I cannot say that I was disappointed with my experience in Spain. I had seen such incredible natural wonders. I had a wonderful time meeting with both Maria and A. I had very crunchy fried calamari. I just did not feel like there was a town or city where I could potentially move to and feel happy. I was not exactly looking to move to Fiji either but I don’t think I can put them in the same category. I spoke the local language in Spain but I could not fit into the siesta-based time schedule. Nor could I find a way to chit chat with locals. For whatever reason, I had decided that Lisbon and the rest of Portugal would probably have a similar time schedule and would most likely cause me the same frustration (…and I would be very, very wrong).

The bus from Badajoz arrived on time to the Santiago Calatrava designed intermodel transit hub of Lisbon. You can transfer between buses and trains easily there. This relatively new structure was already showing its age. I knew I would be back for a close-up look for my day trips and I was eager to see my friends.

My arrival in Lisbon started with a direct visit to the apartment where Anna, Alyssa, Tame and their two friends, Arminda & Will from London, were staying. I’ve known this group for something like 15 years. We had traveled previously to Vieques, Puerto Rico. I knew we were compatible travelers. Would my backpacking travel style affect their fun? Would they take it out on me? I made sure to have a phone chat with Anna beforehand to spell out that we might not be doing exactly everything together. She assured me there was no expectation of that. I took the metro from the outlying sleepy neighborhood where I was staying to the vibrant, loud and active historic center where their apartment was. I had to walk through what seemed like a few rough patches of graffiti and unmaintained structures to get there. My first impressions of the center of Lisbon was that it looked rundown.

When I got to the apartment I was greeted with so much love and it just felt so damn good. Smiles and hugs and laughs and joy were in the air. For me, I had not seen close friends of this nature maybe since my first week of backpacking in Mexico where I met up with Amanda, who lived on the same floor as me in our freshman dorm. Anna and I were resident assistants at another freshman dorm our junior year. We had been through quite a bit together. The group spent time getting to know each other. They had already been pastry shopping and gave me a lovely traditional Lisbon custard tart sprinkled with cinnamon. We decided on a restaurant and headed into town!

To my surprise, a connection from the past would also be in Lisbon at the same time. Wil went to NYU with us. He was now also working with Alyssa on the fantastically interesting Collective Museum project. He would be visiting Portugal on a road trip with his husband and would be in Lisbon at the same time as us. We would be meeting up with him later. After dinner, we scoured around the old town visiting a few pubs and getting a few cheap pints for each other before we met up with Wil. I had not seem Wil probably since 2004. Meeting him after having a few pints allowed for us to have a very free-flowing conversation! We caught up on everything and discussed philosophy and relations and lord knows what else. He mentioned to me that he had been reading this very blog you are reading right now (wow!!) and he specifically had read about my visits to Poland and the genealogical research I had done. He was going to road trip his way to northern Spain, where his paternal roots lie to do the very same. It was an incredible moment. It made me feel like I needed to continue writing about my travel journey regardless of if I know who is reading it… or not.

The next day, wandering around my hilltop neighborhood, I discovered a local park with panoramic views of the city. When I arrived at the top of the hill, I saw there was also a coffee shop and musicians rehearsing. This was much more than just an average park with a view. This was a space for artists and for people to contemplate. I would spend many hours here drinking imperiales (beer in 300ml glasses), looking down at Lisbon, listening to music and writing. I was finally able to process all of the things I did in Poland. I was able to write about it and talk to my parents about it. The previous posts about Poland were mostly written in Lisbon. I had found my connection to the city.

Suddenly, things in Lisbon started feeling more personal. I had visited the same restaurant under the hostel two nights in a row for their 5 EUR fish dinner special. The second night, the waitress recognized me and gave me a HUGE hug and a kiss. I was completely shocked and loved every second of it. She talked to me about her Brazilian heritage and I learned that lots of people in Lisbon were from Brazil because it’s considered safer and has more opportunity for them. There was a warmth I had not experienced in a long time. I absolutely loved it.

It was time to start the day trips from Lisbon. They are very well documented on the Internet and for good reason. The day trips from Lisbon are absolutely amazing. There are no other words to describe it. I spent days visiting beautiful historic towns, cliffs, mountain tops, endless beaches and coves. In the town of Sintra, there are houses nestled into the woods and castles and forts high up on the mountain. Anna & Co. wanted to spend the day in Sintra exploring the architecture and history but I wanted to only pass through Sintra to head towards the formerly thought of “end of the world” in Cabo da Roca. I would meet up with the gang for dinner anyway. There were no hard feelings about us not spending the entire day together.

