Lisbon, Portugal

Things of note for travel day: This was my first look into Brett as a traveler, an aimless drifter, an airport dweller. Turns out he’s just as delightful in the confines of those numbered terminals as he is in the warm walls of our cozy cottage except that he likes to be in charge of keeping the passports and tickets and I also like to be in charge of keeping the passports and tickets so I had to surrender my identification to a fella that loses his glasses on a daily basis. This carried on until he unknowingly dropped my passport in an empty gangway and then I couldn’t hold back anymore and I became the holder of the documents. In other airport news, anytime I left to use the bathroom, I’d come back to him and he’d ask loudly how it went in there. When he was in line with everyone waiting to board the plane, I came back from a quick pre-flight tinkle and his voice boomed, “Was it diarrhea?” I’d shush him and nearby men folk would chuckle. For a moment I wondered if I had actually married Chris Union. 

The flight went just fine and Brett once woke up out of the blue and said, “Everyone will get a chance to smell it!”

We landed in Lisbon at 8am and took an overpriced taxi to our hostel. Initially I objected to staying in a hostel on our honeymoon. If ever there were an occasion to fork over the cash for an exciting hotel, a honeymoon would be it. Brett had stayed at this hostel years ago during a brief visit to Lisbon and he promised I’d be happy about it. I fought this surprisingly hard for a tightwad girl that walks around with holes in my shoes. You’d have thought I’d love the savings. With the promise that this would be the only hostel on our trip, I conceded, and we climbed the narrow staircase to the main floor of the building. 

“Hello.” Brett said at the top of the stairs. Brett was in front of me and I couldn’t see who he was talking to. I heard a man’s voice respond happily and then there was silence. I craned my neck around Brett to see what was going on. The man was looking at Brett with a strange expression on his face. Was it distrust? Confusion? Are they having a silent dude-fude with their eyes? I was just about to shove Brett to the side and make things happen when the man said, “You’ve been here before.”

“That’s right.” Brett said. “I stayed here about eight years ago.”

Juan’s eyes lit up. “I remember you. No, I know you… who could forget a man named Eisenhauer?” and he yanked Brett in for a hug.

Juan couldn’t believe Brett had come back for another stay. You could tell he was honored by this notion; proud of his hostel and excited to have “friends” eager to come back. When he found out I was Brett’s brand new wife and this was our honeymoon, you’d have thought Juan was the one wearing the pretty golden rings. He hugged us and stuffed our bags in the corner and immediately fixed us some coffee. We had a long, morning chat together. Brett and Juan caught up while other hostel dwellers scuffled in and out of the common room with their breakfasts and plans for the day. Juan put us in a private room on the very tippy top of the hostel. We had a tiny roof balcony that looked down over the main street and out at the Atlantic Ocean.

“Fine. You were right about the hostel.”

Our time in Lisbon is made up of many efforts to get lost and find pretty buildings, as well as a continuous search for the most authentic food we could find. Juan was helpful with our food search, sending us to places so “local” that we wound up crashing business lunches and could only close our eyes and point when the waiters came up with their note pads. We never knew what we were ordering but it always worked out to be delicious.

Our first day in Lisbon was cold and rainy so mixed with the sleep deprivation one experiences on an international flight, it was a struggle not to stay in the hostel and sleep. We had a morning nap and an evening nap but Brett wouldn’t let me laze. We had plans that evening and he knew I’d never make it if I laid down. We wandered around in the rain and about 6:00pm we found Fabrica Café, a great little coffee shop that we visited every day. We were regulars by the end of our trip and the staff could predict our order. I reckon that’s a little embarrassing. So we had some pre-supper coffee and at 10:00 we headed out for a nighttime walking tour of the Alfama district. One of Brett’s selling points for the hostel was that they always have activities planned. Tours, concerts, BBq’s, even a Thanksgiving dinner; a few American guests cooked a feast for the whole hostel that day. We took a late night tour that stops at a few different pubs and ends with Fado music. On this tour we met Matt and Charlie (from England) who became great trip buddies who we still quote today. We wandered the wet streets, popping in and out of dark little places we’d have never found and we talked about music and politics and Matt made us feel better about what the UK thinks about the American political situation. Our tour guide was a kid our age with gauges in his ears and a heap of tattoos sticking out from under his sleeveless vest and worn brown scarf. He had lots of interesting things to tell us about Portugal and I regretted my immediate judgment of him that placed him in a new category of Portuguese hipsters that I thought would have lots of pride and little knowledge. He was a genuine fella, happy and hopeful that we’d love Lisbon like he does.

We ended our jaunt squashed onto a bench with Matt and Charlie listening to some locals sing their traditional Fado songs. The one rule was to be silent during the singing and everyone took this very seriously. This was a locals pub, no tourists except for the eight of us loitering in the back near the doors, so there was no English speaking or accommodating people that didn’t know the rules. We all sat silently, afraid of being disruptive, and on old man started a song. It was silent. Fado music is slow and sad, they are songs written by the families of the fishermen that would leave for weeks at a time. They are songs of worry and longing. So you sit silently and listen. Maybe you sway here and there, but don’t go looking all happy.

