by Riona Kelly
As her voice trailed off, Lindy finished it. “The Golden Gate Bridge. It does resemble it very closely since it is also a suspension bridge, built in the same way, and is painted in the same golden-red paint as its counterpart in San Francisco. In fact, some people refer to it as the Golden Gate of Portugal.”
While the bridge seemed close, it still took them another thirty minutes to get onto it. In reality, it looked even bigger with six traffic lanes layered and two train levels. Below them, glimpsed now and then through the weather and the bars of the golden cage, they could glimpse the Tagus River flowing out to the Atlantic Ocean. Lindy tensed a little with the strain of getting into the city, and she wasn’t particularly fond of crossing large bridges like this, but she took deep breaths and concentrated on watching out for the traffic.
Once they were across, she relied on the GPS navigator to guide them to their hotel, the Metropole near the city center. When Michelle had sent a text to Roberto telling him they’d delayed leaving for Lisbon, he’d gone to work and located a hotel for them in the city. He had a friend who knew someone, and all those contacts paid off in a hotel reservation they might have gotten without help.
She pulled the car into the nearest parking spot to the hotel, labeled check-in parking only. A bellman with an umbrella came up to greet them and escorted the ladies into the lobby, holding the curved dome over the heads the entire way. Once inside, Lindy breathed a sigh of relief to see it was a high-quality hotel with elegant, old-world furnishings. Deep cushioned chairs and love seats formed a conversation square in the lobby, and a bar sat off to the left. All the comforts, she conceded. The kid did okay.
As she checked in, Michelle went with the bellman to get their luggage from the car. In a short time, check-in was completed, and they were back with a luggage cart hauling their three suitcases and a backpack.
“What about the car?” Lindy asked. “Where do I park it?”
“It’s being taken care of,” Michelle answered. “They have a valet park it in a nearby lot, and they will have the keys for us at the valet desk any time we need it. I think this may be like Sevilla, though, just leave the car parked and take a cab around town.”
“You’re probably right,” Lindy replied as she’d been thinking the same thing and was relieved she didn’t have to find a parking garage in the downpour.
Their room was spacious and looked very comfortable with a pair of oversized twin beds with elegant golden spreads, and a stack of pump-looking pillows piled on top. Michelle didn’t hesitate, throwing her body into the center of the nearest bed.
“I guess I get the window one, then,” Lindy said with a laugh. She strolled over, pushed the sheer under-curtain to one side to look out, and peered out at the gray fog of the storm with hints of the coast peeping through. When the rain cleared, it would be spectacular. Sitting on the bed, she felt the mattress yield to her weight, and her mouth curved into a pleasing arc. They had memory foam beds. Perfect. She should have Roberto arrange all of their hotels.
They had gone without lunch, relying on their large breakfast in Seville to carry them through to Lisbon, but now, at nearly three-thirty in the afternoon, Lindy’s stomach rumbled, demanding attention. She checked to see if the hotel had a restaurant and perked up when the desk told her the bar served tapas all afternoon.
In far less time than it took to cross the bridge, they were seated in a booth in the bar with a cocktail table holding soft drinks and a plate of freshly grilled shrimp with garlic and lemon. The waiter set down a dish of grilled zucchini, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts along with tiny little cocktail forks to spear them. On the side were rounds of yeast bread to soak up the oil and garlic sauce.
“Heaven,” Lindy breathed as she bit into a shrimp. “This is heaven. The first time I traveled to Portugal, they brought the whole shrimp—shells, head, and all—and you had to break them apart before you could eat them. It wasn’t for the squeamish, and up until then, I had generally gotten my shellfish cleaned, so it was a challenge to get my dinner.”
“Oh, no,” Michelle grimaced. “I don’t know if I would like that. A girl could starve.”
“I learned quickly. It’s not too bad to take them apart, but you have to keep ignoring the eyes.”
“Please, Auntie. I’m trying to eat here.” She stuffed another shrimp tail into her mouth and followed it up with a mushroom.
