The Grand Lockdown Tour

Uffizi gallery Room of the maps

A few weeks ago, C & I decided on the Grand Tour. It was going to be the European Tour, but geography which will become apparent, made that impossible.

In order for this to work, we had to dig out our holiday clothes and these are the only clothes we can wear for the week. The plan is to immerse ourselves in the culture and the cuisine and if possible send some postcards.

    Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (8)

Monday – We began our trip by going to Portugal. We found our hotel very agreeable (housekeeping a little basic) and we were able to find a very good table on the terrace for breakfast. Avid readers of this blog may remember that last year we went to Lisbon for a city break. We loved it.

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (45)

One of the things we did there was take a bus tour which passed along Av. de Berna where the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is to be found. But on the trip last year we didn’t have time to visit, so on Monday as part of our Portugal day, we did. It’s a lovely building, set in gorgeous grounds and some very interesting art work.

Later C spent some time poring over her recipe books – it’s a sort of cookery holiday – and created some wonderful Pasteis de Nata. They were creamy and delicious. She was left with what might be described as a gallon of the custard mix and so we have enjoyed Flan on several occasions.

pastel de nata

In the evening we dined on a cod and fennel dish which surely must have originated in Portugal, with its long coastline and love of fish, despite the recipe coming from The Skinny Cookbook.

Tuesday – This was a hectic day, not least because I was giving a talk to the Chelmsford U3A Local History group about my novel, The Girls from Greenway.  And so, because of the lack of time, we took a detour from our European Tour to China, not least because it was going to be easy to prepare a vegetable stir-fry with noodles in the evening.

China

I  had been to Beijing in 2000 to talk about domestic violence and changes to the Chinese marriage laws. Beijing was a wonderful place to be – we ate some fabulous food there, and in between busy days at the conference, we were able to do some exploring. I even managed to have a (very short) conversation with a member of the Red Guard in Tienanmen Square, asking if we could visit the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong (shi, bu shi? Yes no?). The answer was ‘bu shi’ (no) as there was a meeting of the National People’s Congress.

China 2

So now, we quickly visited Namoc – the National Art Museum of China, again a rather lovely light building with some tantalising, delicate paintings. By late afternoon C was suffering from jet-lag and we had to relax with large G&Ts, which was very possible, of course, in our comfortable hotel.

Wednesday – We were in France, the country that I love, visiting Paris, City of Light, but also City of Dreams, City of Culture…

Paris view - Saint Michel

We nipped in, briefly, to the Louvre, but the Musee d’Orsay held our interest. It has so many wonderful pictures, not least Les Raboteurs de Parquet (the Floor Scrapers) by Gustave Caillebotte.

Gustave Caillebotte The Floor Scrapers

After watercress sandwiches for lunch – a little known French favourite, for dinner we dined on the Elizabeth David and Barbara Pym stand-by – omelettes, green salad and white wine. It was to have been steak and chips, but travelling so fast through so many different cultures we have been eating a lot of rich food – and we will always have Paris.

Thursday – Italy. We spent the day speaking Italian – si, non, buon giorno.  And then a wander around the Uffizi Gallery. 

Italy

The last time we were in Florence we tried to go to the Uffizi Gallery, but the queue was so long and the day was so hot. We contented ourselves with looking at the copy of the statue of David outside the building, and if memory serves me correctly, we went to a nearby cafe and had a cooling drink of something akin to lemonade. This time we meandered through some of the famous rooms, including the Room of the Maps and the Botticelli Room.

It was my day to cook. Supper was pasta of course, a simple sauce of smoked salmon, lemon, dill and yoghurt, followed by panna cotta. It was to be tiramisu but we couldn’t get the sponge fingers.

