Study Abroad 2005...

On Monday we drove up the coast from Lagos north towards Lisbon, or Lisboa as it is called here. The drive up let us pass through the all types of terrain, for example. Imagine that you are heading out towards Bodega Bay and winding you way through the hills, curves, sand and rocks that punctuate the coastline. Then all of a sudden the rocks turn into the "tundra" setting and some trees start to show up. Next, you look out the window and now you are basically heading south on the 5 towards San Luis Obispo past the huge wind turbines on the hills. Then the winding road pops you into a little town, much like the the one just before Doran beach where Alfred Hitchcock filmed the birds. Upon exiting the town (where you will see a white sign with black letters with the name of the town in it and a huge red slash through it denoting you are now leaving the town), you get back on the roads and wind through some more hills with the beach and cliffs on one side and the hills with really nice houses on the other (aka PCH in Malibu) and before you know it, actually about 297km later, you are crossing one of the most beautiful suspension bridges and battling traffic down the main drag in Lisboa, Portugal, the country´s capital.

Most of our sightseeing was done from the car while trying to find the hostels in the guidebook. We passed by no less than 10 different statues of all the Portugese explorers and their respective plazas and parks before parking under the Plaza de Don Pedro(I or II) and booking a room at one of the (slightly shady, but pretty standard) cheap, big city hostels.

Because we had to leave early the next day we used the rest of the afternoon to walk around and made it to the Castelo do Sao Jorge (The Castle of Saint George) where we got to walk around inside, and up around the edge of the castle and in the towers. The views of Lisbon from the castle were amazing, as are the pictures that my semi-functioning camera allowed me to take. The experience in the castle was made complete by the guitarrist playing in the courtyard providing a kind of antique and relaxing Portugese soundtrack to the visit.

We headed back towards our hostel passing by some plazas and statues along the waterfront of the Tejo River and back up another hill to try to figure out what the gothic arches above the buildings were. They turned out to be the remnants of a destroyed roof of the cathedral the now houses the Architecture Museum of Lisboa, but we were too late and didnt get a chance to go inside.

Porto, the famous wine of Portugal and Spain seemed to be calling our name as we walked by a bodega (wine shop) with a free tasting sign in front. Not knowing much about wine as is, Porto was a much bigger mystery. We sampled a White, Ruby, Tawny, Vintage 2000, and a more expensive 1998 Vintage porto (in that order).

PORTO: the deal with porto is that it is a sweet wine (used as an aperative if white and a dessert wine as a red) and is between 19-22% alcohol, made that way by the combination of brandy with the special grapes growm all over, but most famously in the northeastern part of Portugal. The white is the only one served cold, and the others are served at room temperature. The white, ruby, and tawny are all ready to drink when shipped to the stores. They have matured first in oak oak barrels (of varying size) and then in the bottle ranging from 2-5 years depending on the type of wines. Whites usually the least, Tawny the most of the three. The dates are not printed on these bottles because the wines are usually a combination of years all put together and therefore not dated. The vintage wines are different in that they are from only one year, and age most of thier life in the bottle. There you could buy 10, 20, and 40 year vintages (for a pretty penny). The longer you wait the more brown the wine becomes, and the better it tastes. The 2000 Vintage we tried was the better of the two, and once opened has to be finished in about 2 weeks, while the 1998 vintage, of higher quality had to be finished within 2 days of opening the bottle. The experience was very educational and surprisingly yummy. I, not being one for red wines, enjoyed them all and,lucky for all of you, I bought a bottle of the 2000 Vintage to bring back...so its Porto tasting for all!!

After the cultural immersion (aka wine tasting) we stopped at the grocery store and tried to understand portugese (haha). Portugese sounds like Spanish words mingled with Russian ones, spoken with a French accent. They can pretty mucn understand anything you say in Spanish, but try to understand them and you walk away feeling pretty dumb. Hunger soon set in so we set off, after getting dolled up for our last night in Portugal, and headed off to find some traditional Portugese intertainment/food.

Walking down from the Castle along the windy cobblestone streets of the Alfama area, we had passed some restaurants which advertised Fado performances that night. Fado is a typical Portugese style of singing, usually to a guitar or two. The music is very somber (def not cheesy pop song somber) but kind sorrowful and very passionate, at least for the singer. We enjoyed our dinner, sorry no linguisa (typical Portugese sausage) to the beautiful sounds (and untranslatable lyrics...sorry ill work on Portugese next) of the music in a restaurant of 6 (very intimate) tables, in what appeared to be a bathroom. It was about that big with floor to ceiling tiles and everything. Needless to say it was memorable.

Another successful trip through another country on my list. I definitely did not get to see enough of Lisboa and could really spend another weekend seeing the sights, and probably another shopping at the amazing stores and eating yummy food, but I guess that will have to wait.