Baixa

Lisbon 2018

Dia de Natal a Lisboa

I had done a bit of research on places open to eat on Christmas Day – very few. However they included the highly-rated Ribadouro which was in walking distance of the hotel. So I walked off towards it to try to make a booking. Wrong! It doesn’t open until 12 but some chefs were lounging at the back door smoking and said if I came about three o’clock I’d get a table. So I went to the wonderfully named Praça de Alegria (Square of Joy) sat on a bench in the sun and planned a tour. I had explored the Baixa area yesterday so today it was the Barrio Alto, now my Portuguese may be negligible but in any language I knew it meant lots of up.

I made it up to the Mirador of San Antonio which had a convenient Christmas Market so I was able to have a coffee, a custard tart (OK pastel de nata) and find a bench from which to Skype my son and daughter-in-law post lunch in Hong Kong. We had a good catch up and agreed that Lisbon was a fine city, if hilly. As I looked from the mirador across the city to the Castel de Sao Jorge, I started to wonder if my plan to include that was sensible or even sane.

Having made it up to the Barrio Alto there was some up and down but undulating rather than the precipitous gradients I’d conquered earlier – even the tram wheezed a lot. It’s a grid of streets with some residential some commercial and a few of them open today. Relief came when I was able to buy a waiter’s friend (trusty Swiss Army left at home as I had no hold baggage this trip) and had a bottle of wine back at the hotel for later in the day – organic you see, no screw tops!

I gradually made my way back down to the riverside in time for a coffee in the trendy Chiado district.

There was a good display of old newspapers through the ages in front of the city hall which I admired prior along with a novel festive tree. I then had a flat walk across to the square before the ascent to the castle. A fortifying beer was needed to tackle that, rather spoiled by a persistent multilingual beggar – at least he knew Happy Christmas, Bonne Natale, Frohe Weihnachten and Feliz Navidad to address to various passers by. Oh delight! Just past the bar is a beautiful sight – an escalator. It took me two thirds of the climb leaving just the final scramble up to to the gates of the castle to see this notice.

I should have checked but thought maybe a castle would be open but if they can charge you for entrance then they’d have had to pay staff today. So I walked around the area, spotting a few stretches of battlements but missing out on the (supposedly) fabulous view across the city – well I had seen it from the other side.

The escalator was only up and just as I was contemplating hundreds if not thousands of steps down a small bus appeared which was headed down to the square at the start of the Avenida de Libertad where my lunch would soon await. I was a bit early, not a Raggett characteristic, so I had a beer in a padeleria where pastel de nata were just waiting to go into the oven.

So I walked up the opposite side of the avenue to yesterday and then crossed to Ribadouro where they were indeed able to find me a table, right beside a tasty tank full of lobsters.

They were a popular choice and the couple at the next table were battling their way through oysters, large prawns and a whole good sized lobster. They were a young Chinese couple, she severely elegant like the casino villainess in any number of dramas, he in scruffy top, joggers and trainers. Oh and have I mentioned that at least one in three of all people on the streets today is Chinese. Maybe it’s the Macau connection, maybe just that the Chinese are now the world’s greatest tourists. Anyway I decided that a lobster would be too far I accepted the suggestion of the traditional Lisbon Christmas dish of baked cod loin served with caramelised onions and pink peppercorns. I had read somewhere that many restaurants bring some plates to the table which you could be forgiven for thinking were freebie appetisers but which then get added to the bill. I was quite peckish so a plate of pata negre ham went down very well with a glass or several of a Lisbon white wine called Lasso. I managed most of what looked like a half a cod which was very tasty but an unusual Christmas choice for me. After a coffee, I made my way back up through the busy Winter Wonderland to the hotel to Skype the rest of the family, write a blog, read a book and enjoy some wine thanks to my newly acquired friend.

Lisbon 2018

Lisbon Christmas Eve

I’d read about the collection made by a Madeiran Joe Berardo (maybe a friend of Chris Rinaldo) of twentieth century art bought directly from the artists in many cases. I’d also read that the museum closed at 14:00 on Christmas Eve. So I set off with my travel card on the Blue Line and Green Line metros to Cais da Sodre where I needed a suburban train to Belem. I failed to read the signs and flew past Belem Station, the Berardo Collection and the tower of Belem to the first stop at Alges. Fortunately a train in the opposite direction soon arrived with the word TODAS illuminated on its front. This delivered me to Belem where I walked through a pleasant park to the Monasterio de Jeronimos that reminded me a bit of Budapest Houses of Parliament in its gothic splendour. I was struck by the fact that all the circular stone motifs above the windows were different but didn’t have time to visit and discover their story on this trip.

Just across the road is the Cultural Centre of Belem which houses the Berardo Collection. It’s a fabulous building dating from 1992 in pink marble with a water garden and wide airy galleries with an permanent collection with an array of surrealist, dada, pop, expressionist and other art of the last century with most of the major names represented – Picasso, Miro, Warhol, Pollock, Rothko, Moore among them. It is so well curated that I was able to spend a couple of hours without getting the gallery glaze that so often comes over me. I was struck by a Henry Moore that had strings attached which seemed to reference the nearby suspension bridge and rigging of the boats in the marina.

On a lower floor was a series of temporary exhibitions including a piece called Purple by John Akomfrah which is a thirty minute video installation using six huge screens. I’m not prone to sit through such artworks but this was captivating, using brilliantly manipulated imagery, archive footage and a surround sound track that kept me there to the credits. It’s based loosely on a quote from Tennyson “Oh Earth, what changes hast thou seen?” and looks at years of pollution filmed across ten countries with recurring haunting images. It was co-commissioned by the Barbican where it played early this year and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston among others. Surprising, shocking, stimulating.

Outside I walked to the river front to view the Tower of Belem, deisappointingly small for such a frequently used icon of the city and then along to the monument to the Discoverers a much more impressive piece of work.

I followed the river bank with detours for marinas and harbours back to the centre of town and the district known as Baixa. The Museum of Beer called from on corner of the Comercio Square and I finally sat down nearly four hours after my bum was on a train seat. I then explored the local area with its chain shops, a few individual boutiques and some restaurants, few of which would be open tomorrow it seemed. As I approached Rossio Station I had to hide my head in shame for protesting yesterday about the paving of the city. Here was a sculpture dedicated to the brave and talented pavers of Lisbon. They do produced some fine mosaic effects but I’m still looking for a new set of suitcase wheels!

This led me to the Avenue of Liberty a long tree-lined rambla with cafes and I imagine very popular area for a stroll in summer. It ends in the square (why don’t we have a different name when they are round?)named for the Marquis of Pombal the minister who redesigned central Lisbon after the earthquake. As I made it to the north side I knew that it was truly Christmas.

A walk uphill past the many kiosks brought me to an exit for Parque station which is five minutes from the hotel. I had used a metro and a train to get to Belem but walked all the way back so decided to eat nearby again in a restaurant that billed itself as Portuguese with a Japanese accent. It was one of the worst meals I’ve ever struggled to eat and I won’t be recommending Tsubaki on Tripadvisor. Not a good end to an otherwise most enjoyable day. The one drawback about my otherwise fine hotel is that it’s WiFi is very poor so creating these blogs is a very painful affair with many “upload failed” messages. Please bear with me – your messages are very important to me.