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.
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