“So, what would you like to do in this historic city?” Lindy pointed at the tourist booklet they’d gotten when they checked in that listed most, if not all, of the tourist attractions in the city.
“Well, the Belem Tower, for one, since it is so close, but not if it’s raining. And there’s the Commercial Center, Geronimos Monastery, the Bernardo Collection Museum, and lots of other places. What do you think is best?”
“Definitely Geronimos and the museum. The Commercial Center is not a shopping mall, but it is an interesting place as I recall. There is also an art market street where you will find artists and galleries. It’s not too far from here. If the weather clears tomorrow, much of this is within walking distance. In some ways, being in Lisbon is like being in San Francisco. The city is hilly, it’s by the ocean, and it is filled with many interesting places in a small area.”
“It sounds like fun and also calls for my most comfy shoes, I think.”
After they finished eating, they went back to their room where Lindy read through some material on the artists’ quarter and looked up one address in particular. She didn’t want to do anything to alert her niece to a problem, but she definitely wanted to visit Pablo de Sintra’s studio. Located on a side street of one of the main thoroughfares of the art district, it would be easy to find. Public transportation could get them within a few blocks of it.
Michelle took her phone and slipped off into the bathroom. It didn’t take a genius to know she was calling Roberto.
“Tell him, hello, and I like the hotel,” Lindy called after her.
Michelle waved her left hand at her in a silencing motion as she shut the door.
While Lindy was amused by her antics, she thought fondly on her own days as an impulsive teenager with romantic notions. But had she changed, really? She picked up her phone and displayed her messages to see a text in from Colin. She’d missed the notification buzz downstairs. It was a brief note – in Paris, saw my friend, will have report tmrow. Talk soon.
She felt ridiculously happy to hear from him. He seemed such a solid, reliable man – something she’d seen little of in her relationships. Maybe that was part of the attraction. She sent a short text back. Safely in Lisbon. Heavy rain. Tourist thing tomorrow. Miss you.
Just around sunset, the rain started to let up, and Lindy checked the area around them for any nightlife. A fado club was just a block away, so they decided to go there.
“What is fado?” Michelle asked as they huddled together under a borrowed umbrella from the hotel.
“It’s a form of music popular in Portugal. I suppose you might call it a melancholy type of singing, usually with guitar accompaniment. In Ireland, they would probably call it a dirge. The songs are usually about the sea or lost love or being horribly poor, basically, all the things that make people unhappy.”
“Sounds delightful,” Michelle said drily.
“We don’t have to stay long, but you should at least hear a few songs to see what it’s like. The singers are often very good, and it is compelling in a strange way. We’ll have dinner at the club, then we can see if there is anything else we’d like to do.”
The place was tucked into a corner building and up a level to the second floor. Like the Spanish Flamenco clubs, it was set up with tables facing a small stage and was dark, being illuminated primarily by the candles on the tables. Once they were seated at a table close to the front, the waiter brought a short menu and recommended the house specialty, which was pork done in Alentejo style with potatoes and asparagus. While Michelle went for a house salad, Lindy ordered the octopus salad, which garnered a
disgusted look from her niece.
“It’s all right. I’ll let you have a bite.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Auntie.” Michelle requested a soda instead of trying the local punch, which was a lot like sangria.
As the salads arrived quickly, they began to eat. Lindy noticed Michelle glancing at her salad as if she expected a tentacle to crawl across the table and onto her plate. She stabbed a little round piece of octopus with her fork and offered it to her niece. “Try a piece. It’s not rubbery, and it tastes quite good.”
Michelle frowned at the offering. “That doesn’t look like octopus. It’s white meat.”
“It’s been cubed, and most of the suckers removed so it doesn’t look like anything more than cut up fish. The flavor is very mild and mostly picks up the dressing and spices in the salad.”