Halfway through the man’s song, the back door swung open and a fat, drunk guy wandered in. He was probably in his sixties and made even more robust by his heavy coat and scarf. He shuffled nosily down the center aisle of the pub, he passed the singer, oozed around a few tables, mumbling to himself, and then plopped down near the bar. He spoke loudly with the people seated nearby, oblivious to the silence decree and glances shot his way by the guitarist. People seemed to know who he was. They’d softly shush him here and there so he’d talk louder out of defiance. Though all of this happened in Portuguese, you could hear him slurring his words and shooting angry comments at us rule followers. Three quarters of the way through the song, the fat man started shouting at the singer.  I initially found this alarming and looked on with intrigue but everyone erupted with laughter, including the singer and the drunk man didn’t like this. Though the song continued, so did his shouting and soon he was bellowing out his own notes. We asked our guide what was going on and he said that the fat man is dissatisfied with the way the songs were being sung. He says he can do better. When the first singing man was done, a beautiful dark-haired woman approached the microphone. The drunk had settled in a chair with a fresh glass of wine. He watched the girl closely. She started her song in a low hum and Fatso wasn’t having it. He stood up and pushed his way to the front, booming loudly the whole time about how this song should begin. He tried to push her away from the microphone and let out his own roaring hums.

While all of this caused me great embarrassment, I couldn’t wait to see a fight break out. This’ll be a great honeymoon tale. I thought to myself. A fat drunk starts a fight at sad-sack bar concert. Brett gets caught in the crosshairs, protecting his new bride of course, and spends the night in a Portuguese jail! I had it all worked out. Instead the crowd was patient. They laughed him off in-between shushings and there was some kind of humorous exchange between him and the bar owner but no one ever shouted at him or asked him to leave. Our guide said that guy lives nearby and does this occasionally. People let him get away with it because they don’t want to embarrass him. “He is our neighbor.” our guide said.

I thought about how this would never fly in America and I wondered who was more correct.

On our second day, we woke up and hightailed it back to Fabrica for coffee. It was such good coffee. On this day we wandered around, getting lost in winding alleyways and peeking our heads into peoples gardens. Lisbon is full of colors. Every building is a notable hue accented with busy tile work in complementary colors. We found Portuguese kitties, orange trees at every turn, and a surprising number of folks offering to sell us cocaine. We politely declined.

We ate lunch on the balcony of the local clown school. It had a wonderful view and a delicious cod-ball appetizer. The food in Portugal consists of seafood and pork, most commonly in a salted and cured form. While it was all very delicious… and salty, after while I started to crave vegetables and they were hard to come by. Brett’s consumption of salted meats began to concern me.

We’d signed up for a cooking class that evening and after some high-energy chats with Juan back at the hostel, we set out for a long hike to the kitchen. We had to walk through what seemed like a sketchy part of town and Brett was torn between being the fearless leader and my trailing security detail. At the kitchen we met Liliana who hugged us hello and shoved wine into our hands in the same motion. Mostly we stood around while Liliana did the cooking but occasionally she’d have us chop or stir. She constantly used Brett to get things off of high shelves and it made her giggle every time. There was a mother-daughter duo in our class with us and Mom had a little crush on Brett. “How tall is he? Is he as sweet as he seems? He’s adorable.” 

Liliana was great fun to talk to. She had lots of fun Portugal information to share and was also surprisingly interested in our lives. She asked lots of questions and laughed a bunch and then scribbled down towns for Brett and I to drive through on our way to Porto. The five of us sat in our aprons at a small rectangular table and ate a big Portuguese meal together, all of us offering our homes to each other for future travels.

We walked home in the rain, slipping and sliding and cackling. The city got so slippery when it rained. People were staggering around everywhere we looked and I lost my breath laughing at others while clinging to Brett and sliding into lamp-posts. It’s a Teflon pan city.

On our way out of town the next day we had to say goodbye to Matt and Charlie and Juan. Juan was obsessed with Brett. We loitered in the lobby with our new friends and Juan scribbled on a roadmap (using endearing hieroglyphics) and gave us some highway tips before finding Brett on Facebook and looking through our wedding pictures. We had to take two Ubers to the rental car place. The first one broke down on a busy street and we had to jump out with our luggage while the driver put on their panic lights and shouted into a phone in Portuguese. The second Uber was driven by a well-dressed older man that refused to follow the GPS and drove us all around town looking for our destination even though it was noted on the screen right in front of his face the whole time. We had to gently encourage him in the right direction and he’d still blow past our turn and then stop and ask pedestrians for directions. It was maddening and finally we asked him to just let us out. He was determined to get us there and once we got out and walked the rest of the way, we saw him driving around still looking for it and then he pointed when he finally found it. We were already there mind you, but he still pointed at it for us. I was happy to be rid of that guy.

I braced myself as Brett started the engine of Martin, our shiny white Mini-Cooper. Brett looked out at the busy highway with a twinkle in his eyes, revving the tiny engine. I gripped the seatbelt across my chest and waited. Brett looked over at me, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gearshift. He’d been waiting for this moment, to be set free in a small, manual car, to be let loose on the Portuguese highway, to incite terror into his new bride. He smiled a devilish smile, shook the hair out of his eyes, and we set off in the rain heading north to Porto.