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.
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