Jet lag

It is now 9:30 pm in Lisbon and I feel pretty awake. I didn’t sleep much on the overnight flight to Heathrow but I got a couple light naps in on the flight from Heathrow to Lisbon. 

As a strong believer in the convenience of public transportation, I took the metro from the Lisbon airport to downtown.  I could see rush hour traffic jams on the highway as the plane landed too.  That all went pretty smoothly.  I got a rechargeable metro card with 24 hours worth of service on it from an actual person (the automated kiosks wouldn’t give more than 10 euros in change and all I had was 2 50 euro notes from the ATM in the airport). I thought it was a long line, but it turned out the line was for the automated kiosks, half of which were out of service or something.  They have metro maps above the doors in the train, clear directions in the airport to get to the train, and the waits were very short. I changed from the vermelho (red) line to the azul  (blue) line to get to my stop. 

Getting from my metro stop to the hotel proved to be more difficult.  I knew the hotel was on a little side street near the Teatro Nacional.  I asked at a news kiosk for the street and the guy pointed me in what turned out to be the wrong direction.  In a few blocks when I reached the previous metro station I realized that and walked back.  I then asked what turned out to be a Dutch tourist.  I asked in Portuguese, she said English or Dutch please, but no, she did not know where the national theatre was.  I walked back to the original metro station and found the National Theatre, but still no street.  I asked 3 young policemen.  They had to look the street up on their phones.  Oh, only 3 minutes walk around the other side of the church.  No Rua Jardim de Regedores.  I ask a bellman at a hotel – he doesn’t know but a passerby answers and gives fairly detailed directions back to where I thought the street should be.  I head back, and sure enough!!!!  I find it!!  Hallelujah!  I am tired and sweaty by now.

I shower, change into clean clothes and head out to the street for dinner.  The hotel is on a pedestrian street with 5 or 6 restaurants. I ask the front desk clerk which one he recommends.  Well, they are really all the same he says.  So I get a table outside at the one next to the restaurant, Solar de Bacalao. I’m not sure how this translates, maybe Codfish sun?, Sun of the cod?  Anyway, the streetside table was perfect for people watching and I enjoyed a small bottle of a red wine blend from the Alentejo region while munching on olives, bread, grilled squid rings, and smashed potatos, carrots and parsley in a butter sauce.  The enlarged menu I had a view of is translated into the major European languages, so I could see who was reading which language.  The head waiter seemed to be conversant in all the major languages and attempted to deliver his invite to dine in the appropriate language.  He misread the three Argentine ladies, thinking they were Italian.  I got the English menu but requested to be spoken to in Portuguese so I could practice, which they were happy to do. (I was going to add a photo here, but the internet is too slow!).

An American couple in front of me had must have ordered the seafood special for two and were about done with a huge plate of crustaceans when I sat down.  The French couple behind me were very upset about slow service with perhaps the same seafood special.  The American couple started in on their second bottle of wine with the second course, so they were fine.  Chill out frenchies!  I thought you were the slow food people!  Come to think of it, maybe they weren’t French because the waiter was speaking English.  They had European accents of some sort though.  Flemish maybe? The Americans moved on to the fish and lobster (?) course while I munched on my squid rings.  The passerbys were very international, although mostly European.  Plenty of tourists speaking Portuguese too.

So now here it is, after 10 pm.  Am I not tired just because of the food?  Or because it is only 5 pm in Maryland?  Would it be better to watch tv or to read more of Thoreau’s “Cape Cod”, the next book club book, to induce sleep?  Don’t answer that!