With obvious reluctance, Michelle took the fork and bit a tiny piece off the offered meat. She looked like she expected it to gag her, but her expression changed to something more neutral when she realized it wasn’t awful.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Lindy said as Michelle ate the rest of the piece.
“It’s okay,” she admitted. “But not anything I’d get excited about.”
They had just finished up dinner when the fado singer came onto the stage. A guitarist followed her out, taking a seat on a chair behind her. He hit one string to give her a starting note, and then she began singing with a powerful and emotionally charged voice. The words, of course, were in Portuguese, but she managed to convey the worry and grief in it as she sang. The guitar joined in after the first two lines and added a soulful sound to the music.
“The power of the music is to be able to touch the part of your soul that responds to the sorrow in the song and to identify with it even if you don’t understand the lyrics,” Lindy whispered to Michelle. Just the melody and the voice pulled tears to Lindy’s eyes, and she could feel the longing and sorrow in it. Michelle sat with her eyes down, looking at her hands beneath the table rather than at the singer, and Lindy wondered if she was texting with one of her friends. Whatever. She couldn’t blame her for not being enthused with this part of the adventure, but at least she’d been exposed to it.
As promised, after three songs, all of them sounding pretty much the same, they left the club and headed back to the hotel.
“Shall I look for a dance club or something else for the evening?” Lindy asked.
Michelle shook her head. “No, I’m kind of tired tonight, so an evening in would be good. It looks like the rain is stopping, so if tomorrow is clear, we can get an early start.”
Lindy agreed. She felt just about worn out after the drive today and those draining songs. She’d forgotten just how depressing a fado could be.
Lindy awoke to sunshine coming in the window and a clock reading six. Early to bed meant waking up early, although it appeared Michelle still slept. She took advantage to get showered before her niece got up. Then she checked her phone’s GPS to make sure it showed Lisbon. By then, Michelle was up and heading to shower.
She decided their first stop should be the Belem Tower since it strictly meant a photo stop and look around the monument. Situated nearby, but on the shore, they would need to take a bus to it. That would be easy to do in the earlier hours of the morning since the other places they might go wouldn’t be open for at least three hours.
After eating from a selection of pastries and fruit with the strongest coffee in the world in the hotel breakfast room, they went to the bus stop and boarded within a few minutes. The ride went fairly quick even though many of the customers were heading to work, so it made frequent stops, but then, they weren’t in a hurry, so that didn’t matter.
The Belem Tower itself perched at the edge of the water on the far side of a semi-circular tiled plaza. It looked like a gray stone medieval tower fortress, which was what it had been. The tower was surrounded on three sides by a curtain wall with round towers in them. In all, it resembled a small castle.
“Once it guarded the mouth of the Tagus River,” Lindy said, reading the information from her phone. “It was actually built on an island near the shore, but the river shifted.”
“It’s really a work of art,” Michelle said as she took several photos and marveled at the detail work that went into the fortress. “The builders really liked to decorate everything, didn’t they?”
“Yes, I guess they did. They liked to have beauty and form in their work, even castles and fortresses. They were functional, though, and the features that look like embellishments often served a purpose, such as those cross-looking window openings that allowed archers to shoot arrows at the enemy without exposing themselves much.” Not that Belem seemed to have any examples of that particular building feature, but it did have triangular notches that might have served a similar purpose. Still, given where they were positioned, they were more likely to be venting or drain holes for the privies.
“Can we go in?” Michelle asked as she pointed to an entrance that appeared to be open to the public.
“I guess we can.”
As it turned out, they were a little early, but they used the time to stroll along the waterfront, take photos, and enjoy a hot cup of coffee from a street vendor. By the time they returned, the entrance was open, and they began exploring the area. On the bottom floor, they found round openings for cannons to fire on any ships entering the harbor, although none of the cannons remained now.
Lindy read that it had been used for an art exhibit after the renovation in the 1990s and eyed the space with new appreciation. Upstairs were chambers that had been used by the governor, or so the pamphlet she’d picked up read. In the center was a water well to provide for their needs. Several round holes in the floor could be used to drop oil or other objects on an enemy below.
