Beautiful Buildings, Tasty Pastries, and Crashing at the Beach!

BELEM & COSTA CAPARICO, PORTUGAL -- April 28, 2006

After willing myself to wake up this morning, I decided to scrap my original plan to visit Sintra, which I knew would entail a lot of walking, and instead take a more laidback approach to the city. I headed off via the metro for Praca de Figueira, near Praca Dom Pedro where I wandered yesterday. From here, I caught a clunking, ages-old tram car which shuttled me to the Belem district, a 6-km stretch west along the riverbank.

Belem is known as one of the few areas of the city which survived the land-leveling earthquake of 1755. The focal point of Belem is the Mosterio dos Jeronimos, an absolutely stunning white-marble monastery that towers toward the clouds. This is the place from which Vasco da Gama received his send-off when he began his first voyage to what is known today as India. Standing within its tranquil inner chambers, I find myself traveling back centuries, imagining the hum of excitement as shipmen made the final preparations to the vessel that would carry them across the great waters, imagining the regal costumes and ceremony which accompanied that occasion.

I stop at an ages old pasticceria for one of Belem´s most well-known treasures, the pastry which bears its name, Pastel de Belem. After ordering at the counter, the young lady on the other side produces a warm, puffy delight on a white plate, and after checking with me, douses it with cinnamon and powdered sugar, so that I can try it in ¨traditional style.¨ I bite into its custard-filled center. It is absolutely delicious, like a creme-filled, just-out-of-the-oven donut... maybe it´s the atmosphere, but somehow it just tastes better than any donut I remember back home...

Just across the road, adjacent to the edge of the river, stands the impressive Torre de Belem, where you can climb to the top for a birds-eye perspective of the district. It is decorated with sculptures of da Gama's entourage in dynamic proportions. Inlaid in the concrete floor is a map of the world, pinpointing the many voyages of this intrepid explorer and the places he discovered.

Dragging with exhaustion, I opted to take a tram, then ferry, then bus to the nearest beach, Costa Caparica, where I intended to spend the remaining few hours of sunlight relaxing -- and hopefully napping -- with the sound of the waves breaking in the background. Caparica turned out to be a bit more populated than I had expected, with loads of windsurfers donned in wetsuits daytripping from nearby towns to enjoy a day of sand, sun, and fine waves. But the rhythmic rocking of the waves as they crashed into the rocky coast proved to be more than hypnotic, and I soon fell into a delicious sleep, basking in the afternoon light, where I shared beach space with other sunbathers. Waking from my nap, I dabbled into the water, which may as well have been a newly melted ice cube. It was no wonder those surfers, all appearing like skinny blue seals out at sea, were covered from head to toe in their rubbery wetsuits.

Getting back to Lisbon was a bit of an adventure, as my lack of Portuguese made for an interesting game of hide-and-seek with the bus that would take me back to Cacilhas, from where I would ferry again across the river to Lisbon.

Tonight's evening meal was no doubt traditional -- fried, salted cod with egg and roasted potatoes. I had caught a glimpse of the mountains of salted cod so well-known in Lisbon at a supermarket yesterday afternoon. They were literally completely encapsulated with crystal-white salt, the preservative that allowed fishermen to bring in their catch by the hundreds each day and still be good to serve a few days afterward. Aside from a few unsuspecting fish bones, the meal was delicious, albeit incredibly fishy... well, what else should I have expected??

Fred took me to a cafe just down the street, where I met a few close friends of his from his first days in Lisbon. Half the group was sipping a glass of the extremely full-bodied, sweet wine known as port, for which Portugal is so well-known. We finished off the night with a return to Bairro Alto, where we met up with Fred's sister Vanessa, who had also emigrated from Brazil, and a handful of her Portuguese and Italian friends. They took me to a quaint little "authentic" Portuguese bar, down a tiny, out-of-the-way alley in the Bairro.

Between the Portuguese and Italian that were rattling around the long table where we sat, I understood next to nothing. But the atmosphere was friendly, there were enough smiles to go around twice, and then some. The night stretched out into the wee hours of morning. 1:00 AM, the 2:00 AM rolled around, and still the evening was far from over. Over the din of chattering voices, the all-American classic, "Stand By Me" began playing over the speakers. And within seconds, the entire room began belting out the chorus in perfect English. It was one of those unexpected yet memorable moments that will be an anchor for some of my fondest memories in Lisbon -- here I was, with a group of strangers-turned-fast-friends, with a massive language barrier between us, and a catchy American tune from the 80's bridged this gap in a way few things couldn.

Around 3:30 AM, we finally called it a night. As luck would have it, I couldn't fall asleep, and spent the next two hours reading bits about Slovenia from Fred's Lonely Planet collection (I'm not the only one who has a shelf full of travel books!!)

~Melanie