We were looking forward to Greece and Austria…

 

 

 

 

Weekend in Lisbon part 3

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (107)

Letter 3 to Susan

Pousada de Lisboa

Saturday afternoon 3.30pm

As we walked along the road this morning we passed one of those shops that always used to fill me with delight and anticipation – a stationery shop. I so rarely write letters these days that I don’t go into them (having said that I found a lovely shop on Holloway Road just before Christmas where I spent a giddy 20 minutes floating past shelves of tissue paper and crepe papers and intricate clever Christmas cards and envelopes.) Anyway – this morning I drifted in – being still in epistolary mode and looked for writing paper. There were no pads at all, just sheets of paper that you bought individually – but they were all thick, stiff, luridly coloured and the man said, no they didn’t have pads. So I bought this exercise book – entitled worryingly ‘Disciplina’ – because I liked the lines down the side. And some cheap envelopes and some pretty coloured paper bags.

Portugal Lisbon Sunday February 2019 (19)      Portugal Lisbon Sunday February 2019 (18)

Then we walked up to the tower, Elevador de Santa Justa, that the student of Gustave Eiffel designed. It looked interesting – like an ornate high lift.

Lisbon February 2019 (4)You shoot to the top apparently and there’s a café and a monastery and you look out over the roofs of Lisbon and then you come down – but there was an enormous queue – so we looked at it for a few seconds and walked on.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (198)

When we first arrived we were walking around quite aimlessly, knowing nothing, up and down cobbled hills lined with small old houses, some streets were very pretty but much of it was depressing – crumbling walls, peeling paint and so much graffiti, a lot of it just scribble, some old and faded, like a mess of old tattoos.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (212)    Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (189)

But then we did the guided bus tour and drove through business areas, modern glass and steel, wonderful art deco and art nouveau buildings, and beautifully tended green parks.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (271)           Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (106)

Even the old prison was pretty – it was pink!

 Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (284)

Doubtless quite horrible inside. Apparently Portugal was the first country to ban capital punishment and the prison was built to house long-term serious offenders. And in front of the heavy wooden doors was a straggle (as outside jails all over the world) of tired women waiting to see sons, husbands, dads, lovers. As D Trump might say, ‘SAD.’

Last night we went to a small restaurant we’d noticed in the morning. From the outside it looked fairly unprepossessing – but inside it had the neat look of a 1950s cafeteria. When we got there last night, half of the neon sign was lit up.  ‘Restaurant’ it said, but ‘Rio Grande’ – its name – was still dark and unlit.

Lisbon Rio Grande restaurant     Portugal Lisbon Rio Grande restaurant Feb 2019 (257)      Portugal Lisbon Rio Grande restaurant Feb 2019 (262)

We began with the usual starters, where various items are brought to the table and you eat (and pay) for what you want, and don’t pay for what you leave. We had sardine pate which was quite delicious and then C had Porco a Alentejana – pork and clams – a local speciality, and I had liver, as a result of little Portuguese and little English and a bit of pointing. Washed down with house red it was a great meal.

But again Lisbon is so strange – so many of the buildings are crumbling and dilapidated – but on ground level there are sparkling shiny bars and shops. And then, like in the picture below, in the daytime a street maybe grey and empty and covered in graffiti,

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (91)and then at night, in the dark, it was humming! This was just across the road from the Rio Grande and as we were eating hosts of dressed up people wandered past on their way to clubs and restaurants, Fado, the cinema and who knew what else.

Portugal Lisbon Sunday February 2019 (2)

We’ve had a great time, lots of walking, lots of looking, and we’ve drunk coffee – in fancy places with Art Nouveau, on small quiet terraces with blazing sun (it’s February!) and tea with hot milk amid heaving crowds of tourists.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (315)

But city breaks are tricky. You rush from one thing to another so you’ve ‘done’ everything and it’s exhausting and you don’t get to really know anywhere. But with the increasing size of my Portuguese vocabulary, and being deep in Small Death in Lisbon I’d like to come back and do some more exploring.

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (14)

This morning we discovered that part of the buffet breakfast is champagne!  So tomorrow, as our last hurrah – we shall go for the sparkling wine and get slaughtered before we leave for the airport.

Sunday morning

A clearly sensible breakfast but note the sparkling wine.

