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.

About ½ Way Through This Initial Journey

 

Last night the plan had been to get takeaway.  When we went out for our midday walkies, we discovered the takeaway joint was at the edge of the regular restaurant district.  Scratched that idea.  If one is going to walk all the way down to the restaurants, one is going to eat at said dining establishments.

 

Instead, Francie walked down to the local Pingo Doce and got some clams, clams for a clam stew.  There was a salad with buffalo mozzarella, some chips and homemade salsa and some tinto.  The wine was from the Douro valley and was quite tasty. To finish all off a little while after the dishes were cleared, there was an 18-year-old scotch whiskey and some gelado. 

 

Our fellow travelers asked if we were ever going camping again.  I laughed and said, “This my friend is camping in my dotage.”  We are cooking new meals based on available ingredients.  We are hiking at least five miles a day. We are on the alert for wild animals (big assed dogs behind fences here as opposed to bears rooting through garbage bins in the northern woods). We are traveling in unknown terrain.  The beds might be a tad more comfortable than a bed roll, but we are essentially doing what we did camping. We are sharing each other’s company and discovering new things together.

 

Today is our 45^th day in Europe.  We are just a tad past the halfway point in this journey. I am dropping into the rhythms of this place, casual morning, long lunch, slow afternoon and joyous evenings.  I probably will have to immerse myself in football and pick a team to root for when I am in the bars. I really don’t want this to end.

Last Day in Olhao

 

Last night I tried a couple of times to record a video post showing myself and the almost full moon as I talked about how much I enjoyed Olhao.  Never really captured what I wanted to say or the look I was going for. So here goes as I try and put it into words.  My espresso at my left hand.

 

Olhao is mostly a working seaport with some gorgeous beaches attached. And yes, there is a row of restaurants that stretches on for more than a kilometer. But really it is nobody first choice for a waterfront holiday.  I mean there is the intense swamp/fish smell that comes from the fish processing plant every couple of days when the wind blows into town. Also, there are the coffee shops/bars filled with grizzled old men sipping Superbock beer, lingering for hours at a table set out in the middle of a sidewalk. And even the new condos have issues notably the stucco siding falling off into the street and onto the sidewalk below.  And there are the ruined buildings.

 

But…

 

I have lived in seaside towns before and the fish smell it kind of comes with the salt air and the sea view.  The old men are just that old men, strange only because I am a stranger in this town a place which has existed with grizzled old men for many, many centuries. While it might be easy to view my photos of old houses as disaster porn, the key thing is that they are old and they are still in use.  This place has cycles of life, cycles of use and reuse older than the nation from whence I have come.

 

And…

 

The pace of this town is a pace I like.  Morning is filled with activity.  Then comes a long lunch.  Then real life slows for a time only to awaken again in late afternoon and continuing on until 10 PM or so.

 

Olhao is working class.  I come from blue collar beginnings so the humble side of this town is not a shock or a deterrent. Olhao is on the water and I spent the most formative years of my life at the edge of the ocean. Ohlao has a good spirit of life and at this stage in my life I appreciate that life-force.

The Promised Dedicated Work Station

I have not created a blog post in a bit.  At current we are halfway through our Portuguese adventure. We have now arrived in Lagos, Portugal after leaving Olhao.  Train ride took about 2 ¾ hours.  Cab took about half an hour to get to the station and a half an hour to get to the place due to Google maps discombobulation.  Downhill the train station is about 20 minutes away.  Uphill, well I don’t even want to contemplate that.

 

Truth be told I really, really loved Olhao.  It was a working seaport with tourist beaches and restaurants appended to it. Must be my blue color upbringing, I don’t mind the smell of fish and brine.  I don’t mind old men in wife beater t-shirts drinking beer at noon.  And I do like unpretentious dives with good pastries.

