to destroy so many functional, sustainable cooling spaces.
Last we needed to take an explore. Upcoming is a tall ship race that is starting from the Port of Lisbon. We wanted to see the tall ships. We walked to the subway. Took a subway to the train. Took the train to Alcantara Mar. Turns out it was one stop too far to actually see the ships at dock.
But wow what a restaurant scene. Located under the 25 de Abril Bridge suspension bridge the row of restaurants was packed to the gills. (Yes, it is a seafood pun tied to the fact that these are almost entirely seafood restaurants). We walked around and gawked and watched the crowds pour in and then caught the train back to the Santos stop where the ships actually were docked.
Again, despite having been here a year I was surprised at the very vibrant, very active bar and restaurant scene down along the Rio Tejo. The stroll from Santos to the ferry/subway/streetcar/train stop at Cais do Sodre is a short, pleasant and vibrant walk.
We found the tall ships at dock awaiting the race. We saw one of the ship’s crews returning from wandering about Lisbon. We saw people watching the set and fade. We saw the outstretched arms of Jesus blessing the river and its denizens.
The light along the river is amazing. If you get a chance you need to take a wander down along the Tejo as the day is fading. Hey grab a pint or a gin and tonic and let the day fade away as colors of orange and indigo bleed across the river’s waters and the western sky.
Yesterday I had a plan. The plan wasn’t great but it was a plan nonetheless. We were going to Ikea to get three or maybe four things. To quote the good old Grateful Dead, “…it never works out the way it does in the song.” We got more than three or four things.
Going into Ikea is basically a trip from meatballs to madness. For us the meatball plate is front end loaded given the restaurant is right there at the start of the maze. The madness follows as you work your way from chairs to mattresses to kitchens to kid rooms to downstairs and clothing hangers, kitchen scales, plants live and plastic and the weird cinnamon buns.
One thing about Ikea, if you see a display with add on pieces or parts you like, get them all at once. When you go back three months later the display is gone and the specifically adapted parts are nowhere to be found. I was looking for cloth boxes to go into the closets we bought six months ago. The size I needed was no longer to be found although the display back then had lots of them around. Sigh.
I also wanted to get a heavy-duty clothing rack. The one on the website seemed a possible match to what I desired. Up close and personal it wasn’t. So, what to do? Well instead, we bought a kitchen scale, new sheets, a desk lamp, a flower stand, cloth shoe boxes that will be repurposed and pilsner glasses. Sigh. Between the baffling maze and the disorienting noodling of the piped in Scandinavian jazz I believe I was subliminally manipulated to buy, buy, buy. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.” Oh wait, I did get pants hangers. They were on my list.
While in Ikea ran into a couple of other ‘Murican family units. Both were from California. The one I talked to at length had two kids of grade school age. He was in IT and she was a licensed psychologist, both of whom are remote workers. The IT guy I get, just give him a fast internet connection and he can work from anywhere. The psychologist is more interesting, obviously her practice is by teleconference. I used to do hearings every single day by teleconference. However, I think there is risk in a psychologist not living in the same land as her patients. One day she is going to advise someone to cool off and refocus, you know take a few deep breaths and then walk to the Mercado or …., oh wait I meant you favorite store. Oops. Hank or Hal Ketchum (I don’t remember his first name), the guy who did Dennis the Menace had a similar problem. At the height of the comic’s fame, he moved to Switzerland living there for several years. He knew he had to return to America when he found himself starting to draw Dennis’s father returning from work on a bicycle carrying French bread and a bottle of wine.
Later in the day I Facebooked, I read newsletters, and I watched some trashy TV. Of those three actions the one that was the most important was the reading. Will Bunch is a columnist for the Philly Inquirer. His article Journalism Fails Miserably at Explaining What is Really Happening to Americahttps://archive.ph/haxhn is a must read for anyone who believes the US is worth saving. What he writes talks about how newspapers, TV and news websites are covering the current admixture of political races, criminal indictments and the purported tribalism in America in the wrong way. Mr. Bunch says this time the election is different, very different.
I urge you to read the whole article. The gist of it being the Republican party of old, the financial conservatives that acted as a balance to social program favoring Democrats no longer exists. It has been replaced state by state with diehard defiant Trump acolytes, people who no longer believe in democracy but rather in the cult of personality of Donald J. Trump. (See https://apple.news/A3DZI7L7hSam488dNwDigbg ). They worship an authoritarian who is waiting to be crowned something more than President. Covering this race like Kennedy/Nixon, Nixon/McGovern, Bush/Clinton, etc., is not honestly covering what is really occurring. This is a fight between democracy and an almost certain capitulation to authoritarianism should Trump win. I believe Bunch is correct.
I really, really urge you to read the whole piece. But here are Mr. Bunch’s concluding paragraphs.
“These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse-race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable “tribalism.”
We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements, and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst covered election in U.S. history, that it might also be the last.”