Portugal Lisbon Sunday February 2019 (8)

We went for a last walk round to the east of the town, wandering along the bank of the river and then climbing up and up. There quite by accident we found the Museu do Aljube Resistencia e Liberdade, Resistance and Liberty. And because it was Sunday morning we got in free. It was a wonderful museum, set in an old prison, where political prisoners were brought.

Lisbon February 2019 (80)

It was moving and powerful, recounting the story of Salazar’s regime (1932-68), in Portugal and in the Portuguese colonies, and then the Carnation Revolution which ended the regime (by then under the leadership of Marcello Caetano) on 25 April 1974. It was called the Carnation Revolution because almost no shots were fired and carnations were put in the muzzles of guns.

Lisbon February 2019 (45)         Lisbon February 2019 (105)     Lisbon February 2019 (69)

Lisbon February 2019 (106)            Lisbon February 2019 (40)

It was great to have found the Museum – it wasn’t mentioned in our guide book (bought the week before our visit). And there was a lovely cafe at the very top of the building with this extraordinary view.

Time to go home. I haven’t mentioned the Portuguese love of cinnamon (in the cafe at the Museum there were packets of cinnamon sticks to, I assume, stir in your coffee) nor have I talked about how easy it is to mistake pumpkin jam for apricot jam – it’s too tragic.

Here endeth the third letter.

Liz x

Weekend in Lisbon part 2

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (43)

My second letter to Susan

Pousada de Lisboa

Saturday 9.20am

Yesterday was a day of activity and walking. Lisbon is a very hilly city, but its pavements are a thing of beauty.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (118)    Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (45)    Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (143)

With all the walking one of my feet almost dropped off. Certainly my shoes are suffering. You may have noticed that I have adopted a lace-up suede brothel-keeper type shoe, which others might unkindly call a cheap trainer. Whatever, they are falling to pieces – which may be due to my putting them on and off without undoing the laces. What did our mothers always tell us? Apart from warning us that if we went out with wet hair we would have cranial arthritis in old age. So many things I should have listened to.

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (21)          Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (111)

2 things of note happened yesterday:

  1. A little old lady came cackling out of a café. She was about 80, about 4’ tall and she had a stick. She shouted to us. She wanted help getting down the kerb. She knew no English and my Portuguese ‘I’d like a white coffee, por favor’ did not fit the bill. She clutched my arm and kept laughing. As did 2 women who worked in the café who came out for a smoke. We got down the kerb then went round the corner and got up on the pavement (such as it was – all stony cobbles) again. We double kissed goodbye and she patted my face. She may have invited us to her house – which the guide book assures us happens – but how could I tell?
  2. We went on a tour bus, around the city. We eschewed tram 28 which is regarded as a must do – every one which passed us was full, with people standing in the aisles.

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (8)Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (45)On our big yellow bus we got to sit at the front (yes, almost driving the bus ourselves) with our earphones in and a great view of the town and its hills, its curves and its fantastic architecture.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (295)

I knew so little about Portuguese history: Vasco da Gama – I knew the name, but did I know he  was the first person (with his crew, obviously) to sail directly from Europe to India? No. I knew little of Portugal’s extraordinary colonial past, nor the 1755 earthquake which destroyed much of Lisbon. And we learned a little about the rise of Salazar, from his time as a 21 year old in 1910 watching the revolution which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy to his time as a dictator, side by side with Franco’s Spain, until the end of his rule in 1968. We passed the 25 April bridge, renamed to commemorate the end of the dictatorship (Estado Novo) in April 1974. It is apparently the 32nd largest suspension bridge in the world and crosses the River Tagus, from Lisbon to the municipality of Almada on the south bank of the river.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (244)     Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (245)    Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (255)

Also in the Belem area is the Monument to the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) originally built for the 1940 World Fair held in Lisbon. A wonderful stirring, almost brutalist, piece of sculpture.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (254)

And we saw a fashion shoot as our bus was stuck in a traffic jam for 10 minutes.

