A Visit to Lisbon

As our regular readers know, we can only handle about five weeks of Spanish class in a row before we need a mental break. Amazingly, our first five weeks of class in 2018 were up the Friday before last (February 9) and we took off for a week in Portugal (Lisbon and Porto).

Heading to Portugal, we admit that we knew little of its history other than what we studied in connection with the explorers -- who doesn't remember Vasco de Gama? It turns out that Portuguese history is very similar to Spain's, including rule by the Moors, the expulsion/forced conversion of Jews in the late 15th century and a less heralded Inquisition. In the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese generally sailed east while the Spaniards sailed west. (They did head far enough east to "claim" Brazil for Portugal.) Portugal overthrew its monarchy in 1910 and was a republic (technically 2 republics) until the Salazar dictatorship (1933-1974). In the current Third Republic, Portugal has seen many changes of governments and has generally remained poorer than its larger neighbor.

Portugal is a small country (about 10 million total population) with about a third of its population living in and around Lisbon. Since we are now used to our little town of San Sebastian, Lisbon seemed like a big city to us.

Because of its many hills, Lisbon is known as the "San Francisco of Europe" and we can vouch for that! (It also has old-style trolley cars.) We walked many hilly neighborhoods exploring the sites and city. One of our favorite sites was the Sao Jorge Castle. Built high atop a hill (of course) overlooking the city and Tagus river, archaeologists believe that the site was inhabited as early as the 6th century BCE and that the (unnamed) group that lived there traded with the Phoenicians. The current castle was built primarily by the Moors although there has likely been a fortification in that location since the Roman period. The views were great.

 A lot of the walls of the castle are still standing and it was fun to walk on them - they had a very Game of Thrones feel. And of course, a castle needs its banner.

This being Europe, of course we went to see churches and monuments. There had to be at least one grand plaza with an impressive gate entrance and large statue:

There were also smaller sites including a defensive fortress (the Belem Tower) that is now into the river:

And, a monument to the Age of Exploration right at the river's edge:

The food in Lisbon was very good and very reasonably priced, although not super-cheap compared to San Sebastian. We had a wonderful meal at a restaurant near our hotel and ate twice at one of the best pizza places in the city. (We feel a bit deprived because there does not appear to be really good pizza in San Sebastian, so we had to go back a second time). But, of course, our favorite food experience in Lisbon was at a wine store called Lisbon Winery. We went for a late-afternoon snack of local cheeses and charcuterie and had the owner of the store all to ourselves as she introduced us to some wonderful and interesting Portuguese wines. It was fabulous!

All in all, we liked, but did not love Lisbon. Maybe it was just too big, maybe it was that it seemed to lack the kind of a center that most Spanish cities have or maybe we were just tired of climbing hills. But, we would definitely return for more pizza and a continuation of our education in Portuguese wine.