Woke today and took my morning meds. Started a load of laundry. Then I did the same with a load of dishes. Took a moment to read a couple of news articles. Scanned the stuff regarding American politics, Trump this, Trump that, blah, blah, blah. Read about real estate developers trying to buy land from fire victims when family members of those people have yet to be found. Came across an article in the Guardian talking about how tourists with wheeled suitcases are destroying Europe. Most of it in the article was stuff I had heard before, inappropriate behaviors in public spaces, noise, crowding, etc. Most of what was there on the page was seemingly code saying Americans are being ugly, they don’t respect our cities and their treasures.
Then I got to the part where the author argues expats, retirees and digital nomads have killed the essence of Lisbon. Zoe Williams said, and I quote, “Lisbon is the prime example of a city altered beyond recognition, to many people’s eyes denatured by an influx of people who could just afford higher rents.” (The emphasis is mine.) She then quotes a half Brit-half Portuguese man who says, “The main avenue, where there used to be old multibrand boutiques, now Gucci has come in, Prada has come in, so that’s shot the rents up. The newcomers want sushi, they want Thai food, they want vegan. The old lot can’t cater to that, so they’ve shut down. Lisbon has lost its soul.” Geesh, make me feel like a soul butchering murderer why don’t you Zoe?
I took a break at this point from doom scrolling, and anytime you actually follow the news today from the fires in Hawaii to bombings of grain silos in Ukraine, you are doom scrolling. Made my breakfast. My morning repast was oatmeal with nuts, raisins and a teaspoon of sugar. Couldn’t read the instructions but the recipe is universal, two cups boiling water, one cup oats and five minutes simmering. Sat on the balcony and watched the city of Lisboa awaken. Deliveries were being made. Women with heels totally incompatible with the sidewalks of this city headed into office buildings. Birds chirped.
Hung the laundry. Put the dishes away. Checked my calendar, nothing urgent today. Have to straighten up the room where my nephew will stay when he arrives tomorrow. I probably should pick up a fan for that room. This place is not air conditioned.
I am troubled by the Guardian post. Note well, I have spent more than a year here over the course of the last five years in bits and pieces. I have done what I can to observe local courtesies. I don’t join the crowds in the touristic areas (unless someone is here visiting and wants to see a particular sight). We shop local and cook most of our meals at home. I am trying to learn the language, but I am an old dog and I am going deaf so it is hard. I rented a place at asking price in the business district and I pay my rent on time. I have expat health insurance so as to not overburden the health care system. I pump my retirement income into the Portuguese economy by buying goods and services. I am not alone in these practices.
I fell in love with Portugal because of its beauty, its kind people, and the pace of life. I am trying to be part of this place, not a destroyer of it. Thanks Zoe for making me feel awful which is what I think your whole article was about. I think the goal of the article, without explicitly saying it, was to justify xenophobia and shame the others, in this case primarily Americans.
Ms. Williams seems to intone that tourists and expats need to somehow solve the issue of housing affordability in European countries but she offers no insight as to how that might be accomplished. In the end I think her xenophobia shows its full ugliness in her last two words, “…go away.” Don't be just another pundit Zoe, if you going on this kind of attack, throw in some proposed solutions to the problem you feel you are highlighting. "...[G]et naked or go away," really isn't much of an answer now is it?
Sunrise 8 miles high and 500 miles from the coast of Portugal
East Lansing to Lisboa, twenty hours door to door. Flight time was a little over 6 3/4ths hours all told. Fastest flight across the Atlantic ever for us, 5-3/4ths hours. Travel time, flight time, whatever, it is a whole different world we live in here reached after less than a full day of travel.
I had forgotten when I scheduled our return every single small store owner is out of town in August. Walking around I saw a great many of the small coffee shops are closed. Rush hour is very damped down in terms of both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Kind of nice to have the city moving slow when I am moving slow. Today in Lisboa is especially quiet being a holiday, Assumption Day.
Pushed myself all day yesterday to stay awake and active. In an attempt to avoid jet lag. When I finally hit bed, I fell so deeply into sleep that I did not hear the garbage collection that happens each night at midnight and one AM.
Woke up early. Body of course thought it was noon when I rolled out of bed at seven to the morning’s softly glowinglight. Francie was deep into the dream zone so I quietly set about my tasks. Agreat number of our plants had been moved around so as to make it easier on our friends who were watering them to take care of that task. They did a splendid job mind you, but the plants needed to be back in their places.
Started a load of laundry.Went to two super mercados to get bread, milk, eggs, sandwich meats, and a variety of otherstaples. Cleaned out the refrigerator wiping down all the shelves and drawers before stashing the newgroceries. Brewedice tea, brewed coffee. TookFrancie coffee and an apple pastry as she was waking up in bed. Hung the laundry on the line.
Today in Lisboa is warm but it is enjoyable.Going to head out shortly for a quick lunch. We are back in Lisboa; we are back in the rhythm and pace of life that can be lived joyfully.
Given the vacant city streets today this seemed like a good musical coda.
