Eyes aflutter

When I first arrived in London, I created a list of the places that I wanted to visit most. I had been very slowly going through that list, and Lisbon was one my priorities. I don't know why Lisbon was such a priority for me - possibly because I wanted to do something different to Spain, and because my mum was born in Macau which was a Portuguese colony at the time. The custard tarts looked really good too.

It was a bit of a last minute decision, and I managed to get some flights that didn't cost me the earth on TAP Portugal - the Portuguese flag carrier - sparing me the pain of flying on Ryanair which while admittedly cheap, has questionable business practices. Not only that, TAP Portugal not only gives me Star Alliance points, but it's a full service airline which serve food for free (a hotdog from Heathrow to Lisbon!), allows you to check in luggage for free and provided me free newspapers from London. Which calculates a saving of about £3 despite paying an extra £30 to avoid Ryanair. But no complaints whatsoever.

When landing at Lisbon I was one of the few people who had a non-EU passport, and while all the EU citizens shuffled behind 1 immigration counter, I breezed past the queue and was whisked through within seconds as the first person in the line. The EU citizens glared at me, and then decided to stop their glaring in case my swift clearance through immigration was due to me having a dipomatic passport or being someone of consequence. Of which I am neither, which was confirmed moments later when I found out that the airport bus was no longer running. I made a split second decision to take the local bus as it arrived, shuffling on with all the locals and some brave tourists who decided that a taxi would have been too expensive. We trundled along, and although I was slightly nervous by not having a map to follow along, I was feeling excited being in Lisbon. Excitement turned into grumpiness as we hit a monumental traffic jam and moved 100 metres in an hour. An hour and a half later, we had gone about 500 metres more, and then the bus driver pulled to the side and kicked everyone off. By then I was cursing the Portuguese and went off to the look for a taxi. Fortunately, we had hit the main road into central Lisbon, and by pure chance found a Metro station after walking by an enormous Workers Union rally, complete with children waving red flags and adults chanting slogans.

Tired, thoroughly shitty and terrified that I had lost my hostel bed by being 2 hours late to my designated check in time, I found myself at my beautiful hostel. One interesting fact about Lisbon is that of the top 10 hostels in the world, 4 of them are in Lisbon. Having booked so late, the 2 most popular hostels were booked out and I was left with the third option which was not a disappointment at all. Smiling staff, clean bathrooms and a beautiful lounge area was waiting for me. The Living Lounge Hostel turned out to be quite funky - each room was painted by a different artist and had different themes. The guy at reception had walked me to my room (a nice touch not experienced at any other hostel) and I found my room's theme was coloured circles rising from the floor all over the ceiling. A girl was sleeping in the bunk below mine, and as I started to unpack she started to sigh. Initially I thought she was just making sleeping noises. Until she started heaving her whole upper body as she sighed, I knew it was a signal for me to get out. I snapped my locker shut and she turned around to give me a death stare.

Whatever. Mole.

Now I was annoyed. It's a HOSTEL, woman. People come in and out at different hours, and total silence and privacy is a non-starter. Being passive-aggressive I decided to take my revenge later, and tried to leave as quietly as I could. Meanwhile: a note on how the hostel was created: Years ago when Bulgaria was trying to gain entry to the EU Club, the EU did a project to test cultural differences and got a whole lot of different EU citizens (Portuguese, Germans, Dutch, French and Bulgarians) where they were put together in a campsite to do projects together. The participants were monitored by EU officials to see whether the Bulgarians could get along with the rest of the EU citizens. Apparently at the end, the group had got along so well that there were tears and promises to stay together forever. Two participants decided to get together to open a hostel in Lisbon for young travelers and in the meantime, completely revolutionised the quality of hostels in Portugal.

