Portugal, Day 8 & 8.5: Final Concert & Travel Home

We packed up and left Algarve in the midst of rain and wind like you wouldn't believe.  Or maybe you would believe, because even on the sunny days, there have been rain showers, if not downpours, every single day we've been here.  All the locals have apologized for the weather, saying how atypical it is for them this time of year, but that they've needed the rain.  I guess we can't complain too much, because they got a foot of snow back home, in the middle of March.  But, you know, climate change isn't a real thing and we're all just making it up.  Anyway...

We got on the bus and went to the church we were singing in, Nossa Senhora da Conceição.  Or rather, we got dropped off near it and walked on slippery cobblestones the rest of the way because the streets were too narrow for the bus.  I didn't mind too much because these trips are all about walking anyway, but the cobblestones are extremely slippery when wet, and one person fell on the walk and a couple of us had to help them up and support them the rest of the way to the church, which of course we didn't mind doing, but it just shows how slippery the sidewalks and streets are.  I nearly fell a few times myself, because of course there were multiple hills we were going down on the way there too.

We had rehearsal when we got there, both our own and with the Coro Vox Albuhera, a local community choir from what I could gather.  This group was mostly middle aged and older people from various backgrounds who lived in the area and liked to sing.  If there was any other connection I am not sure what it was.  This group was just as nice as the other Portuguese choir we sang with, though most of the ones I talked to didn't speak nearly as much English as the first chorus and it was a lot harder to have real conversations, which I did feel a little bad about, but what can you do?  We sang very nicely together, doing a couple songs with our director and one with theirs.  Afterwards we walked to the conservatory a few blocks away which I guess is associated with either the church or the group, where they had a buffet lunch set up.  This was more of a casual thing, as nearly everything was something homemade that the members of the Portuguese choir had cooked for us, and we all stood around eating while holding our plates.  There was so much food that I could never remember it all, but it was all good.  Lots of fish cakes and pickled stuff, and tons of dessert.  My favorite thing was the wine-soaked pears.  It looked like they had peeled the pears and stuck the whole thing in a pot of red wine (probably port wine) with maybe sugar or something added to it for at least a day and refrigerated it.  They were sweet and didn't taste like wine at all.

After lunch it was time for the concert.  There was a full audience, and I think knowing his helped.  This concert went really well, maybe even as well as the first one we did.  It definitely makes up for the kind of meh concert that we did a few days ago.  The last couple days in general have made up for the kind of meh days that we've had on this trip, and I'm now back on the positive side of things and really glad that I came here.  I'm also really glad we didn't do the separate group scarf thing for that one song, that I got my yellow one back, and that when we finally got around to doing the song in Portuguese, we didn't butcher it too badly.

Right after the concert we went back to the conservatory to change into regular clothing and hop on the bus to Lisbon.  I don't know how I missed the memo to change into semi-nice clothing because we weren't going to the hotel first, but straight to the restaurant for our farewell dinner.  Most people were dressed somewhat nicely, and I was dressed comfortably for a somewhat long bus ride, but whatever.  It was dark when we arrived at the restaurant, or as far as the bus could fit.  This was a somewhat fancy place that was located for some reason on the docks near all the fishing boats and stuff.  I already mentioned it was dark, and the Portuguese apparently don't put a lot of stock in street lights.  This was a bit problematic because several planks of the docks were broken, rotted through, or just gone, leaving gaping holes for pedestrians to put their feet through and either break an ankle or fall and most likely lose a shoe to the ocean in the process.  A few of us volunteered to stand on these holes and direct the rest of the group around them as they passed, both on the way to and from the restaurant.  I'm not sure which ones were more scary:  the bigger holes on the walking path or the smaller ones on the stairs.

The food was good and there was, in typical Portuguese fashion, a ton of it.  We started with bread, which was mostly miniature pieces of toast that you could put different sauces on:  oil and vinegar (why?), sardine spread (pretty good), and something else I didn't try.  Then they came around with tempura vegetables, which were ok, but instead of soy sauce to tip it, they had a big vat of vinegar (again, why?).  Next was a bowl of pineapples in what looked like mayonnaise but wasn't, and I could figure out neither what it was nor what we were supposed to do with it.  After that was sliced tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and pesto, which is pretty hard to mess up, and so it was good.  Then they had little breads I think with warm cheese (brie?  goat cheese? I don't remember) and honey.  These were amazing and I had a lot of them.  I'm pretty sure after this it was time for the main course, which for non-special-dieters was veal with caramelized onions and some sweetish sauce I couldn't place and I think vegetables including baked potato slices.  This was really good, and I ate the whole thing; it's only the second meal here I've been able to finish because their portions are huge.   Then there was this odd mousse cream thing for dessert.  It was good but very rich and I couldn't finish it.  They are fond of their custards here.

After supper and a few speeches by the Stutsmans (the family sponsoring the trips we take, who decided to come along on this one), the dean, and Dr. Gemme, we made the treacherous walk back to the bus and then went to the hotel.  Some people went out to party on their last night in Portugal, but Bobby and I were never party people and also we're getting old, so we just stayed in and fell asleep after making fun of Portuguese TV.  A lot of over-the-top reality shows, some sports coverage, and a bunch of really weird cartoons, none of which we could actually understand.  Bernd das Brot is a German kid's show that they air here and it is about a sentient loaf of bread that is constantly depressed and grumpy.  I encourage you to read about it, because even just that is entertaining.  And let's not forget the Biggs channel, which was just a looping animation of going through some kind of maze; I'm sure that during the day it was cartoons or something and this was just their late night feed, but still, pretty weird.

