Lisbon Part 2

We got a good night’s sleep last night and enjoyed breakfast at the very modern coffee shop Copenhagen, at the end of our street.  They had unusual breakfast items for Portugal like a soft boiled egg and cold oatmeal with chia seeds, granola and fruit. Usually the options are chocolate or plain croissants, cream filled pastries, or plain rolls.  I don’t think they had any workers or clients from Portugal there.  We could easily fix breakfast at our apartment, but since we leave tomorrow it didn’t seem worth getting the fixings when there were so many options nearby.

This morning we decided to explore the ancient Moorish neighborhood of Alfama and the San Jorge castle.  We took the 1930s era tram across town, but it was very crowded and slow.  I think it was just a morning traffic jam problem.  It did save us a lot of hills though.  The castle has beautiful views over the city as one might expect of a castle whose main purpose was defense.  Parts were built in the 1100s over Bronze Age settlements.  It would be fascinating to see a time lapse film of the development of a hilly city like Lisbon from say 500 BC to the present.   The Alfama neighborhood has narrow streets and lots of passages of stairways.  It is pretty touristy though with a gift shop around most corners.  We walked around for a while and generally headed downhill to the Baixa (low) neighborhood.  This neighborhood has lots of pedestrian streets filled with shops and restaurants with outdoor seating.  The pedestrian streets go all the way down to the Tejo River, the original grand entrance to Lisbon.  Now the biggest ships you see are just upriver at the cruise ship docks. The working port area looks like it may be downriver a little ways.

The old defensive walls of the city passed through here

More recent additions to Castelo Sao Jorge

The former moat?

Sylvan below the flag of Portugal

We had lunch at Noso Italia near the waterfront, outdoors.  We shared a pizza that was pretty good, and the salads and desserts that were passing our table looked great.  As it was very warm out I did get a scoop of passionfruit sorbet for dessert.  We caught the metro back to Rato station so we could judge whether we wanted to haul our bags back to the station by foot or taxi tomorrow morning.

Jake cooling his toes in the Tejo River

I could definitely see staying in Lisbon a few more days.  There are lots of other museums that sound interesting – an oceanarium, tile museum, the old water pumping station, car museum, and another botanic garden.  And there is the historic city of Sintra, a 45 minute train ride from Lisbon.    We can only do so many museums a day though and Jake especially is not into overdoing tourism.  Porto could have used another day or two also.  And then there’s the rest of Portugal!  I’d like to visit some cities that were not quite so overrun with tourists.

While on this trip I’ve been reading Thoreau’s Cape Cod for the October book club meeting.  This book was first published in 1865. Reading the book has made me think about how places develop.  I’ve never been to Cape Cod, but looking at a Google Earth map many of the wild areas Thoreau walked through are now extensive housing developments.  There were before European settlers, Indian communities on Cape Cod and Thoreau describes finding arrowheads.  I imagine they were much like the communities around the Chesapeake Bay.  In Portugal there were references to the Bronze Age settlements (2500 -800 BC).  Portugal is more or less on the same latitude as Cape Cod and so you can imagine a timeline comparing the development of the two regions facing each other across the Atlantic.

I find interesting Thoreau’s statement, “We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always”.  I do have this romantic sense when gazing out across the ocean, but we know so much more now about the ocean than 100 years ago.  Now we know that the ocean has changed because of people.  It has acidified absorbing our carbon dioxide causing bleaching of coral reefs and the thinning of oyster shells.  Fragments of plastic form islands on the ocean and microscopic fragments mix in the waves becoming an unnatural but now perhaps unseparable component.  Thoreau does mention the depletion of fishing stocks even as he describes the deliberate beaching and killing of hundreds of “blackfish” for their blubber, a practice now outlawed in most of the world.  The ocean hides its changes from us under the waves, but advances in technology and science let us see what our eyes cannot.