jay | In Lisboa

After being in the lab until nearly 5am Friday night, I was then the first one down at 9:15 for breakfast. Go figure. Groggy, tired after the last week... I nearly decided to just take down-time and stay close to Rio Tinto.

But exploration inevitably draws me. After another surprise telephone call, I packed and checked out. A rental car, fuel, two days and I can wander freely. No reservations, no requirements, just freedom to wander in a new place and culture... how could I just stay in the hotel in Nerva? So I headed outward...

Initially, I turned too soon in Aracena and got lost. Sort of... I figured out that I was on a small one-lane (!) highway that roughly paralleled the main route, but that wound through the mountains. It was an ecstatic drive... newly repaved, zipping through beautiful hills and mountains and villages... a bubbly sense of joy and freedom.

Castles and whitewashed villages... a classic layout, with the castle on the hilltop, the church in the center and all of these Andalusian whitewashed houses...

Then I crossed into central Portugal. Drier, browner, more cork oaks... the roads were mostly empty, but the drivers... crazy. Passing on blind curves. Several times, I saw near-misses with oncoming traffic... "parade formation", where there are side-by-side cars approaching two other side-by-side cars, head-on. I needed the stop in Evora :).

There, I wandered the narrow Roman streets (medieval streets are wider ;) through decaying ancient arches and white squares and through the town walls. Next to St. Francis's chapel there was a "bone chapel", lined with bones and skulls taken from nearby cemeteries. Two 18th-C. monks thought that this would be a good way to remind us of the fleeting beauty and transience of life.

(and they weren't even drivers, back then ;).

Anyway, the most interesting thing I saw was this Roman temple, in the center of town, bracketed by Renaissance and medieval architecture:

I decided to not spend the night in Evora, and so I called hotels in Lisbon until I found one with a cancellation. Otherwise... (shrug), there was always sleeping in the car.

Driving onward, I was stuck for a half-hour in bridge-toll traffic (sound familiar?) before crossing the 25th of April suspension bridge into Lisbon (Lisboa). But I watched the sun set... over the Atlantic :D.

Several people are probably guessing where my thoughts next led after sunset... after locating and checking in to the hotel, I took a cab up to the Bairro Alto district to the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (Port Wine Institute), which has a tasting room with 150+ varieties and was open until midnight on Saturdays. I stayed until it closed :).

From right to left, its a Feist 10-year old, a Dalva white port, a 20-year-old Barros Colheita, and a 40-year-old Dalva. I chatted and traded sips there with a group of 6 ex-Bell Labs folks from New Jersey, and three weekend-visiting Londoners, and nibbed on cheeses and cakes for my dinner. The Dalvas were easily my favorites. The 40-year-old wrapped its satin embrace around one's face... it was very smooth and balanced and... pleasantly textured. It rolled. The dry white was an unfamiliar style to me, but I loved it! Dry, fluted, balanced, not at all heavy or sugary or cloying... it practically danced and bounced in my mouth. Ecstatic, symphonic...

I wandered out into the Bairro Alto streets, which were crowded and busy and loud on a Saturday night... finally took a cab back here.