I would like to tell you that the next day where we went home was uneventful, but that wouldn't be entirely true.  We had all morning to pack, but Bobby and I both woke up with the flu and didn't want to get out of bed.  We did eventually, and we'd missed breakfast at the hotel by then so we went out to a pastry shop for a breakfast of pastry and soda.  Then back to the hotel to shower and pack.  We got on the bus, and then on the plane after saying goodbye to our tour guides and bus driver, Erich, Mario, and Pedro, respectively.  Again, couples weren't seated together, but this time I managed to trade my aisle seat with the person next to Bobby's inner seat so I could sit next to him.  We were both pretty miserable on the plane ride, but Bobby managed to sleep for a lot more of it than I could.  My headphone jack didn't work so I couldn't watch any movies (they didn't even have English subtitles or I would've tried that), but I did read a whole book on the plane.  The food was not great but I've certainly had worse on planes.  We were both cold on the plane ride, and I alternated between freezing and sweating.  Also, between already being sick/having a headache and being in a pressurized aircraft, my head hurt so badly that I was crying.  I felt like it might actually explode I was in so much pain.  I'd taken all the drugs in my purse and they weren't doing a damn thing.  Eventually I got a flight attendant and asked for a bag of ice to put on my head, and I spent the rest of the ride holding a bag of ice alternately to my forehead and back of my neck, because the cold was the only thing that could numb the pain even a little bit.  Eventually we landed, got our bags, got through customs, and then had to wait for the bus to pick us up.  We got back to SCSU without breaking down this time, and I drove us home.  By this time, I'd recovered a little but Bobby had gotten worse.  We got home after midnight, where an enthusiastic Akasho greeted us.  Jim came up and said hi, and then we went to bed.

Overall, it was a good trip.  The weather could have been better, but we still had a good time.  This group managed to be a bit less like the obnoxious college Americans that we always seem to be whenever we go someplace, and it was interesting actually talking to the people you sing next to all year.  We saw some cool stuff and ate some good food and met some really nice people, so I'd say it's a win, and I think I'll want to go on the next one as long as the price doesn't dramatically rise.  I really enjoyed singing other country's music with other country's choruses in that other country.  That's the best part of the trip for me.

Portugal, Day 7: Sand and Sun

Today was a true vacation day.  After breakfast at the hotel (they had lots of stuff but I only had time for fruit and a croissant), we got on the bus and went to Sand City, which claims to be the biggest permanent exhibition of sand art in the world.  They had a whole garden of sand sculptures, made just from sand and water, pressed and carved into all sorts of shapes and designs, although most of them were people.  It only took about an hour to go through the whole thing, but it was really cool.  They had a few pieces that had been damaged and were covered up and areas cordoned off because of what I presume to be damage from the recent rains.  Some of the pieces had been there long enough to grow moss or plants, and some were very new.  They rotate the displays every so often, so there will be different things to see if you ever go back.

Then they took us back to the hotel for nearly six hours of free time, which we used to go down to the beach behind the hotel, swim in the heated indoor pool and go in the hotel's hot tub, and nap.  We also walked into town for a bite to eat and to get some snacks and drinks for tomorrow's bus ride back to Lisbon.  The beach was surrounded by cliffs of clay, and had perfect waves for surfing...if only we'd had access to a surfboard.  I was kind of surprised nobody was surfing there, because this area of Portugal is renowned for its good waves.  Maybe the water was just too cold (I dipped my feet in, and brrrrr!).  They had brochures for things to do in Algarve, and if we'd known about them and known we'd have this much free time earlier, we may have booked an excursion for a dolphin watching cruise or a cave kayaking tour, but hey, we needed a relaxing day before tomorrow's concert, and I'm happy with what we did.

For supper, we went to a nice restaurant in town, a bit further away from the hotel.  We got on the bus and passed a lot of cool architecture (very jumpable) and art on the way.  There were about half a dozen rotaries on our journey, and each of them had a big art sculpture in the center.  The bus was going too fast to take any pictures of them, but I appreciate that they were there.  There was a man with a paper airplane in one hand and a paper boat in the other, a series of walls covered with decorative tiles, some giant globes, dolphins, and my favorite was a couple of worms wrapped around each other smiling, and you could see their tails coming up out of the ground on the little traffic islands approaching and leaving the rotary.  It was cute.  There were others I don't remember and a couple that were under construction.

The food at the restaurant was really good, and for once, the correct portions.  There was bread and a pumpkin-ish vegetable soup with croutons in it.  The main dish was pork with cheese and fig or prune stuffing covered with an orange sauce, steamed veggies, and mashed sweet potatoes.  Dessert was a fruit cake with berry sauce drizzle and ice cream made from prickly pears.  It was so good.

Now we're back at the hotel for the night, and we've got to pack up because we're checking out tomorrow morning, going to our rehearsal and concert, then going on a long bus ride back to Lisbon so we're close to the airport the next day when we leave.

1-Sand sculptures.
2-Beach.
3-Restaurant for supper had awesome jumping stuff.
4-Main dish, very fancy.

Portugal, Day 6: On the bus to Algarve

I was too tired to pack everything last night, so I did all that this morning, not leaving me a lot of time for breakfast, or so I thought.  I stuffed some fruit and pastry in my face and when they said the bus was coming rushed out to wait in the lobby for another ten minutes.  But, whatever, we got on the bus and stayed there for three hours.  We went to a rest stop for lunch, and it was pretty bad.  There was not enough food for a bus load of people, and what they had was overpriced.  What we wound up getting tasted okay, but it took way longer for everyone to get their food an eat than expected.  We were supposed to be on the bus for less than half an hour and make a stop in Santarem for a tour, but there was a building collapse and flooding over the last couple days and getting around town was still a bit hairy according to the guides, and just to be on the safe side, we were going to skip it and go straight to the hotel in Algarve.  This meant three more hours on the bus without a significant break (minus a rest stop with the lousiest bathrooms I've ever used, and I've gone in the woods before).  The one cool thing about it is that a whooping crane couple made a nest on top of one of the light poles there.

We got to the hotel and had time to use the pool and hot tub before supper.  The hotel had a buffet dinner and had just about every kind of regular food animal you could think of, which I sampled, and it was all good.  They had a ton of salads and veggies and some fruit as well.  They also had a ton of different cakes and mousse and ice cream for dessert, which of course I tried, and they were delicious.  After supper, we jumped around on the hotel's back patio for a bit before just going back to the hotel room to chill.  Tomorrow we've got a cool-sounding tour of sand sculptures scheduled.  I hope it doesn't rain (it was rainy on the way here but mix of sun and clouds once we got here).

1-Whooping crane nest.
2-Hole in the floor masquerading as a toilet-good thing I have a strong squat!
3-Panoramic of the countryside on the way here-cork trees as far as the eye can see.

