Lisbon, 20.12.2024: Black Cats and Closed Churches

So yesterday on the 19th, after breakfast we figured out how to take the subway to the Gulbenkian Museum, and spent several hours there before lunch. Following the directions in Steves’ guidebook proved a bit more complicated than we had anticipated, and as we exited the subway (blue line) at the São Sebastião stop and tried to spot the El Corte Inglés store that’s supposed to be at your back as you walk down Avenida de Aguiar, it proved difficult to find. As we were pondering that matter, a couple, French I thought, came up with their guidebooks and asked if we knew how to find a certain street. Turned out that when we finally got to the Gulbenkian, they were there, so they, too, were trying to follow evasive directions to the evasive entrance to the museum. (Video above: an accordion player on the blue line of the Metro to Bairro Alto, 20.12.2024.)

When we finally got oriented along Avenida de Aguiar, we found that we were on the wrong side of the large and busy avenue, and had to find a way across it to the rather hidden and inconspicuously signed entrance to the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian gardens through which you have to walk to reach the museum buildings. The gardens were very pleasant to walk through, heavily wooded, with pathways that were both covered in pea gravel and had actual paved walkways, and with flat circles next to the paths that collected rainwater to simulate shallow ponds. 

As we neared the buildings that constitute the museum, a black cat suddenly appeared on the path ahead of us, sauntering in the direction of the buildings. When we reached the stairs leading up from the gardens to the museum buildings, there was the cat sitting jauntily on them, as if waiting for us. As we approached, it got to its feet and led us up the pathway.

More confusion when you reach the museum buildings: you buy tickets in a building separate from the museum itself. Then you have to walk from that building with your tickets to go to the museum proper – and none of this is explained by the rather cold, unhelpful staff in either the ticket building or the museum building. As Steve said later when we had lunch in the Bairro Alto, the people at the Gulbenkian were the most unfriendly we’ve yet encountered anywhere in Lisbon. At one point as we walked through the museum, I crossed a line I hadn’t seen – it’s marked on the floor, where no one looks as one looks at paintings and other exhibits in a museum – in front of a Turner painting, and a docent quickly ran up to me to instruct me not to cross the line. Rude and unhelpful….

Iranian prayer niche, late 13th or early 14th century, Gulbenkian

Turkish tile panel, trees in moonlight, ca. 1580, Gulbenkian

I did like the collection at the Gulbenkian, manageable and not dauntingly large, and idiosyncratic. In particular, I found a section of prayer niches from Iran and tilework from Turkey, dating from the early medieval to the late medieval period, fascinating. The small collection of Impressionist works and the several Turner paintings were also alluring. 

The place was vastly overheated, however, and after the walk from the subway through the Gulbenkian gardens, I had worked up quite a sweat that continued profusely as we walked through the museum, so that I finally had to find a bench and sit down and fan myself. Nor was I the only person fanning himself that I spotted as we walked through the museum.

The temperature was in the 60sF when we arrived at the Gulbenkian and reached 65 yesterday. Portuguese folks evidently consider that cold winter weather. Everyone is bundled in sweaters and jackets, and buildings have heat roaring, our hotel included, so that we have to open the door to our balcony to let cooler air in and make the room tolerable.

I did encounter a very nice young woman who may or may not have been a Gulbenkian employee. While I waited outside in the fresh air as Steve returned to fetch his bag that the entrance folks insisted he put in a locker when we entered the museum, I dropped my iPhone and then could not pick it up – could not bend over to accomplish that task. I managed with my left foot to work it up onto my right foot and was gingerly stepping with the phone on my foot to a place where I could then set the phone down on a higher spot and retrieve it. As I did that, the young woman came up and said, “May I help? Do you need help?” When I said yes, she bent and picked up the phone and handed it to me and smiled kindly. I appreciated her very much.

The museum tour finished, we took the blue line of the subway in the opposite direction – instead of the direction of Reboleira, which we’d taken to get to the Gubenkian, the direction of Santa Apolónia – down to Bairro Alto, and toured that part of the city. I’d read in Rick Steves’ guidebook that the overlook above Igreja de São Roque is worth visiting, so we headed towards that site, discovering as we walked up R. da Misericórdia from Chiado that it was quite an uphill climb, a challenging one for two old gents, one of whom is recovering from a gastric infection, the other of whom is too stout.

