jetjunkies

March 1, 2025

Pete and I walked through the quiet morning streets to the bus station. Again no train, and no flights that day to Lisbon. One and one half hours to Seville, a cab ride to another bus station and six and one half hour’s to Lisbon. The seats were very narrow and all seemed to have a sunken seat cushion. We were fortunate that we each had two seats to ourselves.

We were exhausted by the time we arrived at our B&B. We had self check-in due to the late hour. A code into the building and another code into the 4th floor B&B and our room. Unfortunately the owner had programmed our room’s keypad incorrectly, so we waited in the common area until he could fix it remotely. After dropping off our luggage and recuperating a bit we walked around the corner and had a so-so Japanese dinner, went back to our room and collapsed until the next morning.

March 2, 2025

I was eager to go to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian located near our lodgings in a beautiful park, and in a Brutalist building.

Most of the exhibits were very contemporary with many video performance art installations. A couple of my favorites were a video installation about being black in Lisbon “you are never just a person, you are always black” and a video about the underground during the Franco era, smuggling people out of Spain. The museum did have more traditional 20th century paintings. They had a unique open storage space where you could see the collection on rolling walls and an open display. The museum has over 12,000 artworks that spend more time in storage than on display. Open storage allows those works to be displayed on a rotating basis.

There are laminated pages with the name of the artist, painting and date.

We took the Metro down toward the historic area and found the most fantastic Indian restaurant, some of the best Indian food ever. As you may have noticed we haven’t been eating the local Portuguese food. After two months of travel we are hungry for food of home.

March 3, 2025

Lisbon is known for it’s hand painted tiles that decorate the exterior and interior walls of historic buildings. In 1755 Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula and Northwestern Africa experienced an approximately 7.7 magnitude earthquake with the subsequent fires and tsunami destroying much of the city. Most buildings and decorative tiles are from the reconstruction.

The Portuguese are somewhat sensitive about Spanish being spoken to them, even though many words are the same in both languages. From Wikipedia, “The Portuguese who first achieved independence and national unity and then established a far flung colonial empire only to lose out later, in large part to Spain, resulting in a prolonged feeling towards its neighbor as an upstart and arrogant Big Brother.” So, no love lost there, plus Madrid’s past expansionist dreams haven’t help foster warm feelings. There is a long, though spotty historical record of Portugal being supportive of the Jewish people. Before WWII a fairly minor Portuguese consulate, Sousa Mendes saved 30,000 people, including 10,000 Jewish people fleeing German held France through Spain. He provided false documents and personally vouched for people at the border with Spain. At the time Portugal’s dictator, Antonio Salazar was remaining neutral and signed a neutrality pact with Franco to hold off the Germans. Mendes was of course caught out eventually and relieved of his position, but before punishment could be meted out, according to Wikipedia, Life magazine featured a headline story on 29 July 1940 calling Salazar “The greatest Portuguese since Henry the Navigator!” The naïve Life reporters could not accept the story that a minor Portuguese consular official had acted on his own conscience. Hence the big cover up with Mendes being accused of professional incapacity and Lisbon, Portugal becoming the main embarkation point for refugees escaping to the new world.

March 4, 2025

A rainy day in Lisbon, so we rode the Hop on/Hop off down to the Praça do Comércio facing the harbor, one of the largest Plazas in Portugal.

After getting very wet waiting, waiting, waiting for the next bus we arrived back at our B&B to start packing up.

It has been an amazing trip with lots of adventures and memories made. Traveling with carry-on has worked well, but I have to say that I’m sick of wearing the same clothes over and over. There is a temptation to burn them, but I know that won’t happen. After hanging in the closet for a few months they will look more appealing.

Thanks for coming along on the journey!