Portugal, Day 5: Rainy Day in Oporto & Second Concert

This hotel had fruit, eggs, salad, and pastries for breakfast.  There was probably meat somewhere but I didn't have any today.  I had hot chocolate and added an espresso shot to it, because I was very tired.  We piled onto the bus in light rain for a guided tour of the city.  It was supposed to be part walking, part bus, but the rain kept the informational tour on the bus.  There was a really nice scenic overlook we stopped at to get out and take pictures at even though it was raining, at the end of a bridge crossing the river where you could see the whole city of Porto.  As soon as we got off the bus, the sky opened up.  Thunder crashed.  Lightning flashed.  In seconds, anyone who was outside got soaked.  We all got back on the bus.  As the bus was leaving the spot, we saw a downed tree that had been vertical and healthy only minutes before as we were driving by it on the way up.  We continued the tour on the bus and when the rain let up, we got off and went to the train station to see the tiled artwork there, get lunch on our own, and then the bus took everyone back to the hotel.  Bobby and I just relaxed in the room for a little while and later called a cab to take us to the Arrábida bridge climb.  The weather had cleared up by then and the excursion wasn't cancelled.

When we got there, we were a little early, and we were also the only ones signed up for that time slot.  Bobby jumped around on some stuff nearby while we were waiting for our turn.  The guide noticed and he thought it was pretty cool.  Later, he handed us a brochure and told us about other bridges that don't have guided climbs that he's seen other intrepid adventurers hanging around on.  We wouldn't have time or good enough weather even if we wanted to free climb bridges, which we don't, but it was nice of him to recommend local spots based on our perceived interest.  Of course, he was like, "You didn't hear this from me," so that part won't be going in to my trip advisor review.  He also called us a cab afterwards to take us back to the hotel.  The climb itself was fun.  Low-key, over pretty quickly, but overall worth it.  You get harnessed in, clipped to a metal rope fence, and walk up the curve on the underside of the bridge for the equivalent of 18 stories on a narrow staircase.  At the top, they give you port wine (apparently invented in Porto, where most of the world's port wine still comes from) served in a little chocolate shot glass, which you consume just like the ginja from the other day.  If more liquor and wine were served in chocolate cups, I'd probably be an alcoholic.  Anyway, the view was really wonderful, and then we went back down so we could get ready for our concert.

We had supper first before the concert, at a local restaurant.  There were multiple types of appetizers, all some kind of fried meat bites, and most of them I didn't like too much.  The main course was grilled chicken (or steak if one so chose), which was ok.  Fries and white rice were also served a sides.  Dessert was a kind of pudding with cinnamon that kind of tasted like fruit loops.

The concert was late, starting at 9:30pm.  We've been told this is common in Portugal, nighttime events starting that late because they siesta here so it's not so bad to get up early the next day.  I'm going to come right out and say I was a bit disappointed by this concert.  We were doing a whole hour concert by ourselves this time, no local choirs to break things up or sing joint songs with.  Apparently there was supposed to be another choir but they had to pull out for whatever reason a couple months ago, so we had a solo concert today.  There weren't many people in the audience, it was freezing, the performance space up near the altar was far too small to fit everyone very well (the upshot of this is that we once again put off doing the scarf dance stuff), and sight lines to Dr. Gemme were inconsistent.  I was bobbing and weaving to try to keep my eyes on her from behind others' heads for cues as she was moving around, and I'm pretty sure she conducted this concert differently than she's been conducting rehearsals, so looking for her to cue holds and stuff wasn't as useful because some of her signals made no sense because they weren't what we were looking out for.  People came in and out during the show, and not just in between songs, so it was distracting to some people singing.  When we got it right and didn't lose our place, though, the acoustics were great and it was a very fancy decorated church that was about 500 years old.

After the concert, it was back to the hotel.  We're leaving tomorrow morning at 9:20am to spend the day on the bus driving pretty much the full length of the country to get to Algarve, where they say it will be warm and sunny.  The weather was so bad that it was on the local news back at the hotel tonight.  We couldn't understand much of anything they were saying, but we recognized places we were today in their damage reel.

1-Tile paintings in the train station in Oporto.
2-Bobby climbing stuff.
3-Weird sculpture coming out of the building and the ground near the church we sang in.
4-Panoramic of the inside of the church we sang in, Misericordia.

Portugal, Day 4: Travel to Oporto

At around 9:00 we gathered in the hotel lobby with all of our trappings and subsequently boarded the bus to travel to Porto (or Oporto as they say it here), saying goodbye to Lisbon (Lisboa) for now.  A little after 11:00 we arrived in Fatima, a suburban town in Portugal unremarkable in all other ways except for a gigantic church plaza nearly the same size as the Vatican.  This site commemorates an approved-for-belief miracle, where it is said that three boys out playing saw the Virgin Mary in the sun and she told them a prophecy, that two of them would die soon.  Two years later, two of them did die of plague, and when the the third one eventually kicked the bucket, they buried them all together and built a church around them.  I don't care much for saints and miracles, but the plaza they built is fancy as fuck and has some good parkour spots around it.

Bobby and I found some good spots to jump around for a couple hours and had more duck rice at a place that was not nearly as good as the last one.  There's one monument/modern art installment that's a giant red heart with the bottom split like legs, and the one side probably says that it's dedicated to saint someone-or-another (I don't read Portuguese, so I couldn't tell you), and the other side has a silver man statue walking upside down on it.  The opposite side of the heart has the same setup.  Bobby ran up it, and I took a cool picture of it in panorama mode standing between the two halves so I could see the two silver statues at the same time.  I'm actually very proud of the picture I took.  (Scroll to the bottom of this post to see it.)

Then we got back onto the bus and went to Porto.  I saw the guy unloading bags huck my backpack with my laptop in it onto the sidewalk, where it crashed into another suitcase, which promptly fell on top of it.  I get that they wanted to unload things in a hurry, but really, they should be more careful.  No tip for you!  We had free time to get settled in our hotel room before supper, so I tried to check in with my friend Becka who's house-sitting for us to see how her and the animals are doing with the supposed foot of snow they're expecting back home.  This is when I discovered that the latch that holds my battery in place is busted, and it will now just fall out.  I currently have to be using my laptop on a desk where it can be stationary (and no longer function as a laptop), or have it plugged in at all times (and the charger is easily knocked out).  I happened to bring scotch tape with me, so I've put some of that on to hold the battery in, but I'm at the hotel room's desk right now typing this because I don't want to test that tape too much when I don't have many options should it fail.  When I get back home, I'll probably duct tape it in place if the latch can't be fixed when more tools than coins and pens are readily available.  My decade-old beast of a laptop is going to be super-classy.

