Good food, good wine and good beaches

Palabra del día: Soldad
Soldad is a Portuguese word that expresses an emotion of missing someone you love.  It is oftentimes sad but not always, and according to a knowledgable tour guide, any definition that is less than three sentences long is inaccurate.  This word is relevant because it is the emotion behind Portuguese folk music, called fado. 

Comida del día: Pasteis de Belem
These delicious cream tarts are famous in the neighborhood of Belem.  We each ordered one, and they came out warm, with a flaky crust and a creamy, sweet filling... we couldn't resist ordering another one!

Foto del día: 

View of Lisbon on a foggy morning.  Thankfully it was sunny every afternoon!  Red roofs, big hills, and is that bridge in the distance the Golden Gate Bridge? No, but it was built by the same company and looks exactly the same.  Lisbon even has cable cars, just like San Francisco.

Another blog post about yet another European city...this is starting to feel a bit too routine!  I still haven't quite recovered from those six weeks of traveling over winter break, so when I left for Lisbon I was already feeling a bit worn out just from the thought of living out of a suitcase again.  But something about having four days to relax in this charming coastal city, with its beautiful blue tile-work, charming hills and cable cars, long walks along the ocean, and scrumptious wine and pastries, made any reluctance to travel disappear immediately.

I went to Lisbon with my WashU friend Caroline, who is studying in Madrid this semester.  I had never traveled with her before, but we turned out to be excellent travel buddies.  It helped that we both share a strong passion for food!  So I'll start with the food.  We ate so much good food.  Portuguese food is like Spanish food but with more butter and tons of fresh seafood.  I'll resist describing every meal and just give you the highlights.  Pastries, obviously.  In addition to the cream tarts, I ate the best chocolate cake I've ever had in my entire life, but we had to search for it a bit after reading about it on Caroline's TripAdvisor app.  We finally found it in the LX Factory, which is a factory converted into funky shops and cafes.  The cafe with the chocolate cake literally only sold chocolate cake and coffee drinks.  It was the perfect texture and combination of cake and frosting, I could tell that the chocolate was top notch.

Also in the LX Factory, we found this giant bookstore, full of plenty of corners to snuggle up in with a good book, and also including a cafe, concert space, and a really cool bike statue hanging from the ceiling.  

Back to the topic of food (don't worry, I'm almost done).  The best meal we ate was at a restaurant that we passed on the way down from seeing a castle, called L'Petite Cafe.  We were on our way to buy a picnic, but our hungry stomachs and the jars of sangria on the patio tables made us stop. Thank god we did.  We ended up chatting and eating on that patio for three hours with our jar of the best sangria I've ever had, and even went back to that same restaurant two nights later.  It's so nice to be on vacation!  Here's what we ate: 

Salmon salad (much fancier than we were expecting!)

Octopus rice. There's tons of seafood in Lisbon and octopus seems to be really popular.  The next day, Caroline ordered a whole octopus at a restaurant!  I was very impressed.  I did try one tentacle, and it tasted like butter.  Yum!

So yes, we ate a lot.  But moving on to the next important thing, we also saw some great music.  One night we went to one of the oldest jazz clubs in Europe.  The music was great, although the venue was nothing special - the original building had been destroyed in an earthquake that destroyed much of the city of Lisbon in 1755 and was rebuilt recently.  Another night, we went with a group from our hostel to see a fado show, which is Lisbon's folk music centered on the emotion of soldad.  We went to a bar where locals go just to sing for fun, basically like a fado jam session.  It felt very authentic and I could definitely feel the strong emotions in the music, which in some ways was similar to the feeling of suffering which is often present in flamenco.  In fado, they use the Portuguese guitar:

I had never seen one before and I learned that each string is doubled to give the instrument a more metallic sound.

When we weren't seeing concerts in the evening, we went to Barrio Alto, which is Lisbon's top neighborhood for nightlife.  I had never seen anything like it before.  It was up a big hill (like most things in Lisbon), and consisted of blocks and blocks of bars and crowded streets.  Everyone would get their drinks in plastic cups and then just stand on the street socializing and people watching.  

In addition to eating and nightlife, we made sure to see all of the important tourist attractions as well.  Highlights include the Belem neighborhood, where in addition to eating pastries, we also went to a beautiful monastery, a free modern art museum, the maritime museum, a tower to climb up and look at the views, and a nice walkway along the ocean. 

One of the many boats at the Maritime museum, which focused on Portugal's history of world exploration and discovery. 

We also went to the Castle of San Jorge, an Moorish castle which of course didn't compare to the Alhambra but gave us a chance to see some great view of the city.  Lisbon isn't all that big, and we were there for four whole days, so we had a chance to do a half day trip to the beach and a full day trip to the town of Sintra.  It was so nice to relax on the beach, and Caroline even went in the water!  It was a bit too cold for me but I did enjoy the sunbathing.  The day trip to Sintra was gorgeous.  We walked through a colorful castle with lots of interesting tile work, then walked through the park surrounding it to see a beautiful view of the castle from afar. 

Tile work on the castle walls

Got some Spanish tourists to take a photo of us

Hiked down the hill from the castle then back up a neighboring one, and we were rewarded with this view!

Then we continued to trip to see a garden that was designed by a renaissance man to represent an escape from hell, and included pitch black tunnels and a really tall well.  

Really tall well (from the top) 

We finished the day at Cabo de Roca, the western most point in Europe.  There wasn't much to do there besides take photos, but it was definitely one of the better places to take photos:

Lisbon felt similar to Spain in terms of its schedule, food, and relaxed lifestyle, and the language, which is of course very similar to Spanish.  Caroline and I found that we could understand about half of what we read in Portuguese and about nothing when people spoke to us.  Thankfully there were lots of Spanish tourists who we could talk to who were taking a vacation to escape the craziness that is Semana Santa in Spain, although Caroline and I returned to Granada in the middle of the week to participate fully in that craziness.  I'm still gathering my thoughts about the Semana Santa experience, which turned out to be much less relaxing than the Lisbon experience, so keep your eye out for an update soon!  In general though, I loved Lisbon as a chance to enjoy beautiful views and some time by the ocean in a city that isn't overrun with tourists or tourist attractions and maintains a lot of local charm.