In the glow of the sunset, I wandered out to explore the local area in Baixa and stood along the river watching the sunset. I moseyed around and went back to the hostel for dinner. Another great addition to my hostel was that a 3 course meal and wine was provided - all for 8 euros! They had a cook come in at night and prepare food, and then at 9pm you sat at the large tables and literally got served by the cook. The food was fresh and the wine mellow. On my table of 10 there were 9 Americans. And me. And of the 10, three were boys. The other 2 American guys were ridiculously loud and screamed camp. I ended up talking to the girl sitting next to me, and it turns out that she had been to Melbourne before. Backpackers who had been to Melbourne are generally rare to find, so I enquired some more to find that her mother was sitting next to her. Her parents had lived in Melbourne back in the early 80s in North Balwyn! We laughed a lot and I had a chat to the girl's mum/mom about Melbourne, turning to my work in the civil service, turning to Muslim fundamentalism turning to Asian values turning to Asian parenting. At times she got a little bit scary when talking about Muslim fundamentalism, possibly due to being a (in no particular order) Texan Republican Christian. She had 7 children, and when I asked her how she managed, she said that it was "by the Grace of God", but also more to do with her thinking that raising children was blue collar work as infants, and then as they got older, being white collar work to manage the bigger picture of how her children fared in life. An interesting concept.

After dinner we sat around talking some more when Jan (the mother) decided she wanted to explore the city by night. Her daughter was enthused, and they invited me along. As we were leaving, another one of my Kiwi room-mates who I had met briefly was also invited and he decided to come along too. We walked around the hip Chiado district where all the bars are and it was absolutely pumping. Entire side streets (in a similar vein to Melbourne) were full of people drinking and smoking, and we decided to have a drink. Wandering around with my beer in hand, we found that the maze of side streets just kept on getting busier and busier - no-one was in the bars, but everyone was standing outside enjoying the warm twilight. We kept back going to the same bar where I met quite possibly the most affable and genial barman to ever serve me a plastic cup of beer. I thoroughly enjoyed myself that night having a good chat and somewhat feeling alive. The alternative was to listen to the mole beneath me sigh and/or snore. We quit while we were ahead at about 2 in the morning and wandered the quiet streets of Baixa back to to the hostel, finding that the hostel was still pumping. Ah, the party life of all these young people.

The next morning I was sitting at breakfast when my New Zealander room-mates came down to join me at breakfast. Sitting down, the Kiwi bloke eyed the chess board on the coffee table and asked if I played chess. I replied in the affirmative, and I could see the repressed exasperation of his girlfriend. The Frasier Crane in me almost mused aloud that "it would be a quick game". Turns out that karma outranks pomposity and after some early wins with a lot of swearing from my opponent, I made some blunders (or more accurately, he started to play much better) and I lost the game. I bade farewell to my room-mates and then left to explore Lisbon.

Like scratched vinyl, I will now start to talk about how lovely it was being in the sunshine. My back was already sweating into my new backpack which I had bought recently (2 days before my trip to Lisbon my zip fell off my front pocket off my bag with my keys inside it. I couldn't get the zip to open, so had to borrow a pair of scissors to cut open my bag. Having cut open my bag to get my house keys, my bag's zip miraculously opened. I mourned for a while for my backpack - I had had it since my very first backpacking adventure at the end of 2003, and it had served me well for over 5 years), and in trying to make it to the castle on top of the hill, found myself at a flea market.

I am not usually a fan of flea markets, but always have a browse anyway. My family has a collection of turtles, and everywhere our family roams we always find the time to purchase a locally-made turtle. We have some lovely pieces at home in Melbourne, and also some rather ugly ones. Some have fallen by the wayside (i.e. sucked up accidently by the vacuum cleaner) and we still have our favourites. At the Lisbon flea market I found a man selling me a raft of wooden objects, and offered to sell me this enormous giraffe for 15 euros. I declined, but saw a small turtle instead. His asking price was 5 euros, and I managed to bargain him down to 4. Upon reporting this back to my flatmate, Frances, she laughed at me and told me I was a shit negotiator. I may be, but then again, I didn't feel like arguing to save maybe another euro when this man's livelihood depended on selling wooden objects at a flea market during the day.