The hotel we're staying at in Porto is super modern.  Everything is new wood and invisible doors and chrome.  The bathroom is a little weird, though.  The door and part of the wall that typically jut out making a corner next to the bed area are not opaque.  The wall itself is rounded, and the wall and door are made of a translucent glass with the strangest doorknob you've ever seen (a chrome cylinder with no real handholds, but just a small groove to grip it and turn it, and to "lock" it, you turn the knob into a slit in the thick glass edge of the adjoining wall, but you can turn the knob from both sides of the door, so there is absolutely nothing keeping others out or you in, plus they can see you.).  Let me just let that sink in for a moment.  The bathroom, the most private room in any household or establishment, does not have opaque walls.  Granted, they're frosted thickly enough that you get only the vaguest of shapes and colors, but since neither wall nor door go all the way to the ceiling, you also don't get much muffling of whatever's going on in there.  Even people that have lived together for years tend not to want to know what the other is doing in the bathroom, but there's no avoiding it here unless you are making a conscious effort to look and listen to something else.  What gets me about this is that this is a decision that not just one person made.  When things are built, there are committees of people who work on the designs.  How did nobody catch this?  Anyway, moving on...

We ate dinner at this fancy restaurant and the food was the best I've had the whole trip.  And there was a ton of it.  Two different breads with different spreads.  Bloomin' Onion (or whatever they call it here, but made with a smaller onion and less grease and much better seasoning and dipping sauce--black garlic, which I just learned today was a thing).  Truffle-encrusted pastry things filled with meat and mushrooms.  Salad.  French fries.  Chips.  For this one, we had pre-ordered from a small list of entree options the day before, and I'd chosen the pork sandwich.  Bobby chose the steak (which came with an egg on top of it, and he said it's the best steak he's ever had).  My sandwich was approximately six inches thick, served in a bowl with a fork and knife, contained at least three different kinds of meat, drenched in a tomato and bean sauce, covered with probably a quarter of a pound of melted cheese (this is on top of the bread, not inside it, mind you), and topped with a fried egg.  This thing was a beast.  I'm surprised I only wasted half of it.  It was really good.  I wish I could have taken it home with me, but alas, not feasible.  I did, however, ask for a take-away (what they call doggie bags/to-go containers here) for the uneaten truffle things.  Truffles are too expensive to waste.  I'll put them in the hotel's mini-fridge and find some way to eat the rest of them.  Dessert was either chocolate or candied egg yolk mousse.  Bobby and I shared one of each, and they were both very good.  I don't normally take pictures of my food, but I did take a couple tonight.  It was just too impressive not to document and share.

When we got back to the hotel, we had a surprise rehearsal for an hour and a half, and when everyone else went to bed, the small scarf dancing group stayed behind to practice and have Dr. Gemme edit the movements to be how she wanted.  So I guess we're doing this thing after all.  Sigh.

It was around midnight when I got back to my room, where Bobby was already in bed and contemplating sleep.  I didn't want to sleep without getting some thoughts down first, so here I am.  Tomorrow is supposed to be torrential downpours and thunder storms all day and Bobby and I, in our desperation, exhaustion, and infinite wisdom, booked an excursion from a travel website for the four fucking hours of "exploring on your own time" we have tomorrow at Porto city center without looking at the weather.  Because we booked it so close to the date, we can't get any refund if we cancel it and my bank won't let me stop the pending charge.  They said I'll have to wait for it to go through and then dispute it.  Disputing charges is such a pain and they usually make you get all new cards and passwords and shit, which I really don't want to deal with.  I'm hoping that the company that runs the excursion we wanted to do will cancel and refund all their customers and we won't have to worry about it, but I don't want to use my data to get a call from them tomorrow and we won't be anywhere near wifi for most of the day.  Ah, well.  Nothing to be done but wait and see.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

1-Heart statue panoramic

2-Heart statue with Bobby running on it

3-Truffle things

4-What passes for a sandwich around here

Portugal, Day 3: Exploring Sintra

We had another relatively late meeting time, around 9:15, which is good because last night I didn't sleep much.  At breakfast, I discovered a pumpkin spread and a cheese spread that I hadn't noticed yesterday, and they were pretty great.  Today, we went into a Lisbon suburb called Sintra.  After a short walking/history tour, we had several hours to get lunch and explore.  Bobby and I found very few things to jump on, but managed to get the majority of our souvenir shopping done, and we found a lot of good things to eat and drink there.

They had a fried rice with duck dish that was really amazing.  I had mango juice and Bobby had a pineapple soda with it.  The restaurant was this tiny little place at the top of a big hill and it had a beautiful view of the city below.  There is this sour cherry liquor called ginja that you pour into a chocolate shot glass, drink half, then put the glass with the remaining liquor in your mouth and eat the whole thing at once.  We also had these traditional pastries that Portugal is famous for:  queijada is a little cup pastry with a cheese-based custard that had cinnamon flavors, and travesseiro is another kind of custard pastry in a pillow of flakiness.

There was a castle in this town too, at the top of the hill, but we didn't have enough time to go up there.  A few people had hiked up only to hike back down again to get to the bus on time, and they were saying how cool it was.  Some people stayed behind to go on a tour by themselves and take a cab back to the hotel.  After hearing on the bus from people who'd gone up and just gotten a little glimpse of the castle, I'm kind of mad that we didn't go up there with the group that decided to stay.  I wish I'd known that that was an option.  Also, I wish they'd just taken the whole group up there.  For crying out loud, if there is a castle in your city, bring the Americans!  One wouldn't think this was a hard concept.

