I spent my first two days in Portugal exploring Lisboa (Lisbon).
the Castillo de San Jorge
Somehow, despite being a city of three million people, Lisboa has the feel of a smallish town. Narrow winding streets. Stuccoed three-storey buildings of soft yellow and pink, upper balconies hung with laundry. Locals smoking on doorsteps and calling to their neighbours from open windows.
Underneath your feet, Lisboa’s famous mosaic sidewalks or calçada.
As you can imagine, these are incredibly expensive for the city to maintain. And, as Ann mentioned in her travel posts, they are slippery — a nightmare for the municipality’s insurers. Nevertheless, the Portuguese are rightfully proud of their calçada. Traditionalism and stubbornness are said to be central to the national character — and so the mosaics remain.
Last night, I attended a fado performance in a neighbourhood restaurant. Fado is the Portuguese version of the blues, although it sounds nothing like it. Performed by two guitarists and a singer, it is a kind of melancholic folk music, often with lyrics about the lives of the fishermen. Think ‘Farewell to Nova Scotia’ and you get the picture (and sound.) Sung with lots of vibrato, eyebrows furrowed, and arms framing the heart. I loved every minute! I even managed to tear up a little, although I had no idea what the singer was on about, since it was all in Portuguese.
Tomorrow I take a bus to Santiago do Cacem to begin my trek.