 

But Lagos.  Wow.  The place we rented is very, very nice.  A pool.  A marble staircase.  Four bedrooms two with their own baths.  A veranda.  Loads of plants including lime trees and rosemary everywhere. When I got up this morning the sun was starting to explode across the eastern sky above the ocean.  The temperature today will reach 80F but this morning it is 60.  Slept with the windows open last night and slept well.

 

Right now, I believe I am working from the dedicated work space.  Uh, I think I could work from this dedicated work space from now until the cows come home. In a day or two some friends will join us to share the space. Hanging out in an alabaster neighborhood drinking gin and tonics will probably be as nice as nice can be. More soon.

 

On a Spring Day Long Ago/On a Fall Day in a Fallen Roman Province *

Scrawny and lanky a young man sits in a bright cheerful classroom in the “New High School.”  He gazes out into the courtyard, a design element the teachers and administrators weren’t quite sure how to use yet. He daydreams but not for long for his harsh, scary old Latin teacher had only 13 students and he could be called to answer a question at any time.

 

Today Ms. Audrey Cooper was talking about the layout of the tradition Roman villa. These history bits were more interesting to him than the ablative and male versus female nouns. He disconnected from his fantasy of being a rock star swaggering like Roger Daltrey at Woodstock and focused on tile roofs, a fountain in the center of the atrium and the marvelous mosaics the artisans would set out on the floors of these patrician estates.

 

Ms. Audrey with her pasty white powdered face took a piece of chalk and in precise letters wrote the word “viae” on the chalkboard. Viae was the plural of via the Latin word for road. She talked about how good roads were important for commerce in the empire.  Good roads, and these were good roads elevated and with drainage ditches on the sides, could allow the Roman legions move quickly through the countryside. Her love of all things Roman was clear as she happily, almost giddily, told the class these roads were engineered to last and some were still visible today. Looking up and to the side gazing at a map of the Empire she intoned some are still in use in rural areas.

 

From rock star to Roman centurion, the young man’s fantasies shifted in a nanosecond.  Instead of being onstage in bell bottoms and sandals singing in a gravelly voice about stopping the war he was marching with troops in a leather skirt and sandals out into the hinterlands of great Roman empire at the behest of Octavius.  Now mind you both of these fantasies had similar components, semi-nude women, modern groupies or roman house keepers.  Hey at 15 years old what more could you expect from the mind of a male child of the seventies?

 

From April 1971 to September 2021 the fifty years flew by.  Ms. Cooper, God rest her soul (and I say that with sincerity), is long dead. The new high school is so very far from new.  The fifteen-year-old horndog with the attention span of a gnat is now a 65-year-old man, retired from a lifetime of work and afflicted with the maladies that come with advancing years. 

 

But here I stand on the grounds of a Roman villa with a docent explaining how when it was “discovered” in the 1700s this villa was large enough to be thought to be a whole village. One archeologist showed however that it was the home of very rich and very powerful patrician.  The temple to animalistic deities was build late in the site’s history because these were holdouts from the Roman empire’s conversion to Christianity.  The docent leads me into a sizeable house to show me how a 16^th farmer used the ruins as the foundation of his house burying the entryway into the Roman dwelling beneath the living quarters of his traditional Iberian Peninsula home.

 

And then after we leave the house and step outside on the path back to the interpretive center, he casually throws out that this was a Roman road that led about 15 km to Faro and then from Faro on the Portuguese coast up to Spain. I ask him if the stones are the original stones from the start of time in CE.  He tells me some but not all and he laughs saying if you look with even a little bit of care you can tell.  And I did.  And I could. And suddenly I was a centurion dressed in leather again heading out for a return to the seven hills of Rome.  I will not address the question of whether my imagination conjured up tanned women in various states of undress.  It is irrelevant.  But I can tell you every second I paid attention in Latin I, II & III came flooding back to me.

 

And God bless the memory of Audrey Cooper and the love of classical history she instilled those of us who dared take her classes. Without her I wouldn't have taken an Uber out to the countryside with my youngest son to gaze upon the wonders of a great fallen empire.