Tile-faced buildings. R. da Misericórdia

I did enjoy seeing the beautiful tilework on buildings along Misericórdia, and took a number of good photos of it. But by the time we reached São Roque, we had decided that the overlook might not be worth the steep climb, and when I spotted an inviting looking small restaurant across from the church, we made a beeline to it and decided to have a bite of lunch before we toured São Roque.

View from outside table at O Largo restaurant, Trindade Coelho 3

Vegetable soup at  O Largo restaurant

Bacalhau à Brás  at  O Largo restaurant

The restaurant was the O Largo at Largo Trindade Coelho 3. A nice Indian waiter standing outside invited us to sit inside, but the chance to sit at an outside table in the refreshing cool air proved more tempting, and we ate al fresco. We both had a bowl of a delicious puréed vegetable soup made, the waiter told us, from beans, potatoes, and carrots. I could taste chicken broth, too. Steve ordered as well a serving of bacalhau à Brás, which came with a small green salad and was very tasty – flaked cod mixed with egg, potato, and onion, a mix that gave the whole dish a silky mouthfeel and unctuous taste. We had beer with our lunch, beer that came in glasses too large for either of us to finish.

As we finished eating, a colleague of the waiter came out to talk to us, and told us – I asked where the two were from – that she was from Pakistan. Both encouraged us to return there for an evening meal, and we told them if we had the opportunity to do that, we’d definitely do so.

Then across the square in front of São Roque to tour the church … which proved to be impossible. For reasons undisclosed (Is this every day? Was this for some special occasion?) the church was roped off so that one could only enter the entrance area and then look at the interior of the church from afar. A man stood on the church side of the ropes, evidently to prevent anyone from entering, and was facing perpendicular to us and others coming in to see the church, so that he pretended we were not there.

The whole experience was very off-putting, very unwelcoming, and I’m sorry to have to say, all too typical of the behavior of not a few Catholic churches at this moment in history. Since we had been thwarted in our wish to tour the church, about which we’d read in Rick Steves’ guidebook, we went down some stairs to the gift shop of the São Roque museum, and found it wasn’t worth touring – tiny, with nothing of interest for sale. The woman staffing the sales desk was nice enough, but I wondered, when she wished us a good Christmas, if she wanted to make a point of christianizing the holidays, a question that grew stronger in my mind when I saw a collection of booths selling things in the square outside the church, all of which seemed to be operated by Catholic organizations of one sort or the other.

Parochial. Embattled. Beside the point. These are things the Catholic church has chosen to make of itself at this point in history. As people turn their backs and walk away…. The total unwelcome we experienced when we walked into the church was like a parable of all of this.

Street art, R. Garrett

Then back down Misericórdia, where I’d read about the Paris em Lisboa shop, Bertrand bookstore, and A Vida Portuguesa, all of which I wanted to visit, all on Garrett Street off Misericórdia. The street turned out to be a tourist’s dream, a roped-off street with restaurant tables in the middle, people playing music, a nasty little mime-cum-automaton, etc. We visited Paris em Lisboa and found it was like stepping back into time, into a 19th-century ladies’ shop with dark wood, understated and overpriced products, haughty staff (all female).

The two women on the first floor of the shop could not have been colder. They pretended not to see us nor to hear me say good day to them. Then up the stairs we went, where the woman staffing that floor couldn’t have been nicer, and on to the top floor, where the woman staffing that floor was equally nice. We decided at that point that we’d spring for a new sheet set, a fitted bottom and flat top sheet with pillowcases, of stonewashed linen, and damn the price. The woman who waited on us was very nice and insisted on wrapping these very handsomely, and, when she saw that Steve had bottles of ginjinha and vinho verde in his bag (we’d just bought them from a little grocery store along the way, along with a persimmon), she also insisted on wrapping those in protective coverings. 

As Steve finished paying for the sheet set, I stood outside – again, blessed fresh air! – and I took a video of the street scene on either side of me. The video caught the nasty little mime, who made a big point of covering his face and then giving me the finger, though other tourists were also filming him at the same time. When Steve came out of the shop and I told him about that, he turned towards the nasty little mime and laughed loudly, with the mime then giving him the finger. What all that was about, I have no clue. We had passed him earlier and maybe he resented that we hadn’t put money in his box? Or he was an outright homophobe and deduced that we were a gay couple? Whatever….

We then decided to call it a day, though it was only mid-afternoon, and we returned to the hotel. We just don’t have the stamina for marathon touring and walking any longer. 