At any rate, the bus took us back to Lisbon town center where we had yet more free time, and still nothing to do.  We walked around the mall (looking for bathing suits because one of the hotels has a pool and we forgot to pack ours, and we found nothing but shoes in 90% of the stores, but eventually we found what we wanted inside an H&M of all places...never thought I'd be glad to see one of those), bought some more pastries from a famous shop, gelato, and roasted nuts from a street vendor (lesson learned:  NEVER do that; most of them were rotten inside and even the ones that weren't were just gross...I spit mine out and we threw the whole bag away).  Then we caught a subway train back to the hotel instead of waiting another two hours for the bus to pick us up.  By this time, it had gotten cold and it was drizzling on and off.

We had dinner at a restaurant that had a fado show.  Fado is a Portuguese instrument that's like a guitar but with more strings and the bottom is more bulbous than pear shaped.  They had a fado, a guitar, and an accordion player with a rotation of singers and dancers perform a traditional fado show.  It started with a young man singing about how a woman walked straight into his heart without knocking, and other such love-isms.  Then a young woman has a turn, singing about her love for him.  Then the girl's father comes on and starts singing, presumably about the girl's happiness and growing up (the one person in the choir who speaks Portuguese wasn't close enough for me to catch everything she was translating).  Next, there was a trio of dance couples performing very fast-paced circle dances involving a lot of jumping and twirling.  They ended the night with slow fado and guitar instrumental songs.  There were a few points when singers or dancers motioned for the audience to sing or clap along, but since none of us know what we're expected to do, it was a bit confusing, that part of it.  Still, though, it was one of the best shows I've ever seen.  The food at this place was great too:  bread, vegetable soup, chicken with vegetables cooked in a mushroom sauce, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

We're leaving Lisbon tomorrow, so we have to pack everything up tonight in our hotel rooms.  Dr. Gemme still wants the small group of us to do the scarf thing in front of the rest of the chorus doing simpler scarf things.  We were going to practice tonight for the concert in two days, but most of us were too tired to even consider it, so we cancelled.  I'm secretly hopeful that we won't have to do the scarf thing at all, but we'll see.

My feelings about this trip have been going up and down.  Being so tired and feeling like you're missing out on all the cool stuff/wasting your time wandering aimlessly and dealing with weather issues make me think I kind of don't want to go on the next trip, but singing with the local choir and seeing an awesome traditional music show make me already excited about wherever the next trip will be.  None of the places we've gone have been places I'd necessarily choose for myself if I had to do all the planning and paying myself, but because a good chunk of both of those things are taken care of by Southern and the Stutzman Foundation and KI Concerts, it's always been worth it to go.  But the trips have been getting more expensive and less well-organized, and I'm wondering when they'll hit that tipping point where I'll sacrifice singing in another country and exploring stuff with the chorus people for a trip that is 100% things I know that I'll enjoy even if I have to pay for it all myself.  We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

In the meantime, here's a picture of Platymoose with us at the little restaurant on top of the hill and one of the view it offered.

Portugal, Day 2 - Our first concert

We had a relatively late departure time this morning at 9:45, for which I was grateful because it allowed us to sleep in a bit and not be as rushed getting ready for the day.  The hotel provided a buffet style breakfast, and we learned that they like marmalades on things, hot dogs and beans for breakfast, an array of lunch meats for breakfast, and their idea of "cold milk" just means "not hot", i.e. - room temperature...good for adding to hot chocolate, not so much for drinking straight up.  They had fruit, mini-muffins, eggs, and bacon as well.  The stuff I tried was all pretty decent.

We were supposed to be touring a shrine and a bridge similar to the Golden Gate Bridge today, but there was a marathon in town that was crossing the bridge and the whole thing was shut down.  You'd think the people planning this would have known that before today and maybe put that particular sightseeing item on any other day, but whatever.  Instead, we had three hours of unexpected free time back in downtown Lisbon.  Yesterday, we saw that there was a castle on top of the main hill in town and today pretty much everybody wanted to go there.  You'd think that the people planning this would make a castle one of the scheduled stops, or at least have one of the guides take the group up there during our free time since at least 30 people wanted to go.  Instead, we were left to our own devices, in small groups with varying directions based on what we asked of the guides who dropped us downtown, handheld maps, and the few people who'd enabled GPS data roaming for getting walking directions.  We had learned yesterday on our walking tour that the way up to the castle is purposely winding, indirect, and confusing, because when it was built, in a time of war, they wanted to confuse foreign soldiers trying to attack the castle and give the people more time to get to the stronghold.  You can see why this might lead people in modern times to having some difficulty finding a place that is purposely obscured by roads and other buildings.  Bobby and I were among the people who went up to the castle, and our group split up a few times to take different routes, because there weren't many signs pointing to the most important tourist attraction in the city until you were almost there, but eventually everyone found their way up there.

There was some interesting street art aside from the boring old graffiti you see everywhere both on the way up and the way down (it was impossible to tell which way we'd come, so we guessed equally successfully how to get back to the meeting place).  There was also interesting weather today.  It alternated between rain/cold/wind and relatively warm probably five or six times in three hours.  I'm very glad we brought ponchos and layers.  I wish I'd had an extra pair of shoes waiting for me on the bus afterwards, though, because there were so many puddles at the castle and on the street that it was impossible to avoid them all, and my feet were wet and cold the whole rest of the day.

The castle itself was really cool, though.  There was a great view of the city and the ocean from the top (including the bridge in the distance that we were supposed to visit today).  There were cannons, gardens, courtyards, and a still-being-excavated archaeological dig inside the castle walls.  You could also walk up onto the ramparts and stand where the soldiers would have been, firing arrows and whatnot at the approaching enemy.  It was really easy to see how it would have been used for battle and the safekeeping of townspeople back in the day.  Definitely the coolest thing we've seen so far.

After finding our way back into town, we stopped in a bakery for lunch, splitting a gigantic toasted ham and cheese panini thing.  It was pretty good.  We still had some time, so we wandered off in search of the oldest cork store in the world, which we'd passed by on our walking tour yesterday.  We couldn't find that exact one, but since Portugal supplies something like half of the world's cork, we found a few other places that sold things make out of cork.  Apparently you can make everything from post cards to neck ties out of cork.  By this point, we were actually running out of time and didn't get to look at all the things we wanted to, but now we are pretty sure of where some cork stores are that we can go back to the next time we're left to our own devices downtown.  If you want something made out of cork, now's the time to tell me, because we're leaving Lisbon the day after tomorrow.  I'm sure we could find cork elsewhere, though, if it's truly as prevalent here as they say.

