This city is a little weird.
For example, albino peacocks roam the grounds of St. George`s Castle. Yes, they are rare, and they aren`t ugly. But an albino peacock sort of misses the point.
Then there are the stubby trolleys painted all over to advertise M&Ms, Colgate and Pepsodent. And the station where trains depart from the fifth floor, directly into a tunnel. And that big blue elevator in the middle of a downtown street, linking the main shopping district with the hillside neighborhood of Bairro Alto.
And then, there was the well-dressed waiter who left our table to run outside and help his buddies haul up an octopus from the sea. At nine o`clock on a Sunday night. In the rain.
My wife, Jamie, and I spent a four-day stopover in Lisbon on our way to the Algarve, Portugal`s southern coast. We stayed in a tiny hotel that once was a count`s mansion, getting on famously with the staff although they spoke no English and we spoke no Portuguese.
In those four days, it became clear to us that the Portuguese were having a good time here, and they expected us to have a good time, too. And we did, right up to the moment our landlady kissed me goodbye.
A mix of cities
Lisbon reminded me of two American cities, San Francisco and New Orleans. Like San Francisco, it is set on steep hills overlooking a bay. It has cable cars and a spectacular suspension bridge. The most significant event in its history was an earthquake.
Like New Orleans, it has an easygoing style, a tradition of hospitality and an atmosphere of genteel decay. Its colors are the age-muted tans, pinks, yellows and blues of crumbling stucco, its music is sweet and sad and its seafood is varied, plentiful and delicious.
Lisbon`s working-class neighborhoods have a special noisy vitality, so that a walk in the streets is like a walk through some big, loud family`s holiday living room. Laundry flaps everywhere from lines hung between windows above the wrought-iron balconies.
The main boulevard, Liberdade, is lined with palm trees. During our winter stay, temperatures were mostly in the 60s and there was some rain every day, though never enough to interfere with our sightseeing.
Our hotel, the 28-room Casa de Sao Mamede, was cheap, cozy and comfortable. Our top-of-the-line $42 ground-floor suite had touches of elegance, with lace curtains and a dark, ornate four-poster bed.
Each of our four days in Lisbon was a different experience.
On the day of our arrival, we made a $25 Gray Line tour. On the second day, we went by train to Sintra, a suburban mountain resort that boasts two palaces and a Moorish castle. The third day was spent wandering Lisbon on our own, seeing random sights while searching for the one place in this city that will cash traveler`s checks on Saturday. On our final day we went to Cascais, on the Atlantic just west of Lisbon, to see a scenic wonder known as the Mouth of Hell.
Jamie had broken a bone in her foot three weeks before the trip, too late for us to cancel. She arrived in Portugal wearing an air cast, which slowed us down, but not as much as I had feared. Only the Gray Line tour, where we had to keep up with a fast-moving group over rough terrain, was a problem.
The tour gave us a quick glimpse of Lisbon`s major landmarks-Belem Tower
(1515), the Memorial to the Discoveries (1960), the coach museum at the Belem Palace, the cavernous Monastery of Jeronimous (1502) and the Castle of St. George.
The castle crowns a plateau overlooking the city. The tour bus parked some distance below the castle and let us off to climb through the narrow, twisting, cobblestone streets of the Alfama, an ancient blue-collar neighborhood that extends down to the waterfront.
A 19th Century Lisbon historian described the Alfama this way:
”labyrinth, confused, heaped up, multicolored; twisted and retwisted . . . embracing narrow streets and kissing eaves; archways, back yards, blind alleys, stairways and terraces; commons and courtyards. . . .”
Up to the ramparts
St. George`s is a massive ruin studded with arches and battlements. Along the top of the walls are broad stone promenades offering expansive views of the city and the Tagus River estuary. The oldest parts of the castle date to the Moorish period, which ended in 1147.
The influence of the Moors is even more evident at Sintra. This town 18 miles northwest of Lisbon was described by Lord Byron in 1809 as a ”glorious Eden.” The sawtooth battlements of Sintra`s Moorish castle, dating from the 8th or 9th Century, stretch along two peaks of the Serra de Sintra range, overlooking the town. Strolling through the cool ruins, climbing the towers and exploring the mossy archways and courtyards inspire feelings of mystery, romance and adventure.
On an adjacent hilltop is the Pena Palace, an incredible 19th Century rock pile that rivals Germany`s Neuschwanstein in size, audacity and ostentation. One book referred to it as ”a cocktail of Gothic, Renaissance, Manueline and Moorish architecture.” It was built, beginning in 1839, for Queen Maria II and her husband, King Consort Dom Fernando II of Saxe Coburg-Gotha. The builder, a Baron von Eschwege, is said to have drawn inspiration from the music of Wagner and the castles of Bavaria, but he also threw in onion-domed minarets and keyhole arches that are straight out of the Arabian Nights.
For a bit more than $25, a cabbie took us up the mountain to the Moorish castle, waited an hour and a half while we looked around, then drove us on to Pena. Two hours later, after a tour of the palace, he picked us up again and drove us back to the heart of Sintra.
The next day was devoted to wandering through Lisbon. Behind the Sodre railway station, near a large commercial fish and produce market, we came upon a wildly colorful Saturday noontime scene. As the market was closing, turbaned women-gleaners-came striding out of the warehouselike buildings carrying fish in buckets, baskets and boxes on their heads. Others combed through piles of discarded fruits and vegetables, searching for cabbages and oranges still good enough to sell.
In the street, using wooden boxes for tables, the women set up a market of their own, deftly trimming and cleaning the fish while howling out prices to passersby. As regular shoppers arrived, the haggling became intense.
”This,” said Joao Dominos Antonio, an English-speaking businessman who volunteered to be our guide and translator at the market, ”is where the poor people of Lisbon buy their fish.”
Later that day we rode the 100-foot outdoor Elevador de Santa Justa to Bairro Alto and the ghostly ruin of a Gothic-style Carmelite church. On All Saints Day in 1755, an earthquake destroyed much of Lisbon and the vaulted stone roof of the church fell, crushing the congregation.
Today the walls and soaring arches remain, open to the sky.
The call of the fado
That night we stayed up listening to fado music and guitars until 3 a.m. at a club near the hotel, then slept late on Sunday. In the early afternoon we boarded a train to Cascais, on the Atlantic half an hour west of Lisbon. From there, we walked along the coast road to the Mouth of Hell, a rock caldron where the waves burst in through a hole in a cliff with a deafening boom, then foam, swirl and recede before breaking through again.
The road to the Mouth of Hell was a bazaar, lined with canvas booths where vendors hawked souvenirs and handicrafts. We bargained, and bought two embroidered tablecloths for far less than the asking price.
Later, we stopped for dinner at O Maregrafo, a glassed-in cafe on a stone pier next to a fortress called the Cidadela. The place was nearly empty, but the food was excellent. Our waiter brought several large whole fish to our table, allowing us to make our choices and specify serving sizes.
Service was efficient but unhurried. At one point, we looked out the window and saw our waiter and several other men on a lower level of the pier, close to the water. With waves crashing around them, they were hauling mightily on a rope, getting soaked as they struggled.
Later our more than slightly damp waiter explained what they were doing-hauling up a large octopus that was caught in one of their traps. No question about the freshness of the seafood here.
The next day, we drove to the Algarve. A week later, we returned to Lisbon for our flight home. On our last night in Portugal, we stayed again at the Casa de Sao Mamede, in the same suite.
In the morning, as we were loading up the cab for the trip to the airport, the hotel manager, a cheerful woman in her 50s, arrived for work. When she saw us she rushed up to send us on our way with a smile, a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
