I just returned last night from my “summer holiday”, if you will call it that, as it already lies within a holiday, in Portugal with Parminder. As is to be expected, the flights were all a bit or a lot late (can there be an excuse for a 2 hour delay on a 40 minute flight?) and it didn’t help that I still had a bit of a bastard behind the eyes from my mystery illness at the beginning.

I’ve never had much dealings with the Portuguese language, apart from reading it on the back of cereal packets during the morning meal and so forth, so while knowing I could read it, I didn’t have much of a clue how it should sound. It sounds like a Ukrainian speaking Spanish badly (at a guess: I don’t know many Spanish-speaking Ukrainians, badly or otherwise), and is surprisingly difficult to emulate. So now you know.

We started out staying at Residêncial Florescente in the Restauradores area of Lisbon, a bit of a touristy place but central enough for getting around. We spent these first few days seeing things that were not too far away, like the Castelo de São Jorge, the Museu National de Arte Antiga, and exploring the streets around Baixa and Chiado. Things to see and do:

• Big photograph of Laika the astronaut-dog’s capsule in space, in the Museu do Chiado, a contemporary art museum which is vacuously empty, probaby because it contains very odd things indeed. Can recommend entering via the door in the garden where the Café is and walking in like you’re meant to be there to avoid being charged. Discovered this last factoid accidentally.
• Eat at Casa do Atlantejo on Rua Portas de Santo Antão and have your salt quota filled, because if you don’t eat meat you will have to eat bacalhau at least once, but perhaps many times, and “salted cod” is precisely as appetising as it sounds. Salted cod aside, the Casa do Atlantejo is a nice building, and both cheaper and better than the outrageously touristy places on the same road.
• Go on a Funicular. Unfortunately the useful one, Santa Justa going up to Chiado, is under some sort of maintenance, so it’ll have to be the Lavra one. This leaves you in a slightly less sophisticated district that doesn’t really contain anything you’re terribly interested in (unless perhaps ypu are writing an article about poverty, or immigration into Portugal) but you do get to walk downhill. Walking downhill, or joy of joys on level ground, is one of the great pleasures of Lisbon. City maps of Lisbon should be topographical, because the single most important factor deciding if you can be bothered to go somewhere is it’s altitude relative to your current position. Beware the hills.
• Buy a Cock of Barcelos souvenir.

After a few days we got the incredibly cheap (€1.55) train from Sete Rios to Sintra, a 40 minute ride unfortunately mainly through urban mess, but to a great destination. There we stayed as the Pensão Residencial Sintra, just a ten-minute, take-your-life-in-your-hands walk down the side of a busy road to the centre of town. The hospitable part of the centre of the town can measure no more than a few hundred metres wide and long, the slab that lies directly in front of the Palácio Nacional, the historic countryside summer retreat of the kings of Portugal.

We spent one day taking a terrifying bus ride up the mountain to the Castelho dos Mouros, the old Moorish castle that sits atop the hill (seen in the small picture above), and climbing uncountably many stairs to the very highest rampart from which you can see as far as you could possibly wnat to. We followed this by carrying on even higher up the mountain to the Palácio da Pena, something to do with Manuel II. It’s like a Disney channel / History channel mashup.

Another day we went to Quinta da Regaleira and Monserrate, two large estates slightly outside the town which have been donated to or bought by the municipality. The first was built for a wealthy Brazillian with very curious tastes. It is a shame that things like that can’t, or aren’t, built anymore. Anyone with enough money doesn’t have enough taste: c.p. MTV Cribs. If I had bags of the stuff, apart from having an outrageously good time with it, I’d have such an estate built. Bring out the gargoyles, I say, no-holds-barred with the filigree.

Later we returned to Lisbon, this time staying at a more usual hotel, the SANA Rex hotel overlooking (though sadly not our room) the Edward VII park. I didn’t know of Lisbon’s unusual topography when I booked it, so was sad to see it was uphill from most interesting places. Luckily the Parque metro station is at approximately the same altitude and just a walk through the park away.

On this new visit to Lisbon we went to the Gulbenkian, a museum of the onetime private collection of Calouste Gulbenkian. An odd collection in some sense because he was not interested in making sets or series of objects, just getting the best of each class. What to try to sneak out: Lalique. Can’t get enough. It’s a shame the modern stuff is so bland in comparison. Have I just said something a lot more general than I intended?

We also went to see the area of Belém, a bit further away from where we had been so far. Visitors beware the train system: it doesn’t always stop at Bélem, which lead to us hurtling past it a few times. The thing to see here of course is the Tower of Bélem, not very far out to sea these days due to land reclaimation, but still curious. Nearby they were setting the Red Bull jump-off-a-runway-dressed-as-something-daft competition, but that was to be the following day and I wasn’t terribly interested in it.

Having a closer look around Chiado we came across a shop selling old prints, books and other collectibles, which is really a place you have to go with a lot of time to spare, because each item is a treasure. One day maybe I’ll return and give it it’s due consideration.