Two Sen-ção-tional Travel Days

Hi everybody, it's your host of season 6 of The Blog, Ian Rosenberg, coming at you from the Lisbon Airport with achy feet, sore hips, a bloody nose, and stories upon stories of adventure!

So I'll start my story Friday morning, skipping the all-exciting train ride and hotel experience in Chicago. Friday morning I woke up and went down to a very mediocre hotel breakfast of hash browns and turkey sausage before heading off to the Consulate General of Spain. See, for those of you who don't know, this place has been the bane of my existence for the last six months. They have constantly contradictory information, don't seem to know what they're doing, and they are stupidly difficult to get in contact with. Meanwhile, they had my passport and would control whether I was able to board my flight to Lisbon that night. So, the embassy, despite opening at 9 am, did not want people to come in to pick up the visa before 9:30. So I got there at 9:20 and sat right outside until it was 9:30. I then walked right in aaaannnnndddd, nobody was there to help anyone. Totally typical. I could see there were people in the back doing paperwork, but nobody had come to the desks to help people. About 20 minutes pass and I finally work up the nerves to ring the "ring for service" bell that they had. Aaannnnndddddd nobody comes. One guy looked up and laughed, and thanked me for having the nerves to finally hit the thing. We got to talking and it turns out he's spending the next several months in Seville as well, leaving next week. So, he may make a reappearance in the blog soon. Anyways, after 50 minutes, someone finally comes and asks us all to give our ID's so we can receive our passports. At this point, my heart was racing, and when mine came back, she opened it up to have a completed visa in it. I was so relieved and decided I'd go explore for the day to celebrate. Now I guess I'll never have to deal with that damned place ever again.

The rest of the morning was spent at Navy Pier, riding the ferris wheel, walking around, and doing the crossword. Thrilling, yeah? I then headed over to lunch at Naf Naf grill and stopped at the Chicago Symphony's gift shop before heading back to the hotel. I ended up getting a book about symphonies and a miniature Brahms statue, while talking with the lady who managed the store about the music she was playing. To get back to the hotel I passed through Millennium Park. You know, went to the bean, sat by the fountain for a bit, and by those weird people brick projection fountains too, though they didn't spew anything. I then just watched some YouTube in the hotel lobby for a few hours before going out to dinner.

I asked my friend Justin, who lives in Chicago, what I should do for dinner. His response was to go to this place called Portillo's, and it did not disappoint. I got exactly what he recommended, which was the beef sandwich with fries and the chocolate cake shake. The beef sandwich was literally just beef on a sandwich, but it tasted pretty good nonetheless. My one critique would be that the bun was too soggy.

Next were the fries, which were crinkle fries and cooked to a very appropriate level of crunchiness. Finally, the chocolate cake shake is literally a cake blended into a chocolate shake, and it is delicious. I could not get close to finishing the enormous shake they gave me, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I did have. The ambiance of the place was typical American, with Chicago sports merchandise all over the walls and cool signs all over. Really what I needed before leaving the US for three months.

I took the L to the airport and checked in and went through security no issues. Pretty uneventful until we get to Lisbon, but I did get lucky with the empty seats. I was in a row of two, and the other seat was empty. The seat behind me was also empty, so not only could I lay back, but I got to spread out. The food was delicious, definitely the best airplane food I've ever had, witnessed by the fact that I've never finished an entire meal on a plane before this flight. So, without further ado,

LISBON (Lisboa!)

Wowie did I have fun. So my flight to Lisbon landed at 12 pm and my flight to Seville leaves at 10:30 pm, so I had the entire day to go around and explore. Now, when I left the airport, I was told I could put my stuff in a locker. I had my hiking bag, which weighed filled to the brim with about 35 pounds of useless garbage. I mean, there was a football, four picture frames, wall decorations, and lots of clothes and toiletries. I also had my viola with me. Unfortunately, all the lockers at the airport were full, so I had to schlep all this around with me the whole day. So, that's the context that my eight-hour-odyssey through Lisbon should be put in...

I got on the metro and decided that I'd go, according to the map, what looked like the center of the city: Martim Moniz, as it was close to where most of the line intersections are. Well, you know what time it is.

Metro Review!

Part 1: The facts

The Lisbon Metro is a system outfitted with a mix of older and newer vehicles. The red line, which services the airport seems to be newer, as it services mostly the outside of the city and its trains are newer, along with the stations being outfitted with more technology. The green, blue, and yellow lines all service downtown.

Each line intersects with each other line exactly once. This makes transfers infrequent, and "big" stations rare, leading to packed trains during rush hours. On my way back to the airport, I got yelled at twice about having such a big bag and inadvertently hitting "pequenos." Meanwhile, I was trying to let more people on the train. This is the only criticism by the way of the people of Lisbon... much nicer than the Parisians, but still occasionally curt when in crowded, public areas.

The lines are named by their colors, but they have been dubbed something else as well. The red line is named for the "east," as it services the east of the city. The blue for a seagull, the yellow for flowers, and the green for a boat.

You can buy a one-day card and its usable on any of the public transit systems in the area, including the metro, bus, and streetcar (more on that later!)

Part 2: The Review

Though once on the metro it is very efficient, and the riding experience is pleasant when the trains aren't totally overcrowded, I found the distance between stations to be significantly inconvenient. In Paris, you can walk around and run into a metro station within five minutes, and today it took me ten minutes to find a metro station I was looking for.

I like this idea of a hybrid color and naming system; it’s easy for tourists to latch onto the colors, while still keeping them associated with something and not just your standard numbered / color / lettered lines like in so many other systems I’ve seen.

