Of course our last night in Barcelona ended around 5AM and we had to wake up at 8AM for a flight to Lisbon, or Lisboa as they say in Portugal. Our flight was scheduled to come in at noon, which gave us a lot of time to watch the 3PM football (yes, football!) match between Portugal (Christiano Ronaldo... swoooon) and Cote d'Ivoire... or so we thought. But more about that later...Our contact for the apartment was prompt, but a little too speedy. He also mentioned that our water would be out of commission until 3PM, but you never know. "With the Brazilian guy" you never know, but we were given an emergency number to call Miguel, if there were any issues. Anyway, the apartment is really cute, basic and in a quiet neighborhood. There are some amazing buildings here and some even worth listing on Sotheby's. But who will buy them?! We are right above the Bairro Alto in Principe Real, and just a nice walk away from Rossio Placa, which is our favorite local landmark.
So we had a nice lunch in the Lisbon version of Restaurant Row. T had a chicken stew of some sort and I had some roast pork chops, but only the dark meat! My favorite type of meat... dark! We sat with a pair of sisters originally from Mozambique and a friend from Brazil. We asked where we could watch the game and they recommended the Docas, where there were many higher end bars on the water. I guess Docas means docks, so you can imagine how great it could be. They also said the fare on the taxi would be around 7 euro, so we got on a taxi and said "Docas, por favor!" Well there was some miscommunication or SOMETHING because T&I ended up at a train stop called SANTOS, where the driver told us to go to a bridge and we will find the Docas. Oh, this was all in Portuguese, so we have no idea what he actually said. Not knowing ANYTHING about the area, we trusted him, but also thought it was suspicious that our fare was only $3.50. So, we started walking and figured the overpass to get on the other side of the tracks was our "bridge." We kept walking along the pier to find a lot of empty buildings and construction. The sun was just shining so bright and there were no clouds in the sky, so it was pretty warm for us, too. T decided to approach a construction worker about where the docas is, they said just keep going. There was a bridge about 2 miles away, which looked like the Golden Gate Bridge in SF, and they kept telling us to head towards there, where we'd see a white building, again in Portuguese, so we have no real idea. We walked a few more meters (since we're in Europe) and found huge cargo and branded freight and thought "this cannot be right." Pushing forward, we continued walking where we found some business people watching the match stoicly in office lobbies with a big screen. Finally, an English speaking guy around our age emerged and helped us truly understand where the Docas was, clearly below the bridge that was 2 miles away (or about 3.2 km in Euro-speak) from where we started walking. We still have no idea why the taxi driver dropped us off so soon! So we got there, and people were just as stoic at the bars as they were at the offices, of course except for the teenagers that were sitting near us. At least they added some life to the crowd. It was a pretty uneventful match, but it was still cool to root for Portugal among the Portuguese in Portugal.
After the game, we went back to our neighborhood where we watched the Brazil match at a bar called Portas Largas in the Bairro Alto. It definitely had a Brazilian mood, so people were being rowdy (look at me stereotyping like a local!). It was a much more entertaining match anyway. We continued our night at a bar I can't remember, but the guy who was trying to get the crowd going was named Christian. Half-serbian/half-german and able to speak in about 7 languages, he epitomized super European male. Oh, and he was about 7 feet tall! An aspiring model, he moved to Lisbon "for love" but now he really likes working and living here. He was really great at giving us the low-down on what to do or see in Lisbon, so it was definitely great to meet him on the first night. The bartender Sergio was just a beautiful man, but he was shy I suspect because his English was not as good as Christian's. We asked him where to go for good Portuguese food and he started raving about his hometown Evora as if it was the best place on earth. "I've traveled to Spain, France, Africa, everywhere and all their food is SH*T compared to Portugal!" He compares a lot of things to sh*t. For some reason, it is just so cute when he says it!
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