Then it was time for rehearsal, both on our own and with the Portuguese chorus we were doing a joint concert with.  We had extra time while the other chorus was rehearsing their own stuff before we had to get ready for our concert, so Bobby and I wound up exploring this nice park they had across the street from the church we were singing in.  Of course we did some parkour and found some interesting gardens.  There were cactusy-fern-looking things that were so big and solid that people were carving their names and stuff into them instead of into the trees (which were also big, solid, and had the bonus of being climbable and interestingly shaped by knobby bits and dangling roots).  I thought I had lost my phone for about 15 minutes and I also didn't know where Bobby was, so I started panicking, but it turns out they were in the same place, more or less, and I just didn't know where that place was.  It's a bit scarier, the thought of losing your phone in a foreign country.  I had data turned off and I don't think the find-my-phone feature works when you've done that to avoid accidental roaming charges.  I had no doubts I'd recover my husband, though.  :P

The church was cold, as churches tend to be, especially the old ones, which they all are in Europe.  I've never seen a modern church in Europe in any of my trips here.  I'm pretty sure they're illegal.  Anyway, the church was cold, and all my layers couldn't do me any good when it was time to be in concert attire.  Thin polyester does nothing to keep the chill out, and my wet feet weren't helping.  Despite the cold, the concert was pretty great.  We wound up not even doing the scarf-dancey-thing we'd rehearsed in our little group yesterday because Dr. Gemme decided that the whole group would do much simper movements at certain song parts.  I honestly think it looks better that way than if just a few of us were moving around.  All or nothing.  Go big or go home.  I have no idea if that will change for future concerts, but I think it worked well for this one.

The Portuguese group, Coro Medico, is a group of doctors and medical students from a university in Lisbon who like to sing in their spare time.  For such an informal group, they were phenomenal sounding.  Despite not having a lot of rehearsal time in the performance space, I think we did pretty well ourselves too. After the concert, which had a full audience, we had dinner out at a restaurant with the Portuguese group, who all spoke English very well (they start teaching foreign languages here in elementary school, not middle or high school like back in the states, and English they take from first through 12th grade as a required subject, so many people are at least somewhat fluent).  On the bus ride there with them, one of them said they were dancing in their seat to our faster songs, because we, "had the spirit".  So, mission accomplished.

The restaurant we went to had a vertical garden on the outside wall.  I've seen pictures of these but never one in person.  My assumption is that they're spices and vegetables used in the food they make there.  It was cool looking.  The building was situated on a cool little plaza which had a decent amount of parkour potential, which Bobby and I did a little bit on after supper while waiting for everyone to come outside to walk together to the bus.  We mingled with the other chorus during the multi-course meal, and the people we talked to were all very nice, interesting, and well-spoken, which I guess you can expect from a bunch of future doctors, but it was a really nice time and I was sad when the tour guides announced it was time for us to get on our bus again and the other chorus to get going too.  The girl directly across from me was named Marta, and she loves hiking, swimming, and animals (she wants a dog, parrot, and iguana when she gets her own place with a yard).  When we mentioned that we did parkour, she thought that was so cool.  We were discussing the differences and similarities between our countries, and she said that their president was also a famous reality tv star before he got political, but when asked what his show was, we learned that he got famous reviewing on video books that he'd read.  Their president is apparently well-liked by just about everybody regardless of what party they're in and is friendly to everyone he meets.  I wonder what that's like.  Also, I'd like to point out once again, that their president got famous by reading books.  I don't know with any certainty that our current disaster-in-chief has read a whole book in his entire life.  Can we vote Portugal for President in the next election?  Anyway...

The food was good and there was a lot of it.  We started with bread on the table, which you could put either butter or sardine paté on.  I tried the sardine stuff, and it tasted quite a bit like tuna fish with a different mixing agent than mayo.  I liked it, but I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone.  Next up was a vegetable bisque, and then we moved on to fried cod and rice with beans.  The server asked if I wanted a second piece of fish, and I said "no" and shook my head and waved my hands, but he laughed and put a second piece on my plate.  I knew I wouldn't have room for it, especially with another course coming.  They could have saved that fish for someone else who would enjoy it.  But alas, the poor codfish died in vain.  Anyway, the next course was chargrilled chicken with french fries (no salt or ketchup for them, though, not that I like the latter anyway).  I had a drumstick piece, which was smaller than our chicken drumsticks but very good.  I kind of wanted another piece, but I said no when he asked because the next piece he gave out to everyone else was a middle piece of some kind and I always prefer the on the bone stuff.  Bobby wound up with two middle pieces and he said they were a little dry even though the flavor was good, so I'm glad I got what I got.  After the chicken was dessert, and everyone got little chocolate and vanilla swirled ice cream cups.  Finally, they offered "coffee", which is actually espresso, and I had some because while I hate coffee, I really like espresso and Europe does it better.

One of our choir members had a birthday today, and the restaurant brought her out a piece of cake with a candle in it and we sang happy birthday to her, and then the Portuguese choir sang their version of it.  They have a very similar tune but use more and varied lyrics for each line and you clap as you sing it and it gets faster and faster until the end.  Then the birthday person sings a thank-you song back to them in the happy birthday tune.  It's pretty cool.

When we got back to the hotel, Bobby was passed out with his shoes and poncho on in about five minutes, and I have the energy to write this blog post.  I had to mess with my phone for far too long to get it to talk to my computer again and get these pictures from today off of it.  Later on, at the end of the trip, I'll probably do the big photo dump from the phone and camera and put it all together somewhere.  But for now, here's what we've got:

1-Interesting mural on the way to the castle/fort (Castelo de Sao Jorge)

2-Entrance to the inner wall of the castle compound

3-Garden inside the castle with peacocks and peahens just chilling

4-Giant cactus mural

5-Inside the church we sang in (Basilica da Estrela)

6-Giant cactus in real life

7-Vertical garden restaurant

P.S.-They call the first floor the ground floor and you have to go upstairs to the second floor to get to what they call the first floor here, and not just in hotels where it makes sense to call the entry floor something different like reception or lobby.  It's a bit confusing.  Also confusing are the bathroom signs.  WC is the abbreviation for water closet that they use instead of restroom or bathroom, and M is for woman (mulher) and H is for man (homem).  Their pictures for each gender are slightly more modern and curvy/stylized than in the USA.  I'll have to remember to take a picture of one before I leave, as weird as that sounds.  Alrighty, off to bed.  We don't have any concerts tomorrow (there seem to be fewer of them than originally planned/past trips), but tours of ruins and stuff all day.  Lots of walking again(today was over 12,000 steps!).  As they say in Portugal, boa noite.

