Boas Fiestas!!

That’s ‘Happy Holidays’ in Portuguese!

This past Monday and Tuesday were national holidays in Spain, so Angel’s family and I headed off to Lisboa for the break. We stayed in a little campsite just outside of the city- his parents in a camper-van and us in a little cabin (bungalow) that was just cute as the dickens.
We did a lot of sight-seeing (Belem, the Monasterio de los Jerónimos (pictured), Castillo de San Jorge, the Cathedral, etc) some shopping and ate some amazing Portuguese meals. (The meat was fantastic, but my favorite edible experience was the traditional tarta almendoa, (almond pastry, kind of like a pie).




Several other of my favorite experiences were:

1. Riding on the famous trolleys (tranvias). The city is Enormous!! Surprisingly so. And it is stretched over 7 giant hills, as well as a ton of smaller ones. We mostly stayed in Barrio Alto and Chiado (both in the city center) but dipped into the oldest area by the castle and cathedral a bit as well. That is where we rode the trolley (number 12) up and down some very exciting hills.

2. The famous Fabrica dos Chapéus, a specialty milliner where only a few customers are allowed to enter at a time, but each is paid a lot of attention, no matter how many times you try on every single hat in the store. We all ended up buying at least one (except Angel) and wore them for the rest of the day.

3. The Instituto do Vinho do Porto (the Portuguese “Port” wines). We did a tasting in this beautifully decorated old building. We tried several different types of Portos, my favorite being the Dow’s late bottled vintage 2004, as well as a few Portuguese cheeses. The thing about port wines is that they are all very very sweet and must be sipped slowly, but they really bring out some amazing tastes in the cheeses. (I recommend a cheese called évora, named after the town it is made in.)

4. Fado. This is the traditional song-style of Portugal, a bit like flamenco, but more melancholy. We went to the oldest Fado house in the city, Parreirinha de Alfama, a small cave-like room with a kitchen and about 12 tables. We ate fantastic food, and every few minutes or so someone would come out and sing, accompanied by a traditional guitar and a Portuguese guitar. A woman named Argentina Santos owns the place; She is an older woman who has been one of the most famous Fado singers for decades. She sang towards the end of the night and it was unbelievable what all she could do with her voice. (Watch her here.)

5. The Christmas Decorations!!!! This was hands-down my favorite part of the trip. Lisboa is a city that holds nothing back in the way of festivities: Every single street in the center was bedecked with giant beautiful designs of light- each different! Every time we turned a corner I couldn’t help but squeal with delight. There were also more than a few giant lit-up Christmas trees to be found around the city, as well as hundreds of homes with “Papa Noels” (Santa Clauses) climbing into windows or scaling down the sides of the buildings. We even saw one Santa driving a trolley!

It is also worth noting that many of the buildings themselves were tiled in beautiful, colorful, hand-painted and detailed designs.

SABES QUE…
There was an enormous and devastating earthquake that occurred in Lisboa in 1755, destroying almost all of the architecture (what wasn’t destroyed by the earthquake itself was ravaged by the consequential fires that lasted for days). This resulted in the Portuguese being some of the first to make giant steps in earthquake research and safer reconstruction.