So I got off the metro at Martim Moniz expecting to see a bustling crowd of shops restaurants, and, well, whatever else people do in the downtown of a city. But, I had picked the wrong stop to call the “city center.” I, instead, ended up in a poorer neighborhood that was home to many Chinese and interestingly enough, Bengali immigrants. I basically had gotten off the metro and was launched into Chinatown.

Despite the shock of the clash between my expectation and reality of what I was going to see here, a smile still rushed to my face. I felt like I was finally out of the country again, finally traveling and exploring. So I just walk in a direction, whichever seemed most interesting to me. I headed away from Chinatown and more into the Bengali area. I thought about grabbing lunch at one of those Bengali restaurants, but I decided that I was too hot for some hot, spicy food so I kept on walking. I saw soon signs pointing me towards this Castillo de São Jorge. So I kept on walking. It was at this point that I learned just how hilly Lisbon is. If you’re not going downhill, you’re going uphill. And it wasn’t a gentle incline. The first major hill I hit was so steep that there was actually an escalator—yes, and outside, weatherproof escalator—to help those get up it. And again, I’ve got a 35 pound backpack and a viola with me too. I don’t know what got into me today, but the hills didn’t bother me one bit. I was climbing up and down that city like it was an empty field in Kansas. As I neared the tower, I saw this cool restaurant that overlooked the city. I decided to have a seat. I ordered myself an octopus salad and a beer from Mozambique. I feel like it’s not everyday that you can try yourself something like that, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity. The octopus was good, but I started to get bored of the pepper sauce they put on it towards the end. The octopus itself, though, was delicious. I sat there for a while, looking down at the city and formulating my gameplan of places I wanted to see before leaving.

I continued to follow the signs towards the fort and ended up at the top of the city. You had to buy online tickets, but I was having weird network issues, so I had to call it quits after having already bought the ticket, because the text with the ticket wasn’t coming through. As I walked back down, I saw your standard array of people trying to sell you things. What you do learn from them, though, is what people value about the city. And the one thing that came up over and over again, in nearly every painting these people were selling were the streetcars. Again, more on those later, but anyways I wanted a souvenir, so I went ahead and spent my first cash on a little painting.

The next stop on my trip was down to the water. On my way down, though, I got distracted by this gathering at an overlook. Maybe distracted isn’t the right word; I’d say I was completely and utterly charmed. Looking out in one direction was the wonderful view onto the bay that Lisbon is on, with land off in the distance. In front of the vista was a little pavilion for shade, and under it were musicians that were, despite not too great, providing super enjoyable music. Looking down was the classic Lisbon black and white brick paver mosaic, and in the other direction was a building with a porcelain tile mosaic and a line to the steep street with streetcars occasionally passing by. I stayed there for 20 minutes, just listening and looking around. It was amazing.

I continued to walk towards what I thought may be downtown, and I finally found it. First was the waterfront, surrounded by this massive, yellow palace. There's a bridge across the bay that looks like the Golden Gate Bridge, too! I stayed there for a few minutes, and when I saw the Portuguese flags waving in the wind, I remember getting so excited. It reminded me where I was and how cool it was that I was here. How, despite never having been here before, I somehow felt so comfortable and calm.

I explored downtown some more, including an open air market in the main square of the city, and this really cool restaurant on this staircase. I sat down and grabbed myself a mojito and connected to wifi so I could set up my phone service. Once service was restored, I received that text message I needed with the ticket, on which it said that the fort closes at 6:00. It was 5:15. So, I grabbed all my stuff and sprinted over to the fort. I turned what was, according to maps, a 30 minute walk into a 12 minute walk, and remember, this is to the fort at the top of the city. Which means that those hills are not easy...

Turns out the fort doesn't close at 6, so I ran over there for nothing, but I had a great time just exploring and looking down on the city. It kind of reminds me of Tsaravets in Bulgaria, and walking around the actual castle part of the structure was kind of scary, as it involved navigating these tiny pathways with not-too-sturdy hand rails. Anyways, I think the pictures speak better than my descriptions...

Also, forgot to mention, there were peacocks all around the fortress. But they were screaming bloody murder the whole time—it sounded like twenty babies crying at the top of their lungs.

It was at about this point that my phone died, so there aren't any more pictures for the rest of the day :(

I rested at the Castello for a little bit before heading back down the hill to that overlook where I was earlier to try and grab dinner. I wanted to grab dinner over by Martim Moniz and the Bengali area, but I didn't feel like walking all the way. So as I was heading to the Metro, coming down the street was a street car that said it was heading towards Martim Moniz. I excitedly hopped right on! The inside was wooden and antique. It's just one car, and there were many more people in the car than there were seats. The car moved up and down the very hilly and winding streets, and the ride was as rocky as you could imagine it would be. It was a super cool experience, and if in Lisbon again, I would definitely use that as another form of transit when in areas with less metro (like this one).

(A video I got earlier of the streetcar passing where I got on at this point in the day)

The streetcar seemed to take us to what was not Martim Moniz, as everybody was up in arms about how the "terminus" wasn't right. So I walked around and found a place that was unfortunately not a Bengali place, but had very delicious pizza.

After dinner I thought I'd be late to the airport, so I ran around asking people where the nearest metro station is—Martim Moniz—, since I couldn't rely on my phone for navigation. I found it after running up and down more hills, through narrow streets, and alleyways and made my way back to the airport. Turns out all that rush was again for nothing, as I got to the airport still an hour and a half early, and security took no time at all. I was already checked in, obviously, as this was all a layover.

So that's Lisbon! I'll be back with Seville soon, but for now, Até Mais