blistered

I love my all-stars. I’m not usually attracted to particular brands of shoes or clothing, but I’ve been loyal to Converse since high school. I love them because they are flat and light – usually a good combination for city walking.

But not this city.

From the impossibly narrow passages of Alfama to the broad symmetry of the baixa, Lisbon’s streets have a lot of character. They also have a lot of stones. Roads, sidewalks, plazas, patios, garden pathways – all cobblestones. The black-and-white diamonds, arranged in wide waves downtown or with a simple border just outside my door, are part of the city’s charm.

The variety of calçada patterns can be enjoyed with the eyes, but the rich variety in tilt and texture – that is a story only your soles can tell. If you haven’t gotten a stiletto stuck in a crack, stubbed a toe on a corner or gotten blisters through your all-stars, you haven’t walked the city enough.

Somewhere along the line (at cobble stone no. 23587001 or something) someone got tired of sanding those buggers down – and the subsequent centuries of being stepped on haven’t helped. And so while the cobblestones are beautiful to see, they do not do beautiful things to your feet.

That’s why I’m at home this morning, nursing my blisters with some self-indulgent blog writing. Raw flesh aside, my urban hike was most enjoyable. My morning caffeine must of kicked in after I finished reading the paper at a café in Areeiro – I decided to walk to my next destination despite the fact that it didn’t really look that close on the map.

So I strolled along the Northern edge of Lisbon, stopping to admire ­Campo Pequeno, the Moorish-style arena where men in colourful suits stick pokey-things in understandably upset bulls. A few blocks down is the Universidade Nova de Lisboa’s faculty of social sciences. I poked around in the library where I laughed at seeing TV Paul’s International Order and the Future of World Politics (you remember the green book from POLI 244) in a display case. Poor Portuguese political science students! I am a native English speaker, TV Paul was my professor…and I still didn’t enjoy wading through that book.

My actual destination was the Calouste Gulbenkien Foundation’s gardens and museum. Gulbenkien was an Armenian (born in Istanbul) oil mogul, who spent his riches buying out the Hermitage after the 1917 Russian Revolution (among others). He was living in England in WWII when the British remembered he was Turkish and kicked him out. Portugal essentially bid out the rest of Europe to acquire Gulbenkien and his collections.

(If you're wondering about the picture, I followed the arrows to "...")

I would say that my visit was worth several times over what it cost me – except that as a student I got in for free (yes ISIC card!). It was a museum of utterly manageable size, small rooms dedicated to Egyptian, Roman, Greek, East Asian, Islamic and European art.

My favourite was the Islamic Art. There were gorgeous silk coats from the Safavid period in Persia (18^th cent.), mosque lamps from when the Mameluks had run of Egypt, and – Ipek – the most stunning Turkish tiles from Iznik (16^th cent). There was one panel in turquoise and cobalt that has helped me understand Ipek’s penchant for blues...

There were plenty of other neat things – illuminated scripts from the Armenian Church, an enormous twelve-panel Chinese screen, an ornate grandfather clock ticking at today’s time, long Persian rugs. There was a sizeable collection of European paintings – Monet, Renoir, Manet in the French collection. My favourite was the last piece, “Painter Brown and his Family” by Boldoni. It was so captivating – looked like a candid photograph. Brown in the center, mid-stride, his daughter and wife behind, the daughter caught in the beginnings of a smile, the wife only half in the frame. There was probably a full fourth of the canvas that didn’t have anything in it all. It was totally asymmetric and all in dark browns and greys and blacks – and yet was so pleasing to me.

Culture makes me hungry, so I sat by the lake (the museum is in a garden) and ate my lunch with the ducks. I didn’t feed them, but many other children did. I had never seen a fish fight (and beat) a duck for a crumb of bread before...

I was ready for a nap in the shade of a treeso I walked down town (but up a hill) to Parque Eduardo VII which has one of the best views of the city. I never got my nap though – my (current) friend and (former) serial summer fling Bruno called and I ended up going for drinks and then dinner with him and his girlfriend.

By the time I was dropped at my door I had been out of the house for about 13 hours and my feet were in the state that motivated this entry.

All in a day’s tourism – at least in this city.

a bureaucratic adventure

I was prepared – braced even – for a question that would confuse me, a line that would bore me, an agent that would scold me.

I was not prepared or braced for the afternoon that unfolded. I mean, what have things come to? I had my photo taken next to the ID card place, processed and delivered on the spot. They even had the gall to let me pick the photo I was most happy with. Once I was next door I bought my forms, was called to the counter before I even had time to finish filling them out, was told politely that my pen wasn’t dark enough, filled out a new form in black ink, cut back in line, had my form checked, my height measured (I’ve grown one whole centimeter since my last card five years ago), my finger printed – all in a paltry thirty minutes.

So the face-off with the Portuguese bureaucracy was a bit anti-climatic. Did I mention I pick up my new ID card on Tuesday?

I found myself, then, with an afternoon to spend in this corner of Lisbon. I wandered to Alameda, where a lawn roles from the steps of the Instituto Superior Tecnico (Higher Institute of Technology) to Fonte Luminosa – a massive fountain where Tejo river water crashes through the hill over bizarre statues of naked women holding fish. I stood in the refreshing mist and contemplated my park companions. Once upon a time a crowd of old men sprouted in the shade of the trees that line the park, and they have been huddled around cards and dominoes ever since. Grandmas sat on benches with their hands folded over their bellies, boys played football and some studenty-looking types pretended to study.

I sat at a café with my meia de leite (a potent little café au lait), soaking up the sun and the exclamatory prose of Almeida Garrett. I’m reading a classic in Portuguese travel lit called Viagens na Minha Terra (Travels in My Land). I giggled to myself when I got to this part:

O café é uma das feições mais características de uma terra. O viajante experimentado e fino chega a qualquer parte, entra no café, observa-o, examina-o, estuda-o, e tem conhecido o país em que está, o seu governo, as suas leis, os seus costumes, a sua religião.

Levem-me de olhos tapados onde quiserem; não me desvendem senão no café; e prometo-lhes que em menos de dez minutos lhe digo a terra em que estou, se for país sublunar.

The cafe is one of the most characteristic features of any town. The experienced and refined traveller arrives in any place, enters the cafe, observes it, examines it, studies it, and knows the country he is in, its government, customs, laws, and religion.

Take me blindfolded wherever you like; do not uncover my eyes until we are in the cafe; and I promise that in less than ten minutes I will tell you where I am, if it be a country under the moon.

As Julia, my South American traveling companion and cafe-hopper extraordinary would attest, I share Garrett’s penchant for cafe cultures. This particular cafe had an azulejo (painted tile) of the CN Tower on the wall behind the counter, and I wondered briefly if what universal force made me gravitate towards my own kind.

When my grandmother called asking what I wanted for lunch tomorrow I realized it was time to head home for dinner. I’m taking the train to Alenquer tomorrow to me plumped by my avózinha, then onto Vilar for a friend’s birthday party. Back in Lisbon with the cousins on Sunday...