“I wonder if they ever had to use them,” she commented to Michelle before they headed up to the King’s Chamber and found more of the holes in the floor.
“It looks like they planned for this type of defense on each level,” Michelle answered.
But the chamber was lovely and had a balcony that let them look out toward the shoreline.
“I wonder what it felt like to live in a place like this. It seems cold and barren, although the fireplace is gorgeous.” Michelle wandered over to have a closer look.
“When someone lived here, the walls would have been hung with tapestries that would give them warmth as well as beauty, and the floor would probably have been covered in rugs. But it would definitely be lacking in amenities by our modern standards. Also, it had a military purpose, so it was well-defended, and probably the guards’ quarters were not as nice.”
On the top floor, they could look out across the Tagus River to where the ruins of a companion tower sat on the far shore. That one didn’t fare as well over time. A light breeze caught Michelle’s long hair and brushed it across her face just as Lindy snapped a photo. She glanced at the displayed image on her camera.
Beautiful. So photogenic...the girl could be model. She could see why Roberto had photographed her for his paintings, even without using her face specifically, she was a well-formed young woman, proportionately speaking, and had an uncommon grace.
“Time to move on,” she told her. “The Commerce Center is open, and we have lots to see.”
She started down the stairs with Michelle following. They hurried to catch a tram that stopped near the Tower before it pulled away, and Lindy dropped into the nearest open seat to catch her breath. It had been a long time since she’d had to dash for a tram. But it took them to the west side of their destination, depositing them just steps away from the plaza. The Commerce Center was now a transportation hub for the city.
As Lindy warned, the Praça do Comércio was not a shopping zone but housed many offices that were related to the commerce of the city. Lindy explained that at one time, Lisbon was an important trade and shipping city and still did a lot of import and export. Once this plaza might have been filled with traders selling thei
r products from other lands and financiers would be arranging for expeditions.
As the largest shipping plaza in the city, it had great importance, and the detail of it was breathtaking. An arched gallery ran all along the U-shaped building that faced the estuary. Bright golden yellow paint covered the upper level of the building, suggesting the wealth that the trade center represented. In the center was a statue of King Jose I seated on his horse, stomping the symbolic snakes.
“That’s a ginormous statue,” Michelle said, gawking at it. “It’s at least as tall as the Belem Tower and probably as wide.”
“Go up the stairs and stand by it for perspective, and I’ll take a photo,” Lindy suggested.
Michelle shrugged and did as she asked, skipping up the steps, then turning and still not even coming to the base of the actual figures below the king and his horse.
Behind the statue was the Arco da Rue Augusta, the arch leading to the Augusta Road, which was even taller than the king’s statue. It looked to be easily four stories tall before you got to the trio of figures on the top. By the time they’d walked around the entire plaza and gone down to the marble stairs, called the Cais das Colunas, which lead to the water, they’d pretty much looked at and photographed everything to be seen at this location.
They sat on a bench and rested their tired tootsies as they contemplated their next move. Lindy took off a shoe and rubbed at her ankle feeling the stain that all the walking put on it. The sprain wasn’t totally healed.
“Why doesn’t the language sound like Spanish?” Michelle asked as she listened to a couple of Portuguese men discussing something nearby. “It has a hint of it, but also a hint of French, doesn’t it?”
“While it’s a romance language, and it has the same root as Spanish, it developed separately with words and pronunciations varying. I speak a little Spanish, but while I can read and understand some of the Portuguese, most of it is very difficult for me.” Lindy paused to put her shoe back on and tie the laces. “And you’re right; a little French probably came in from the Basque regions. Certainly, rue is French for road while calle is Spanish. Now, if I lived in Spain and I visited Portugal often, in a short time, I might pick up the differences, and it would become easier. Or so I’ve been told. So, are you ready for some lunch?”