lisbon

If you're ever in Lisbon you must stay at the Oasis Backpackers Hostel and sign up for the X-Trip with Bruno, the anti-tourism tour guide. You'll see things like:

This building, the Amoreiras, which is infamous not only because it was the first in modern style but also because sex tapes were distributed soon after its completion, of the architect and the wives of politicians and other powerful men. Even though everyone in Lisbon has seen these tapes, the media more or less covered it up since there were so many important people involved.

Bruno, at the palace in Sintra where officials would work, talking about the once magnificent but now charmingly shabby apartments in which the aristocracy lived after the earthquake hundreds of years ago:

The palace of Sintra, built by King Fernando in the nineteenth century as a symbol for how much he loved his wife. The architecture is based off of too many styles to be properly categorized. The rooms are filled with so many original pieces that you can't take pictures, can only marvel at the insides of a nineteenth century royal palace. Bruno said it was a good thing that the morning was so misty and drizzling, because it really added to the whole mysteriousness of the building. We walked the Shower Walk underneath actual showers. On the bus ride up the winding mountain path he said, "On your left, if it wasn't so foggy, you could see a Moorish castle," which is a romatic idea, never in my life knowing what this Moorish castle looks like, amidst the trees and in the foggy mountains of Lisbon, if it even exists. He said, "This forest is really interesting because the King gathered all different types of trees from around the world and they all grew, American and Japanese trees alongside one another. That's one of the beautiful things about Lisbon: you plant any kind of tree and it will flourish." (He's really poetic; the kind of thirty-five year old European man I thought I'd fall in love with. I want to write him a letter that says, "You don't have to build me a palace," because it's an old joke in Lisbon: "When you say you love a girl, she waits for you to build her a palace.")

(more in the collection of "tourist taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of tourists")

alligator gargoyle: did you know that the word "alligator" is derived from the Spanish word "el lagarto", meaning "lizard"?

graffiti on the "wall walk":

Went to "the end of the Earth", a title which Bruno may or may not have made up; he tells pretty stories, even if the accuracy behind them is questionable. (He did tell me the real name, I just can't remember.) He said, "If it wasn't so cloudy, you could see New York City from here. It's not so far away; we are just neighbors with a pool between us; the Atlantic Ocean is the garden we share between our houses."

Can you imagine how it would feel, to think you lived at the end of the earth?

We went to a beautiful and deserted beach, my first ocean:

In Chiado, on our way to "the best gelato place in the world" (definitely the best gelato I've tasted, I'd agree; they swirled my fabulous mixture of coffe and raspberry).

Belem, where we visited a few monuments, like Pasteis de Belem, the famous pastry shop where they sell 20,000 pastels de nata each day, but also less delicious landmarks, like the Tower of Belem, the Discoveries Mark, and the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos.

 

The last picture I have is this one, of this silly Barcelona-sized building in the middle of Lisbon. Rachel wrote that the difference between the two cities is that Barcelona has low self-esteem and tries to overcompensate, whereas Lisbon's so self-assured that it can afford to be laid-back, unkempt. I like Lisbon a lot.