More Lisbon

Friday and Saturday, July 4th an 5th –

While having breakfast on the 4th, we heard a tapping on the side of the boat.  Our neighbors, from Norway, arrived with a bottle of sparkling wine for us to celebrate Indepenence Day.  How nice!  We had hoped to share it with them and learn more about their travels (they had already been in the Med and are heading back to Norway), but they were leaving too early.

We spent more time exploring Lisbon and the nearby town of Belem, also along the Rio Teja.  The men really wanted to spend time at the Maritime Museum, which was excellent, along with several other museums and key sights.

Soccer is king here and the World Cup is on.  The passion for the sport is clear.  There are TV screens set up in many of the outdoor cafes, a giant screen set up in the main square and people glued to the games.  With the roar of the cheering through the streets you know when a team has scored.  When Portugal played Germany in one of the earliest games, the stores closed so everyone could go home and watch the game.  The night Portugal played the U.S. our friend Bill emailed to let us know and suggested that, if the U.S. won, we might want to furl our flag!  We were safe – the result was a tie of 2-2.

Each night we managed to get the last train back to the marina, making the most of our time in Lisbon.  While here we used the train, bus and subway systems.  All are clean and efficient and easy to use.

Today is our last day here before starting our journey down the coast of Portugal to Spain and on to Gibraltar.  That means boat time today – cleaning the boat, laundry, provisioning, and trying to get this blog up to date.

Impressions of Lisbon, and Portugal in general:

Portugese are the friendliest people we have met along our trip.  Everyone has made us feel welcome.

• Cafes are everywhere, and they are full all day long.  Mornings are expresso and cappuccino; afternoons and evenings are more coffee, and lots of wine and beer.
• Dinner starts very late as we expected – a reservation for 10 pm is not unusual.  The music starts very late and goes until 2 or 3 am.
• Everyone smokes.  Odd in a country that has a national health plan, but it seems to be cultural.  The French here in the marina also seem to be heavy smokers.
• The Portugese love their dogs.  They are everywhere, including old masterpiece paintings so they seem to have been embraced for hundreds of years.
• Food specialties are fish and more fish.  Shrimp, octapus, cod and other white fish are local and very fresh.  We are eating a lot of fish.  The olive oil here is exceptional and also local.  Along with local red and white wines, the Port wines and ginjinha (a sour cherry like berry) wine are served after dinner.
• The Portugese are fully as passionate about football (aka: soccer) as we read about.
• In a Portugal bullfight the bull lives – cheers!