Portugal, Day 1 & 1.5 - Travel and such

Today was the day!  Or the day and a half/two days, when you think about it.  Anyway, Friday, March 9th was the first day of our trip.  Due to car trouble and a million other little annoyances, the day and a half before the trip was not nearly as productive as I wanted them to be, meaning I did that rushing panic-pack where I probably put way too much stuff in my luggage and also managed to forget something.  I don't know what it is yet, but three days from now I'll hit myself in the head and go, "Oh, THAT was what I forgot!".  Anyway, eventually everything was packed and ready to go.

Poor Akasho, he knew we were getting ready to leave, and he didn't know whether to be excited because he might be going on an adventure with us or whether to be upset because we were leaving him behind.  He did a lot of moping and following us around.  Then when it came time to put stuff in the car, and we didn't get his leash or anything, he bolted out the front door as we were struggling through it with our stuff and ran to the car.  When we opened the doors to put stuff in, he jumped in the back seat.  Pitiful pup.  We practically had to drag him back inside.  The worst part of this trip is going to be not having Akasho around.  On the bust to JFK, some other chorus members were having similar anxieties, so there was one point where everyone was just passing around their phones sharing pictures of their pets.

We were more than a tad late to rehearsal prior to boarding the bus, and there seem to be ever more forms to sign on this trip.  Seriously, how many damn times and ways can I legally affirm that I will not sue SCSU if I die in Portugal?  Moving on...eventually everyone got on the bus and off we went to the airport.  Or so we thought.  The bus broke down a little over half way there and we had to wait for another one to pick us up.  They clearly hadn't had time to clean and prep this one from its previous trip, because there was trash around and the whole bus smelled a bit like the toilet at the back.  It did get us there in time to check in, get through security, and get on board the plane.  For most of us anyway.  One member of the choir seems to be lacking in the common sense department and left one of their bags at the school -- the one containing their passport.  Despite multiple warnings to have your passport in your hand once we got on the bus, this person didn't notice theirs was missing until check-in time.  So, they'll be going back to New Haven, getting their passport, and flying out tomorrow.  I mean, really.  Whatever, their loss.  I kind of feel bad that Dr. Gemme has to stress about this person's stupidity and the problems it creates for her and the tour company, but I'm going to file that under, "Not my problem".

The plane ride was pretty uneventful.  We left at a little before midnight and flew through to Saturday morning.  Because of the time difference, it was about 11:00am when we got there, local time.  I slept on and off on the flight, but not very well.  The food was decent, especially for plane food.  The travel company managed to not put people rooming together anywhere near each other on the plane, and all the married couples and other groups were just scattered throughout.  Some managed to switch with people (and some people came to tears over it) to get next to the people they wanted, but not everyone.  Bobby and I were both middle seats of the middle section, four rows apart, and anyone who switched would be giving up an aisle seat for a stranger, because not even all of our group was in the same section of the plane this time around, and that's not something that many people would do.  We were fine, though, not sitting next to each other.  It was a pretty short flight (about 6 hours).  The biggest down side for me was that the person in the aisle next to me wasn't part of our group and slept like a rock the whole time, so I couldn't even climb out to stretch my legs.

We disembarked the plane directly onto the runway, where they had a shuttle waiting to take passengers to the actual building part of the airport.  Of course, they didn't think to bring enough busses for the entire passengership, so our group got separated before any instructions were given out, which meant that left to their own devices, some of the group waited at baggage claim and others went on to exit the airport and meet up with our tour guides, and then the people in charge thought we were still waiting for those people who had gone on ahead, so there was a lot of needless waiting around.  My guess is that those who had left already couldn't go back in through customs to find and tell those in charge that they were waiting outside, but whatever.  My biggest complaint was that the airport in Lisbon didn't have anywhere to fill up water bottles on the way out.  I wound up buying one later on at lunch, but I don't want to have to buy water the whole time I'm here.

Eventually everyone made it to the tour guides and got on the bus, which had USB chargers in the ceiling, so we could charge phones/cameras without a converter while we rode.  Pretty convenient.  They took us to a big main square, the name of which I forget, but it had the national opera house there, along with the obligatory statues and fountains, because it is a square in Europe and that's what they do.  They pretty much dumped us there and said, "Meet back here in an hour; go buy yourself some lunch."  Which would have been fine if they'd said anything like, what's good to eat, how do you order, do you go up and pay or do they bring you the bill, should you tip, do they do to-go bags here, etc.  But, they didn't.  The one thing they said is that you have to tell your server that you only have an hour because it can take a while to get food here.  We, of course, forgot to tell our server that, but we were fine anyway at the place we went to.  They have this big pedestrian concourse full of shops and restaurants, and it was all rather too much to take in.  Someone came up to us with a menu, speaking pretty good English, and asked if we wanted to try the lunch specials at their restaurant around the corner and have non-tourist Portuguese food.  I bet they say that to all the tourists, but we were hungry and any place was fine at that point.  The prices on the menu were pretty good and at least the titles of the food were in English (no descriptions and few pictures).

We went there and got a table inside as opposed to outside, and I'm glad we did for two reasons.  The first is that it was getting pretty windy, and even though it hadn't started to rain yet, it's more comfortable to eat when you're not cold.  The second is that we saw peddlers coming up to everyone seated on the sidewalk and trying to sell them junk.  No thank you, I just want my meal, please.  Bobby had a small steak with an egg on top with rice and fries, and I had a kind of potato-codfish-egg scramble thing.  It was pretty good.  I got water with the meal and found out that they don't really serve tap water for free at restaurants, but they sell you a bottle of water and give you a glass.  I didn't finish my bottle at the restaurant so I took it with me.  I don't know if you're supposed to, but I was pretty much out of my own water, so I didn't care about custom at that point.  After the most confusing encounter with wait staff ever, we paid and left.  Walking around a bit, we passed by probably a half a dozen pastry shops, which we'll have to go back to later on when we have more time on our own.

