Lisbon, 19.12.2024: Ramshackle Colors and Chocolate Cups

Christmas Market, Rossio Square

After arriving in the morning on the 18th, we were so exhausted from a day’s air travel that we showered and slept several hours once we’d reached our hotel, Hotel Florida on Duque de Palmela off Avenida de Liberdade near Parque Eduardo VII. The hotel is pleasant, though seems to have seen better days. Our friend Mayson B., who was formerly a travel agent in New Orleans and helped us make arrangements for a number of trips, recommended it to us. It’s where he has stayed when he’s been in Lisbon.

 

As the taxi took us from the airport to our hotel, we could see why travel gurus like Rick Steves say that Lisbon is a beautiful if ramshackle, sprawling city with many layers of history. Quite a bit of the housing we passed is, in fact, ramshackle, almost like housing projects you’d see in New Orleans. The feel of cities with a glorious past which have now been bypassed by time…. Thank goodness for the EU which, with its infusion of money, has allowed Portugal to emerge from its impoverished and autocratic past – and what’s going to happen now as fascism rears its ugly head everywhere in the world again? There were signs along the streets that suggested to me a political contest is going on now between candidates promoting autocracy and those defending democracy.

 

Once we’d gotten up from our long sleep yesterday morning, in the afternoon we walked down Avenida de Liberdade to the Christmas market in Rossio square in the Baixa. To say that Liberdade was teeming with people would be an overstatement, but lots of people were out on a Wednesday afternoon shopping or strolling, none walking with much determination or the energy you’d meet in a bustling city in a cooler climate. The temperatures were balmy, in the higher 60s, and it was exceedingly humid, so that I broke into a sweat after a bit and had to take off my jacket. Rick Steves is correct about the tiled sidewalks being hazardous. The weather made the tiles slick, and at times, we had to watch ourselves to avoid slipping.

 

Monument to WWI Dead, Avenida de Liberdade

Winged Lion Fountain, Avenida de Liberdade

I took desultory photos of buildings painted in pretty ramshackle colors, of the imposing monument to the dead of World War I and two cast-iron winged lions that spout water that an online piece about monuments and sculptures on Liberdade says were made by mass production in France and have exact counterparts in Porto’s Gomes Teixeira Square. Maybe I was too tired to appreciate all we saw along Liberdade, a long avenue with ritzy shops and imposing buildings that again puts me in mind of parts of New Orleans. Or maybe the overcast skies and mugginess made things seem a bit drab. I’m hoping we’ll find Lisbon more enchanting in days to come.

Christmas Market, Rossio Square

Christmas Market, Rossio Square

The Christmas market was also a bit disappointing. There’s the … strangeness … of replicating the iconography and themes (fir trees and snow) of Christmas in the north of Europe, of Christmas markets in Germany and Austria, which provide the Ur-pattern of Christmas markets. Bing Crosby singing about a white Christmas over loudspeakers in a big square with seagulls wheeling overhead and the promise of absolutely no snow in the southern European climate. 

There were booths selling cheeses, sausages, dried fruits, pastéis, drinks of wine or ginjinha, handicrafts including azulejos (these all seemed mass-produced), etc. We bought a spicy chorizo and a small whole cheese that we sampled first, with a taste like a robust brie and also a brie’s texture. Also had a sip, and I do mean sip, of ginjinha at one booth. It was served in little cups smaller than the size of thimbles. I wondered, when the man at the booth poured the liqueur and asked if we wanted a red or white cup, why the color mattered (and where he saw red, I saw brown). Then, when Steve finished his sip and returned the cup, the man croaked, “Chocolate,” and explained that the cups are chocolate – so, white chocolate cups and milk chocolate cups (the “red” ones). He then put his hand over his eyes to mime shock at our inability to know we had drunk our ginjinha from edible chocolate cups, which did taste nice with the coating of cherry-cinnamon liqueur left in them.

 

Beira Gare Restaurant Near Rossio Square

Beira Gare Restaurant Near Rossio Square

Bifana, Vegetable Soup, Beer

As we headed back in the direction of Avenida de Liberdade, we spotted a small restaurant, Beira Gare, at Praça Dom João da Câmara 4 near Rossio, and sat down for a bite to eat. It was very pleasant inside, unpretentious, with a friendly waiter who immediately came and took our order – a bifana sandwich for me and a fried cod sandwich for Steve, with a bowl of vegetable soup that we split – and came back to the table and talked to us several times. He wanted to know what we thought of Trump. Steve said, “He’s a fascist,” and the man repeated the word as if he was surprised to hear Trump characterized that way.

 

The soup was especially good, a mix of cabbage, beans, shredded carrots in a chicken broth that may have contained puréed potato to thicken it. The bifana was pedestrian, thickly sliced pork on a crusty bread roll, but after I had sprinkled some oil infused with hot peppers on it, it was quite tasty. We washed the food down with big glasses of beer.

 

The walk back to our hotel after that meal, uphill this time instead of downhill, was arduous, and by the time we got to the hotel, I was so drenched with sweat that my shirt looked as if I’d stepped into a shower. Steve then insisted on walking around the Marquês de Pombal circle next to our hotel to buy some rolls for us to eat with the cheese and sausage in the morning, and after that, we tried watching the rest of a movie, “Brighton Rock,” that we’d begun online before the trip, and before I knew it, I was falling asleep. So we shut that down and went to bed, totally exhausted, and slept well over 12 hours.

 

I’m finishing this chronicle after we went down to the breakfast room and had a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, sliced ham and cheese, fruits, bread rolls and butter, pastries including pastéis, cappuccinos, and juices. I’m feeling a bit more human after having eaten – and we’re now making plans for a day’s activity that we tell ourselves has to be less arduous than our long walk yesterday uphill from the Baixa to Parque Eduardo VII.