This is Monday evening in Lisbon. So far, despite the predictions for bad weather, we have not been inconvenienced by weather at all.
We arrive on Saturday evening after a long, but thankfully uneventful, day of day of travel from Jeez to Madrid to Lisbon. We got to our apartment about 7:30 PM and did not need to go out that evening. The apartment is quite nice and is well-furnished with some “interesting” art on the walls. Once we figured out how to get the heat to work, we were comfortable.
Sunday morning we walked to a near by restaurant area. I had been concerned that because it was Sunday we might not be able to find anything open, but I was very wrong. There are dozens and dozens of restaurants within a 15 minute walk. Many of them have tables outside. I mentioned the weather predictions a few lines ago and many of the outside eating areas, which all have canopies or umbrellas, were adding clear plastic sheeting because they were expecting bad weather. We ate inside at a restaurant Patricia insists we visited years ago. If so, if was a good choice both times. After a leisurely breakfast, we walked to a supermarket so we could stock the apartment for the rest of our visit.
I had picked an apartment location in the Baixa district, in part because that is a relatively flat part of Lisbon. Once we set out for the supermarket, I was immediately reminded that while Baixa might be flat, none of the rest of the city is. It is not called “The City of Seven Hills” (like Rome) for no reason. Maybe 70 or 700 would be better numbers. Like Seattle, going anywhere in this area means you are going uphill—both ways. Getting to the store was a bigger challenge, despite what the map seemed to show, than we expected. It is a good thing we ate first because we needed plenty of energy! [But, of course, Google Maps show in 2 dimensions, unlike the real world which comprises at least 3.]
We had tickets for a concert Sunday evening. Remember the weather predictions of rain I mentioned? Early Sunday afternoon, the rain began. Just sprinkles at first, then rain, the RAIN. It poured for a long time and we began to think we might not be able to get to the venue. But about an hour before we needed to leave, the rain simply stopped. Google maps said the venue was a 20-minute walk. The lesson about uphill, both ways, clearly had not sunk in and we decided to take the walk. [Taxis are very scarce in our area.] It took us longer than 20 minutes and we were tired when we arrived. I wasted no time in scheduling a taxi for the trip back to the apartment.
The concert we saw was a traditional Portuguese musical form called fado (fa-due). We both like fado and this concert was memorable. It was in a small atrium with good acoustics and the audience was probably around 50 people. The performers were literally an arm’s-length away from us. The four performers were a classical guitarist, someone who played the Portuguese guitar, and a female and a male singer. When I looked around at the audience, I think all of them were as enthralled as we were. It was one of the best concerts of any type we have seen.
It is a good thing we got back to the apartment at a reasonable hour because we needed to be up fairly early for a day trip to a city called Évora.
Évora has at least 5 millennia of history. I won’t repeat what you can find elsewhere (including the link in this sentence). Our driver / guide Miguel picked us up on time and we wove through the Lisbon Monday morning traffic to begin the 90 mile (or so) drive to Évora. On the way Miguel fed us lots of information about the area. He is from the Alentejo district where the city is. Évora (pop. about 55,000) is another hilly city and seems to have been “designed” on the principal that if all the important things are way up on hills and are surrounded by narrow, crooked streets, the bad guys won’t be able to get to them. That worked, more or less, for some time.
On our short visit we could not see everything, but we did spend time in the Chapel of Bones, the Cathedral, and we saw the ruins of the Roman temple (no one really knows if it was dedicated to Diana) in addition to getting history from Miguel at many locations on our walk. Miguel and I climbed to the top of the cathedral. There is a large open area on the top which he called a terrace where I had a great view of Évora and some of the surrounding countryside.
Miguel found a restaurant which served traditional Portuguese food for our lunch. We enjoyed the day trip and the drive there and back.
I added pictures to the pictures page.