2000: Spain, Portugal & Morocco
by Carl Russo
4.
The romantic decay of the Alfama district in Lisbon, Portugal, where
the old women balance Hefty Bags full of laundry on their heads.
Spanning the ages from the hilltop Goth castle of São Jorge (6th century), to the exploding steel web of the Oriente train station, (Expo '98), Lisbon has everything one expects from a world-class European city. Yet too few Americans have seen it.
Our arrival was marked by one of those adrenaline-fused crises of stupidity that must be part of my genetic makeup. After hopping a bus I realized that my little bag of camera, passport and wallet were still sitting on the bus stop bench that was fading into the horizon. I screamed at the driver some form of the Spanish words for "stop" and "mistake" and we ran back to find my gear not yet swiped. From then on, my mantra was "Suitcase, backpack, camera bag."
And didn't my camera love Lisbon. The Moorish and medieval alleys and stairways of the Alfama district tumble down from the castle at impossible angles like an M. C. Escher sketch. Some old postcards we picked up at a church prove that the patchy, flower-flecked houses and swarthy faces haven't changed in a century.
My lasting impression of Lisbon is a great wash of blue as seen from the roof of the immense Santo António da Sé cathedral, sky and sea heaving against fragile white blocks barely protected by broken red tiles.
After dark, the flow turns to the trendy Bairro Alto neighborhood on a less daunting hill, where our choice of enticing restaurants was limited to those not offering live Fado performers. Vanessa and I are always up for new cultural experiences, but wailing torch songs don't go down well with mystery fish.
More castle climbing followed in lush Sintra, whose most prominent feature is a ridiculous pair of enormous bowling-pin chimneys jutting from the Palácio Nacional (just what in hell did they cook in those?), and a stay in the resort town of Lagos, colonized by British youth in the Nineties to make the Algarve coast safe for the pint of Guinness.
[
Italy: Sicily 1
|
Spain, Portugal, Morocco
|
France
|
Greece
|
Italy: Rome
|
Italy: Sicily 2
|
Italy: Mezzogiorno
|
Italy: Sicily 3
]
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