The Alfama district in Lisbon is right up on a hill with some steep walks, and I was getting tried already. Talk about a lack of stamina. I wanted to find this wretched castle so I could go in and sit down with a cold drink. I eventually made it to the castle, and although it was nice, there was nothing really special. Although, there was a piper who was busking, and there were about 15 cats surrounding him. I veered between wanting to pat the cats to being appalled at the mangy things circling one of the major tourist attractions in Lisbon. I was however appalled at how expensive my lunch was. I was hot and tired and hungry, and the Bueno Kinder chocolate wasn't sustaining me any more. I bought a fish dish with some rather foul tasting vegetables, setting me back 10 euros, although i did get to sit in the castle courtyard keeping some peacocks and some cats company.

From the castle, I wandered down from the top of Alfama to the bottom. At first it was nice to walk the narrow cobbled streets without a person in sight, but then it got a bit creepy in the eerie silence. Walking down a deserted alleyway, I heard 2 footsteps behind me. I quickened my pace, but heard the footsteps also quickening behind me. I thought I was about to get mugged, so decided to turn around to face my would-be attackers. They walked past me. I breathed a sigh of relief and slapped myself for being Mr Paranoid again. Although, as we all know it, the day I am not paranoid is the day I get mugged. Such is life.

I wandered the streets of Lisbon some more, walking up to the Marque de Pombal. From there I decided to visit a museum, and eventually chose the Music Museum which was housed in a disused section of a Metro station. After paying the entrance fare, I was immediately annoyed to find out that half the museum was closed, and that a kiddie exhibition had just finished. I ended up taking in half a museum with about 50 kids under the age of 5, running around and screaming and carrying on. It would have been exciting if the museum's insurers had decided to pay a visit at that exact moment to see the kids skidding around priceless instruments, but I was nevertheless pleased to see a Stradivarius on display (with a photo of Mr Stradivarius himself and the instrument he had created). I had been looking for a Stradivarius violin, but had to make do with a cello on display.

Back at the hostel, I met American woman and family again. And while there was no-one to witness it, I swear I was being pursued by the American woman's daughter (eyelids fluttering) in addition to the other guy I met at dinner the previous night. Nevertheless at dinner time I got stuck sitting across 2 Dutch fashion photographers who thought the world of themselves (despite them being unattractive and full of themselves), although one of them regaled us with tales of her living on a houseboat moored in the canals of Amsterdam (apparently these boats can't be taken for daytrips or rides - they can be moved, but only to another mooring in the canal!). The American family sat next to me again, and although there were some aspects of the conversation I wanted to steer clear of, it was a happy conversation. Apparently in her heyday, Mom was a skydiver who had completed over 1000 dives, and had done basejumping as well. I told her that I would like to skydive one day, and she said that the best way would be to go to the highest elevation, and if I did it tandem, to find the most unkempt hippie looking guy to dive with. Apparently the clean-cut ones have normal jobs and do sky-diving on weekends only. The hippie-hippie-shake are the ones who sky-dive full time and are more experienced. Mental note to self when skydiving.

The next morning I set off to Sintra - a small town about an hour away from Lisbon. I had not intended to go, but everyone I spoke to at the hostel was raving about it non-stop. I was going to choose between Belem (a suburb of Lisbon on the river) or Sintra, and decided to do half-days of each. I was told that it would be difficult, in that I needed a full day at Sintra, but I thought that this would be a good compromise to see everything.

