Monday 23 February 2009

Last, lucky last..... lovely Lisbon

The holiday is now fading into oblivion and I have to get this finished before I head off on my next adventure which is to Australia in just a couple of days.

We have never been to Portugal and I have to admit I really thought it would be not much of much at all. Well I was in for a delightful surprise. I am not bilingual and I find languages difficult when travelling. Although I know a bit of French I get lost in conversation almost immediately...I am happy to read a few brochures and attempt a translation and I find I am really pretty good at it - my French vocab is quite broad, as long as I am reading it. I have no facility for language recall to construct sentences. My mind is not as quick when trying to interpret a conversation and sometimes the accents just stump me. So travelling in many places in Europe including Italy, France and Spain I have found myself struggling with conversation and very thankful when someone turns up who can either understand my very elementary attempts at their language or, better still, just speaks English. Please don't think I believe everyone should speak English, I find languages fascinating and just wonderful to listen to people chattering away in what to me is unintelligible nonsense. I am so envious of people who have learned a couple of languages when they were young and now have the facility to pick up, think in and speak another language.


So why am I going on about language! Well in Portugal (and Lisbon in particular) the locals seem to be very well versed in English with most speaking and understanding a few words and everyone we met very keen to have a go and try to communicate with us. Waiters, taxi, bus, tram and train drivers, hotel staff, museum staff, and just people in the streets were really happy to answer our questions and to try and speak to us in our language. I have to say it just made travelling so much nicer for us and also a lot easier. People in Portugal were very friendly and accommodating.


Lisbon is a gorgeous old city with many new parts that have developed over the years. The centre of the town has some fabulous attractions which can all be seen on a few trips with the city's sightseeing tours. There are three ways of travelling around and doing the sightseeing tours. You can hop a tram which will wind it's way through streets that a bus would have huge difficulty negotiating. A good walking tour would be possible in slightly more clement weather than we had. And there is a BIG RED BUS! The red bus does 2 or 3 different tours, the tram does a couple around the city and you could walk for miles on a nice day, especially along the river. The little streets and alleyways of the older part of the town, particularly down near the Tegus River are still as they were many years ago with their tiled facades and picture windows with flowerpots. There are enough churches to keep the avid church goer in a fresh place of worship every Sunday of the year! I have collaged some photos from Lisbon but our stay was too short and the weather too bad to do Lisbon justice.


So what did we do? Well we spent a lot of time on the sightseeing tours because you could see from the bus/tram and not be too exposed to the weather. We got wet walking the streets of the old part of the town and we visited the World Expo site. We also went to Fado Club to hear some delightful music. We bought a tricky little cap in a shopping centre to keep the rain off my glasses, and one for Brian Minns (our housesitter) to keep him warm in Scotland! And when it was just too wet to do anything the Australian Open was being broadcast on the telly so we just put our feet up and watched the tennis.



And we found the heart and soul of Portugal - well I think it is anyway - it is called Fado music. Please, if you have any soul or if you like music in any of it's forms, acquaint yourself with Fado. Where the Spanish have flamenco with it's gorgeous dancing and guitars, the Portguese have this divine lilting music, often accompanied by solo or duet in voice, and a few guitars as well. I immediately fell in love with it and found I could just sit mesmerised by it for hours.

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