Equally numerous as the pastry shops were the number of shady and still very brazen drug dealers.  We got asked multiple times on our walk if we wanted to buy hash, marijuana, or an assortment of other illegal drugs.  They just go up to you and flash you a little pouch, and they're kind of pushy, too, for someone who's doing something illegal.  Make no mistake, it's not legal what they're doing.  When we passed by police officers, nobody was offering us anything.  Think like the way hawkers in New York will go up to you and ask if you want to buy a map or go on their tour or buy their "real" name-brand sunglasses.  It's annoying, you don't want what they're selling, and you do your best not to make eye contact.  Now imagine that they're hawking illegal mind-altering substances.  Add in the fact that the old cobblestone-like streets and sidewalks are uneven, making you have to watch where your feet are going at all times, people who will just stop and stand in the middle of the street/walkway without any warning, cars trying to push past mobs of pedestrians on streets that should not be wide enough for motorized traffic, and pickpockets looking for a mark, and you've got what it's like to walk around the streets of Lisbon.  Also, you can't understand a damned word of what anybody's saying, because despite having similar spellings of some words to Spanish and other romance languages you've studied, the pronunciation of Portuguese is so fucking weird that even words you memorized for this trip that you should be able to pick out are unintelligible.

It's not all bad, of course.  After lunch, the group was split into two groups to go on walking tours of the city, and we got some history of Lisbon and Portugal, looked at the the older and more famous churches (of which there are a fuck-ton, despite the earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis that apparently plague the city).  The sidewalks and streets, as I mentioned, are cobblestone.  Or, something like it.  I don't know if there's another word for it when it's a different type of stone and I don't feel like looking it up right now.  Anyway, they are made of black and white and sometimes other colored limestone, and they're arranged in interesting patterns on all the sidewalks.  Our guide told us that no two streets have the same patterns of stones, and I thought that was pretty neat.  A lot of the houses have interesting colored tiles on them instead of paint, brick, cement, or other wall siding, and some are built on ancient fort and church walls which survived the various disasters so they got built on top of.  So your apartment could have a gargoyle on its wall or something.  Kind of neat.  Except when you realize how hilly the city is, how tall many of the buildings are, and that most of them don't have elevators or a place to park.  No, thank you.  Although it is kind of neat that people will put baskets on ropes out their windows to buy stuff from the shops below and the keepers will send up the goods.  We didn't see any of this in action, but we were told about it and saw some ropes tied up on the sides of windows.  At one point on our tour, there was what looked like a parade at first (they had a band playing as they marched), but it was actually a protest kind of march for women's equality, and they were escorted by the police to keep them safe.  I thought that was pretty cool.

There was another guided church tour listed on our schedule, but we didn't do it.  We'd been running behind schedule all day, and there wasn't time.  Plus, everyone was cold and tired and hungry and just wanted to check in to the hotel to shower and sleep and eat.  So, we did just that.  Our hotel is on the outer part of Lisbon, which is the more modern part, and it's pretty good so far.  We've got wifi in the rooms, which is a nice bonus, because I would be annoyed if I could only post stuff from the lobby.  And, our room has a balcony.  It was a bit cold and windy to just hang out on there this evening, but maybe I'll get some use of it.  The shower was kind of meh:  low water pressure, inconsistent temperature, but still useful after a long day of traveling.  We had time for a cat nap before supper, which was a buffet in part of the hotel's restaurant which was reserved for us.  Again, they served bottled water only.  I asked the tour guide where we could fill our waters up before tomorrow's rehearsal, and he said that the tap water is safe but tastes bad and everyone just buys water.  Ugh.  No, thank you.  If I had known, I'd have brought a portable water filter like what we use when we go camping.  Anyway, supper was good.  They had fish, chicken, vegetables, some platters of ham/cheese/fruit/salad, soup, bread, and dessert.  I had pretty much one of everything.  I couldn't finish my lunch earlier in the day (they don't do doggie bags, btw), but at supper I was starving.  It was all good.  Or at least, I was hungry enough that it all tasted good to me.  Dessert was flan, jello, strawberry mousse, rice pudding, or fruit medley.  I had a little of most things, but the strawberry mousse was by far the best.

I thought after supper I was home free to go blog and go to bed, but Dr. Gemme volunteered me to fill in for one of the "dancers" for one of our songs, who had hurt herself on the cobbled streets and didn't want to move on stage for the song.  Calling it dancing is a bit of a stretch, but we're wearing scarves and there are some choreographed arm and body movements to parts of it.  I went to the lobby of the seventh floor where the group was rehearsing the steps, and they're not complicated, but I just feel awkward moving/dancing while singing, especially choral music.  I don't mind dancing in and of itself.  I've performed various dances before with no problem(ballet, belly, aerial arts), and I love singing.  You would think that the two together would make me happy, but no.  It's like mixing meatloaf and chocolate.  I love both of those things, but they should not be taken in at the same time.  But whatever.  I mean, I could flat-out refuse and put up a big stink and she'd find someone else, but that's not really who I am.  They said my yellow scarf would be switched to a red one, which is the part I like least about this, but if we're allowed to keep the scarves like we've been able to in the past, I'm taking home the yellow one, damnit.  While we were rehearsing, the power in the rooms on that floor went out (the lights in the hall where we were stayed on), most likely due to someone trying to plug something in that wasn't rated for that outlet despite all information to the contrary.  This derailed things a bit, and I got back to my room later than I wanted, but I'm still awake enough to type all these thoughts out.

This blog is really just for me to ramble about my adventures so that I can remember them more clearly later on, but if you've read this far, thank you for joining me on my trip, and I hope I haven't bored you.

Going through pictures is always a pain because I take a million of them, so for now I'm just going to see if I can put a few of them up on here, and I'll share whole albums elsewhere later on.
1-Platymoose by a fountain at a main plaza in Lisbon
2-A gargoyle
3-A house with pyramids jutting out of the walls
4-Limestone designs on the sidewalk
5-View from the hotel balcony