Sintra was cute, but I fear that the high expectations led to my disappointment. There was a fairytale castle with some cute rooms (including an Oriental room with some furniture looking like it had been pinched from my grandfather's house) where Portuguese royalty once lived. What was more exciting was the local bus trip up to the top of the hill where the castle was. All the tourists had gotten on the local bus (a normal sized bus at that), and we were speeding through the narrow and curvy roads up the mountain at breakneck speed. Sitting at a window seat, you could see right down to the bottom of the mountain. Every sharp turn the bus driver made, the bus driver honked his horn in case of oncoming traffic, although I wondered whether the honking was out of sheer habit rather than trying to warn oncoming traffic. In any event, he wasn't going to stop. On the way down from the mountain, I got the same bus driver who grinned at me (I had been the only tourist to try to buy a ticket in halting Portuguese (seeng indeed). Tailgating a car down the mountain, I saw that there was an enormous dip in front. The car in front crashed through. Then the bus crashed through. All the female passengers screamed. I caught the bus driver grinning with satisfaction in his rear-vision mirror.

There were other museums and a Moorish castle to explore in Sintra as well, but I wanted to get to Belem. I took a breather back at the hostel and it was off to get a tram to the very lovely place on the water. One of the main attractions was the enormous naval monument on the river, comprising of sculptures of men and sailors on an anchor. The white stone reflected magnificently against the sun, and I took many photos of what is probably one of my most favourite monuments in Europe. Walking along the sea watching men fish, there was a group of German boys in front of me. They were holding hands, and the fact that no-one batted an eyelid was nice. We were all heading towards the Belem tower, and I decided not to go up into the tower given the pricey entrance fee. Instead I sat along the river and watched the world go by until I could feel my t-shirt sticking to my backpack. I wandered back to yet another market in full swing (this time with much nicer but more expensive wares on sale) and went into a little cafe to stand at the counter to order my Custard Tart. According to the staff at the hostel, the Belem custard tarts are special in that they simply don't taste the same anywhere else in Portugal. I stood at the counter, ordered my tart, and bit into heaven. I am used to custard tarts being Chinese myself, but this was different. The pastry had bite and crunch to it. The glaze had made the pastry slightly chewy and the custard was cool and sweet. I would go back to Belem again just for the tarts. I took the tart outside with me (playing tourist and taking a picture of my tart with a bite missing) and continued to top up my vitamin D levels.

I took an old-style tram back to the centre of Lisbon where you gripped on for your life (what is it with Lisbon pubic transportation and holding on for dear life?). It was hot and stinky but quite a bit of fun, in contrast to the sleek comfort of the new trams. I wandered around some more the streets of Lisbon, wandering into a sports shop and buying an enormous tennis ball for 1.50 euros just for fun, and then to a final dinner back at the hostel. It was very quiet that evening, and I was seated with the hostel staff. I was tired and not in the mood for chatting, and it was an early night. Indeed, that night my 4-bed dorm was empty which was great. Earlier that morning, the mole beneath me had made a song-and-dance when she prepared to leave at 6.30am, and just as she left, I sat up and did the most melodramatic sigh for her to see how stupid she had been. She gaped at me and slammed the door shut. Very satisfactory. She is clearly the type of girl who goes through life not realising how unpopular she is. Then again, I am the type of guy who goes through life not realising how passive-aggressive I can be. Oh wait. I just conceded that point. Win for me.

That night I set my alarm to get up at 4am (for a cheap 7am flight). All night I kept on waking up worrying about sleeping through my alarm, and eventually at 3am I got up anyway and read my book. I didn't fear disturbing my felllow room-mates, so i took a shower and packed my bags, ready to leave at 5am. My taxi driver was great showing me the sights I hadn't seen (and still haven't seen, given the pitch darkness we drove through), and I was off back on very nice TAP Portugal flight back to London. For some reason, all the TAP Portugal staff thought i was Portuguese, only to understand the universal sign language for stunned mullet. I waited for 5 minutes at a completed deserted non-EU passport line and in desperation went through the EU line expecting to get yelled at. The amiable chap at passport control was friendly and I was through to buy another custard tart (which was definitely not the same as the one in Belem).

I got winked at by another male flight crew and landed home in London. It must be all those pheremones leaching out of my backpack.

You can take that look off your face now.