Phot-o' the Day: "Temos Sardinha" in Alfama; Lisbon, Portugal

I've been to 49 states and 31 countries, and the only place on earth I've been where the restaurants proudly proclaim that they have sardines is Portugal. "Temos sardinha." "We have sardines." The good news is that they also have sangria, as in "Temos Sangria."

Sardines are something of a cultural icon in Portugal. Other than that, it's a great place to visit.

This photo is in the Alfama neighborhood of Lisbon, where the streets are so steep and windy that ordinary public transportation cannot access it. Visited September 2017.

To (But Not In) the Castle

The sign says to go to the Castle.
Graffito says "Mass Tourism = Human Pollution"

This morning's tourism experience was a visit to Castelo de Sao Jorge.  I use the term "morning" loosely, given that I am old and was jet lagged, so I didn't get out of bed until 11:00AM.

The Castle is the center of the original Moorish settlement of Lisbon.  The area around the Castle was lousy with tourists, thick as thieves.

I was going to go, but there was a line ...

A long line.

That went on and on and on.

So I didn't go in.  I've seen enough castles, I guess.  So I explored the neighborhood around the castles.  Where once this neighborhood teemed with Moors living in the shadow of the castle for protection from the crusading marauding Portuguese ...

Now it's narrow streets teem with souvenir shops

Or restaurants that proudly proclaim, "We have sardines!"  "Temos Sardinha!"

The neighborhood also teems with trolleys.

Teems.

Or maybe it's just my photo file that teems with the trolleys.

Or maybe there's a metaphor here I can end with.  Castles in Europe are like trolleys.  You miss one and another will come rolling along in minutes.

Hotel Convento do Salvador e Casa da Tia Helena

Alfama After Dark: dinner at the Casa da Tia Helena

Time for one of the greatest uses of the internet:  posting pictures of food.

First course:  octopus salad:

Let me tell you.  This octopus salad was huge.  There must have eight more pusses in this salad.  It was much more of a meal salad than an appetizer salad.  It had a nice vinegary taste to it.  So good.  If I had stopped there, I would've had a nice delicious filling meal.  But, of course, I did not stop there.  I had a main course:

Bacalhau com broa.  With a side salad (a clue that the octopus salad was not meant to be eaten as an appetizer salad) and potatoes.

What is bacalhau com broa?  Salted cod with cornbread.  That doesn't sound good, does it.  It's basically tasty pieces of dried cod mixed into southern-style cornbread dressing.  Sounds better now, doesn't it?  It was unexpectedly awesome.  I washed it down with a local beer, Sangres.  It was ... umm ... not awesome.  Almost Coors-ian in its blandness.  It was so bland that if you threw a lime in it, you could sell it as Corona.  Well, to be fair, it wasn't QUITE that bland.

I can guarantee you this was no over-priced tourist trap.  This was the real deal.  Real local food for real local people.  And only one tourist crashing the local scene in a sad and desperate search for authenticity.

Well, in regards to authenticity:  Found it!

Time to wander the one-block walk (uphill both ways!) from Casa da Tia Helena to my hotel, the Hotel Convento do Salvador.

No.  I was not so overloaded with cornbread and cod that it was morning by the time I stumbled back to my hotel.  The pic was snapped earlier in the day, but in terms of the narrative, the pics fit here.

Very very nice small hotel, of about 50 rooms.

Fifty SMALL rooms.  The bed is basically the entire bedroom, which, really, is good enough.  Plus the mattress was comfortable and the room clean.  I like these European boutique hotels where they gut some old building, keep the older facade, but the interior is all modern hotel.  It's a nice way to combine old and new.

Welcome to Portugal: Afternoon in Alfama

Lisbon's Alfama neighborhood is lousy with trams

Reporting live from Lisbon, Portugal.  Today was a Jeb Bush kind of day: low energy.  It was a six-hour flight from JFK to Lisbon and it left a few ticks o' the clock before midnight, so there was not a whole lot of sleeping going on.  So I stuck to exploring the neighborhood in which I am staying:  Alfama.

This is the old "Moorish" section of Lisbon.  The extremely narrow streets will tell you this was laid out well before car culture.  Well before "horse and carriage" culture for that matter.

That is not the ocean.  That is the Tagus River.  It's the estuary, so I'm guessing it's salt water.  But it's not, technically speaking, ocean water.

This is up in one of the high viewpoints within Alfama.  Alfama is quite hilly.  In fact, the steepness of the slopes is the reason trams are so popular as public transit.  There may be no tram in this picture here, but there are tram wires:

Here's an example of some non-indigenous wildlife:

Turista Americana.  These types often can be found in viewpoints of various European capitals.  Especially when there is something photogenic, such as an estuary, to form the photo background.  Hey.  I would've snapped a selfie but I was too tired from overnight flight,

Upon at the viewpoint a band was playing something that sounded Afro-Brazilian.  One of the great things about Portugal is that has done a better job than anywhere else in Europe absorbing the racial minorities from its former colonies into its territory.  And since all of its overseas colonies seem to have awesome musical traditions, that means lots and lots of awesome music.

And stairs.  Lots and lots and lots of stairs in Alfama.

This is the Igreja do Sao Miguel.  Lisbon is lousy with beautiful old church buildings.  Some of which are still used as churches.

Now, let's look at some museums, of the "offbeat" variety:

Museu do Fado, the museum dedicated to Portugal's indigenous bluesy/sea chanty music, fado.

The Museu do Lactancio, which translates to the "Museum of Lactation."  Here's my weird observation.  I'm stunned that "lactation" is a masculine-gendered noun.

And finally, in the same general neighborhood:

Museu Militar.  I did not go in any of the three as it was too close to closing time by the time I had wandered down there.  Anyway, there's a police station next to the Museu Militar.

Here's another thing typically Lisboa (Lisbonian?):

The decorative tile facades of so many buildings.

Anyway, since I walked downhill to the water -- estuary, I mean -- walked down to the estuary, that meant an uphill battle to get back to the hotel.

And what's that beautiful white building up ahead?

It's a re-purposed defrocked Catholic church,

But what it was re-purposed into is impressive:  The Lisboa Panteao.  The Lisbon Pantheon.  Where a boatload of famous Portuguese are buried.  Those little tourist "tuk-tuks" are everywhere, too, by the way,

More trams:

And this is a Catholic Church I found when I figured out I climbed the wrong steep hill to get back to my hotel.

This is the Igreja e Convento da Graca,

My observation about Lisbon after Day One:  what an amazingly friendly city.  People are friendly.  Dogs are friendly.

But the cats aren't friendly.  So in that way Lisbon is just like everywhere else.

Portugal has now become the 22nd (or 21st) (or 23rd, depending on how you count) (which I'm not going to go over here, let's just say that under my preferred method of counting countries visited, it's #22)

I leave you with this, a twilight view of Castelo de Sao Jorge.