Friday, June 20, 2025

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more…. more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part two of ?)

 

So yesterday I started this recap of our wild three week journey through part of Europe, specifically Portugal, Spain France, Italy and then back. So let’s back up a bit and go back to the beginning.

Lisbon is great. We arrived and got settled in jet lag and all. We asked the desk clerk at the hotel for some local restaurants nearby. She pointed out three within a couple of blocks. I do not want to say recommended, but just pointed out some places nearby.

We choose one and it was somewhat of a disappointment. I ordered the tuna steak and it seemed like it was old and not cooked well. Other than that everything we did in Lisbon was great. After dinner we went back to the hotel and sat at the bar. Turns out the hotel had a dessert of the day and we decided to try it. It was some type of cheesecake, yet apparently a local take. We enjoyed it immensely yet at this point it has been almost a month and I cannot remember exactly what it was, but that we enjoyed it.

The next day we started our journey exploring the city. We took the Metro and just made some random stops based on what was available at that stop. The first one there was a huge statue, and again I didn’t journal so I don’t remember who, but someone from a few centuries back that had a major impact on the city. There was a QR code to listen and you can even choose your language. It was fun. Also this was a very major roundabout intersection so navigating it was interesting. We ended up in a park named after a King. Eventually we wound our way around the park and found a small café and this is where we tried the national treat, Pastel de Nata for the first time. Worth it. Yes, it may be somewhat simple, but sprinkled with some cinnamon and with a cup of coffee, and I do not mean the American restaurant type of cup of coffee it is worth enjoying.

Coffee is another endeavor all together in Europe. And most of Europe or at least the areas we travelled treat it about the same. You can have an expresso, cappuccino, café Americano, or café with milk, ordered in whatever language of the country you are visiting. Obviously café Americano is the closest to what we usually order here, but it many cases a bit stronger.

So much more to go in Lisbon and will get back to it.

Another point in general I am going to talk about quickly is driving. We drove well over 5000 kilometers on highways and in cities and towns. GPS is very helpful, but you still have to pay very close attention especially in the towns and cities. The GPS will say make the next left and as you turn you will realize there are two choices staring at you and sometimes the choices run side by side as far as you can see. So all of a sudden you are driving in heavy traffic, watching out for bikes, motor scooters, other cars and you have one tenth of a second to choose which path to take. If you look close at the GPS you can sort of pick out which one is the left you are to follow, but you just don’t have the time to double check. If you make the right one on you go. If you make the wrong one, you may spend ten minutes or more being rerouted all over the place. The towns are old and were never designed for modern traffic. It can be a nightmare.

It is good to have the passenger paying attention to the little screen on your car or phone while the driver pays attention to what is going on around you. Believe me scooters are all over the place and will cut you off in a heartbeat. Yet surprisingly with all our travels we only saw one wreck involving a motor scooter that was hit.

The other fun is when the passenger says that one and you go the other one. Yes you spend the next ten minutes being re routed and told you need to listen. Other times it is a crap shoot and you thank God you were right at that moment.

Before I end for the day, in Lisbon there is a museum dedicated to their history of exploration of the world.  We spent one of our afternoons in that museum on a random choice of where to go. Well worth the visit. Four hundred years of seafaring exploration unfolds before you. As with any large European city there are so many museums to choose from it is hard to pick. We were glad we picked that one, maybe not over others, but as one to have seen.

There is so much more to Lisbon, yet like I said we will move on. One fact though that I found interesting is how well English is spoken in Portugal. Some spoke very well, yet most had a working grasp of the language. We asked a few how they learned English. Some said just through their work and others from school. One young lady said she started learning it in first grade. I think more people knew English than Spanish and Spain is right next door. It is the tourists from England though that have created the need for so much English. Honestly it made being there so much easier than when we were off the beaten paths of the other countries. I pulled into one stop for gas somewhere in another country and as soon as I started speaking the clerk held up her finger and pulled out three charts. One for the pump I wanted, one for the type of gas and one for the amount. They still make do for the tourists one way or another.

Cheers

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