Sintra

Sintra had a tourist bus special for a day pass that allowed unlimited journeys throughout the region. I was able to make my way to the top of the mountain and back down again and walk around some of the architectural gems and grab some great shots. There was an entry fee to each of these places and a long line to get in. Maybe on my honeymoon I can come back and spend the time necessary to appreciate the history but for this moment, I desperately wanted to experience nature. Just as I was making my way back to the bus station, I saw the bus to Cabo da Roca pull up. I ran like hell to catch it! It doesn’t come that frequently and its a 45 minute ride!

Cabo da Roca

Cabo da Roca has such historical significance. It’s a place where even some of the greatest minds of the time thought was the end of the world. It would take some incredibly free thinkers to pose the idea publicly that perhaps even though the other side of the ocean could not be seen, maybe this is not the end of the world. It’s just the end of the world as we know it. The wind was incredibly strong. There were only a few other tourists there and one particularly narcissistic duo of men taking selfie after selfie, seemingly forever unhappy with the quality of selfie output. They were also blocking the best shots for the rest of us.

When I met up with Anna & Co. for dinner, they showed me their wonderful architectural photos. You could see how much fun they had together throughout the day. It was a good example of a challenging backpacking moment. I lost out on a moment with friends that could have been quite memorable. At the same time, they were not planning on seeing Cabo da Roca on this trip and I would have had to make my way back there after they left, even though that was not the direction I was headed. I’ll say it was a sacrifice. I’m not proud that I had to make it but it’s a stark reminder that experiences in life are not always as simple as good or bad, enjoyable or boring. There’s the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) phenomenon that has taken over the zeitgeist but this was not a #FOMO moment. This was a complicated “I wish I were with you” but also “I really need to see these cliffs right now” conflagration of emotions. All I can say is that I’m lucky to have friends who do not take moments like this personally and misinterpret my actions as “I do not want to be with you and I’d rather be by myself”.

Cascais

My day trip to Cascais was so lovely that I would end up coming back again. As I walked along the coast of the town, I encountered more and more natural beauty. The town melds into a very well kept urban beach. The town, like the rest of Europe’s natural secrets, is accessible via public transportation and has a supermarket right outside the train station so you need not do your picnic shopping before arrival. The town is lined with tourist shops and restaurants but it is still quite charming. Public plazas and cute pedestrian-only roads meander around the jagged oceanfront where you can watch teenagers jump off all kinds of rocks and bridges. Across the main road of the beachfront there are also green parks that offer ocean views. The beaches further out are more like coves, offering plenty of natural shade, quiet and wading opportunities. Eventually, the beachfront turns into a Martian rock plain. You can walk amongst the rocks. This plain then opens up into incredible cliffs, the most impressive of which is known as Boca do Inferno.

Costa da Caparica

I thought I was mostly over beaches during this backpacking trip. After my sand fly bites got infected in Samoa, I had seen a ton of beaches all around the world and I was good with sticking to mountains. I still do not know which sand fly bites were from Fiji and which were from Samoa. The Costa da Caparica south of Lisbon is a famed extended chain of beaches not unlike the Fire Island National Seashore in New York. There’s no simple public transit there (but it is possible) and there is a rich forest behind the dunes. There is a single simple restaurant at the entry point. I hired an unexpectedly incredibly friendly tour operator for a day trip there to simplify the planning and to get there as quickly as possible. One thing that this beach has that Fire Island does not is a magnificent crest of mountains extending behind the beach forest. On our drive back to Lisbon, I asked the tour operator all about why he does this job and why I have consistently found locals in Lisbon to be friendly and open to chit-chat. His answer was simple and heartfelt. He explained to me that the Portuguese education system has improved a lot in his lifetime and people are learning English at an earlier age. In general, Portuguese culture is very open and loving but the addition of English as a skillset has made sharing the beauty of Portugal even easier. My love affair with Portugal was real.

Final Days in the Lisbon Region

I rounded out my Lisbon experience with a return to Cascais, another visit to the hilltop panorama cafe and a long walk along the bay. The bay is filled with architectural gems like the suspension bridge modeled after the Golden Gate and a medieval fortress with a natural moat. My next stop would be Porto, which I would reach by train. I returned to the Santiago Calatrava-designed train and bus terminal. I noted where the terminal seemed to require maintenance in order to maintain its special appeal. The poured concrete on the ground level had uneven coloration and water stains. The canopies on the rail platform level had dirty glass and rusty columns, meant to be pure white. It’s a sad truth about Calatrava’s projects that their multibillion dollar construction costs also result in hundred million dollar maintenance programs. Municipalities are so excited to get a something commissioned by the starchitect that they neglect to plan for how they are going to maintain this structural-functional work of art. It’s kind of weird: when a Calatrava structure does not have a fresh coat of paint on it, it actually looks like something out of the 1980s that has been sitting around for a while. It does not feel “bird-like” or “new” to me. It felt like one of those shopping malls they are about to tear down in the midwest. Maybe it was the murky glass panels on the top of the canopy that reminded me of 1980s-style mall ceilings before they figured out that shoppers love domes that bring in a ton of natural light.