Got woken up again by a phone call from home. It was comforting to know that Junglee and Lucy were doing quite well in our absence. Showered, went down for breakfast and stuffed ourselves silly with all the goodies! By this time, we had collected quite a load of laundry that needed to be done, so after getting directions to the nearest laundromat by the lady at the front desk, not finding it, coming back for directions again, still not finding it, stopping and asking at stores, getting directions in Portugese, arguing, fighting.....FINALLY we located the store at the basemet of the shopping mall across the street - see pic above
of round brick building with domes. Thankfully it was not too expensive - 9 euros, about 13 1/2 dollars for 4 kilos. So we dumped it all there, including my one and only sweatshirt which was starting to stink a bit, and left. We stopped at a shop on the way and I bought myself a jacket of sorts, cos in spite of the nice weather it was still a bit nippy at times.
of round brick building with domes. Thankfully it was not too expensive - 9 euros, about 13 1/2 dollars for 4 kilos. So we dumped it all there, including my one and only sweatshirt which was starting to stink a bit, and left. We stopped at a shop on the way and I bought myself a jacket of sorts, cos in spite of the nice weather it was still a bit nippy at times.
We took the train to Sintra, a nearby seaside resort. It was a 45 minute ride and we got to see a good part of the coast along the way. Once at Sintra station, we opted to take the bus which loops around the station and all the major sights at Sintra. We were interested in the Castelo Dos Mouros and Pena Palace. On the map everything looked close by and we were wondering if maybe we should walk, but as it turned out, it may have been close as the crow flies.....the map failed to mention that the castle and palace were at much higher levels, and if we had started to walk, we would still be walking to the castle right now.
We were done with both by about 3pm or so, so we headed back to the station and back to the room by 4.30pm. After a short nap, we left for The Baixa at 6pm. Baixa is sort of the commercial center of Lisboa. After wandering around Baixa for a while, we headed towards Alfama and the riverfront, one of the oldest areas of Lisbon. Alfama is also famous for its fado restaurants. These are restaurants which serve dinner along with fado, a style of Portugese music. We stopped at the restaurant highly recomended by Gautam and our guide book, but when we looked at their menu there was nothing vegetarian on it. So we checked out all the alleys and byways till we saw another promising looking fado restaurant. While we were peering at the menu posted outside, the entire staff that was hanging around outside, asked us what we were looking for. Once they knew we were looking for a good veg restaurant and this was after much hand gesturing and sign language and a bit of dumb charades too, they called the chef, one Raul Rodriguez, from inside who spoke English and who assured us he would make us a fabulous veg salad. We went in and got seated just as the fado musicians - typically one singer and 2 guitarists - were setting up. We had never heard Fado music before and were wondering what it would sound like. It was beautiful....the guitar strumming was spectacular. Some of the songs were surprisingly pretty upbeat. There were 5 singers who took turns singing, and every now and then the entire kitchen staff would come upstairs and join in. It was really fun. The salad which the chef obviously had taken pains to make, was a huge platter each with a bed of greens and some seaweedy thing, with carrots, tomatos, asparagus, artichokes, potatoes, peas and hard boiled eggs on top! R and I could have eaten it for 3 meals, but so as not to offend the chef who was watching us very anxiously, we ploughed thru it and stuffed ourselves. Unfortunately, it had no dressing or anything, just a mountain of steamed veggies, so we kept dousing it with salt and pepper after every mouthful! By now, almost 2 hours later, we had become very chatty with everyone, the singers, the chef, the staff. One of the singers sold us her CD and signed it for us. It was a small cosy restaurant and when we left there were lots of hugs and kisses all around with promises to send postcards to each other etc etc....very touching! We made our way slowly back to the hotel - slowly cos our bellies were too full to move any faster - and got back by 11.30pm or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment