MICHELE'S MUSINGS

Portugal...I will try and recapture Portugal in my mind. It will help get my thoughts away from the fact that it´s 3am in Salamanca Spain and I'm sitting on a cold wire bench in the train station waiting for morning. OK, I did a really dumb thing....I arrived in Lisbon Portugal with 2 new pairs of shoes (a no no). I proceeded to "disable" myself for a week with foot pain, hobbling around behind Drew up and down the narrow winding cobbled streets. Lisbon is a city with a lot of character and contrasts...fado singers crooning sad songs, skin heads creatively pierced and preened, women selling roasted chestnuts with blackened hands from the charcoal, old men wearing Jeff hats gossiping on park benches or in the plaza by the fountain, old women wearing black head to toe- in mourning for life, young dark haired girls wearing tight and dark clothes...the only color here comes from the sky and the tile covered buildings it seems. We spent our days exploring the remains of a Roman castle Sao Jorge overlooking the city (just the shell remains), strolling and losing ourselves in Bairro Alto, Chiado, and Alfomro districts...a winding maze of streets. We explored old cemeteries with family tombs like mini houses, hidden parks and pastelerias with a sinful variety of to-die-for pastries. We visited the Jeronimos monastery, one of the few buildings to survive the 1755 earthquake which killed 40,000 of Lisbon's 270,000 residents at that time. Prior to the earthquake it was a really grand city, grown rich from its colonies. Now the city seems to be undergoing a new renniassance...there is so much construction going on, much done very labor intensively by hand, one bucket of cement at a time. Outside of Lisbon we Visited towns such as Sintra, with its amazing Pena palace built in 1840, modern by European standards. The palace is preserved as it was when the royal family fled Portugal in the 1910 revolution. It's amazing to look at the elaborate furniture, guilded and painted everything (walls, furniture), and imagine the wealth amassed by the monarchy. They paid the price...looking at the family trees you see assassinations in generation after generation. We climbed the ruins of a 1000 year old Moorish castle, and waited for a dragon to appear from the lush mossy forested surroundings...black cats were everywhere. Rather than talk about all the palaces , museums, castles, and cathedrals, it will suffice to day that we've seen a lot of them!!! We learned early on that you can save 20% on room rates by getting a room with bathroom in the hall. All the rooms have a sink and bidet anyway. We managed to get where we wanted, usually by train, sometimes by bus, and twice we got stuck and had to take a taxi. Today we got stuck...the Duoro river (Duero river in Spain) is a prime wine growing region known for its picturesque valley with it's whitewashed villages and impressive stone walled terraces. We took a long train trip to the end of the train line, spitting distance to the Spanish border. The train took us from Porto in the west (home of Port wine), all the way to Pocinho in the east. At the end of the line we discovered there was no food, no bus or train, no anything...except a taxi. It was very frustrating to be 10 miles from the Spanish border yet have no way to get across. We ended up forking out 50 bucks to the taxi driver for a 56 km ride. Our only other option was 15 hours of zigging, then zagging our way across spain to the border. Our Portuguese driver gave us a little extra tour for our money, of course we spoke no Portuguese so he just compensated by speaking really loudly! We had a different taste of the countryside by car. We saw lots of burros pulling carts, being ridden, or standing on the roadside looking cute. We saw many far away castles, and empty historic villages nearly void of tourists....renting a car would be a good way to explore Portugal.. We spent 9000 escudos on the taxi, had 1000 left--so we bought ice cream, cookies, kleenix, and q-tips in an effort to blow our wad....we gave the 20 remaining escudos to a beggar as we walked across the border into Spain .

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