I said in my previous installment that Hotel Florida is fine but has seen better days. That was ungenerous. We do think it was in the past a larger and grander hotel that has been whittled down to size, with pieces of it sold to other establishments. A wall in our room has a sort of cicatrix on it, where the wallpaper has been gouged out. The carpets in the room are rather sad and gray, beyond their years.

But the place is very clean, well-managed, and generally quiet – though both nights we’ve been here now, about 1 A.M., people who must have been out to eat or drink return to their rooms boisterous and perhaps liquored up, and there’s loud talking, door slamming, what may be headboards banging against walls – and, of course, the hotel management is not responsible for any of that. What’s very nice is that the linens are changed daily, or if the beds aren’t changed, they’re made up again – try to find American hotels doing that – everything is immaculate, and if one can discount the rude Eurotalkers past midnight, it’s a very nice place to stay. Though seeing a bigger-than-life Audrey Hepburn on one elevator wall and an equally large Humphrey Bogart on the other elevator wall, both walls facing the elevator doors, is startling every time we use the elevators.

We had cheese, sausage, bread, fruit, and wine for our evening repast last night, and are replicating that meal now as I type all of this.

Docelândia cafe, R. Braamcamp 8

I slept very badly last night, with a roiling stomach and overactive mind, and when I finally fell asleep, slept so deeply that I didn’t wake until just after 9. After I had gotten shaved and dressed, we decided to look for coffee shops or cafés near the hotel, and found one just a block or block and a half away, Docelândia at R. Braamcamp 8. It had really good reviews online, many of them noting that the many hotels around this café charge €20 (it’s €18 at Hotel Florida) for breakfast, when you can get a cup of coffee, orange juice, a sandwich, and a pastel de nata at Docelândia for half that price.

And so it turned out when we walked there and had breakfast around 10 A.M. today. We had all of those and a small cheese, and found everything delicious. We’ll keep returning there for breakfast now that we’ve discovered Docelândia.

Arch of Triumph, Praça do Comércio

José I Statue, Praça do Comércio

View up R. de Prata from Praça do Comércio

After breakfast, we took the blue line subway in the direction of Santa Apolónia to the Baixa, and got out at Praça do Comércio. It was a gorgeous morning, clear, sunny, and cooler than on the previous two days, and we thoroughly enjoyed being by the river and seeing the beautiful views it affords, looking at the arch of triumph, etc. 

Wines of Portugal, Praça do Comércio

Wines of Portugal interior, Praça do Comércio

View through window, Wines of Portugal, Praça do Comércio

Rick Steves’ guidebook notes that government-sponsored wine shop Wines of Portugal across the praça, so we headed there and found it empty. This was around 12:30 P.M. The woman staffing the place told us we could buy a card and put euros on it to enable us to pour (machine-operated) drinks of any wines on display we’d like to sample. We did that, and found the vinho verde we selected, the red wine from the Douro region, and the two ports we sampled, all delicious, and Steve then bought bottles of the vinho verde and the Douro red along with a bottle of port.

Monument to massacre of Jews, Praça da Figueira

Base of monument to massacre of Jews, Praça da Figueir

Statue of D. João I, Praça da Figueira

After this, we walked up R. Augusta in the direction of Praça da Figueira, where we visited the monument to the Jews massacred in 1506, with the massacre starting in the church of São Domingos that looms over the square. Accounts of the massacre say that many of these Jews were conversos (to use the Spanish term), and were blamed for a drought afflicting the nation – so attack, slaughter, and start the slaughter in a church.

Sickening.

Caldo verde, Beira Gare restaurant, Praça Dom João da Câmara 4 near Rossio

As we headed back in the direction of Liberdade, thinking we might brave another walk up the avenue to our hotel, we happened once again on Beira Garde and decided to step in for a late lunch: it was about 2 P.M. at that point. “Our” waiter remembered us and beckoned us to a table and then brought bowls of absolutely wonderful caldo verde to us as soon as we had ordered them, followed by a plate of fried cod and french fries Steve had ordered – with glasses of beer accompanying the food. 

We thought after this that we might go to two tile shops, Fabrica Sant’Anna and D’Orey Azulejos, that Rick Steves recommends in the Bairro Alto-Chiado neighborhood. But when we started the walk to those places that Google maps recommended, it turned out to wind up steep stairs followed by more steep stairs, and we decided to heck with it and returned to the hotel to rest, a long afternoon rest.