Lisbon Portugal fashion shoot February 2019 (31)

I’ve started reading A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson so it’s quite good to know some of the areas – Belem, Cais do Sodre, Avenida da Liberdade. And having found the language almost impenetrable, with the strangeness of the ‘ow’ and the ‘sh’ sounds, it feels very good to be able to ask for uma meia de leite (a coffee with milk, literally ‘a half of milk’) and um garoto (a small white coffee).

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (305)And everyone is so pleased when you try to speak Portuguese that people smile and correct your pronunciation till you get it right.

For lunch we went to the Time Out market, so named because it was an idea of a former Time Out travel writer from Lisbon, who saw a crumbling market and had an idea. It even bears the Time Out logo. It sells fruit, vegetables, and fish, but it also has many little booths (some run by Michelin star chefs) where you buy take-away/fast food and then sit at long tables in the middle of the vast hall, to eat. We had salt cod fritters and a glass of cold white wine each.

Portugal Lisbon Time Out market Feb 2019 (101)      Portugal Lisbon Time Out market Feb 2019 (217)   Portugal Lisbon Time Out market Feb 2019 (218)      Portugal Lisbon Time Out market Feb 2019 (221)   Portugal Lisbon Time Out market Feb 2019 (220)

Then more walking. Rua do Arsenal, a road which leads off the Praca do Comercio, is famous for its salt cod shops. Salt cod (bacalhau), like the fritters we had for lunch, is a local delicacy, so old shops with a deep musty smell of salt cod rub shoulders with tourist shops selling all sorts of items with a yellow tram logo – fridge-magnets, towels, tea towels, pots, plates.

Later we had a glass of Mateus Rosé in an old pretty hotel (Browns) bar called – we later learned – the Browns Burger Bar. Everyone else was eating burger and chips. It reduced the sense of sophistication.

Lisbon Portugal Browns Burger Bar February 2019 (36)

Now we are striding out again, feet throbbing in anticipation.

Liz x

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (70)

 

Weekend in Lisbon

Lisbon February 2019 (9)

We’ve just come back from Lisbon. I had never been to Portugal before and before we went I tried to learn some Portuguese. While I was there I took the opportunity to write a few letters to old friend Susan. This is the first.

Pousada de Lisboa

Friday morning 8.30

So here we are in a very swanky hotel in Lisbon. We arrived yesterday.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (88)

We chose the hotel because it was so central and looked so yellow and pretty. And it is very central – on the Praça do Comércio, right by the river Tagus. We came in on the airport bus, passing through streets of pastel coloured buildings, Roman, Germanic, Moorish architecture, art deco, and everywhere, of course, trams.

Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (3)             Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (4)                       Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (5)               Lisbon Portugal February 2019 (8)

In our hotel room we found a plate of Pasteis de Nata (the famous custard tarts), with strawberries and blackberries.

Lisbon February 2019 (104)

It is very central. But rather like our holiday in Toulouse last year – the main square (Praça) is where everything happens. Last year it was a pop concert so when we came back from dinner we had to queue to be searched before we could get into our hotel. Last night it was football – enormous groups of men in red and orange scarves heaving and singing in all the bars around the square. We went for a walk down to the river, looking across at the 25 April bridge and the Cristo Rei statue

Portugal Lisbon River Tagus Feb 2019 (41)and when we came back the fans had been joined by stalwart riot police, with vans and bizarrely a couple of clowns with balloons.

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (77)

Benfica, the Lisbon team, were playing a Turkish team, Galatasaray – it was a rematch. The score was 0-0, but Benfica won on aggregate (I just read that – these are not my own words).

We have just had breakfast – as always, you walk in and want to eat everything – muesli, egg and bacon, fresh fruit (which in Portuguese the BBC videos tell me, is Fruta da epoca – fruit of the epoch!), croissants, pains aux raisins, doughnuts, brownies, pastel de nata … By Saturday we’ll just want toast.

Now we are going out to see the sights. I understand from Tourmeister C that we shall be going up in a great lift designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel, to see a monastery. But first we are going to have um café (com leite) in a famous café – Cafe A Brasileira – where poets and artists used to hang out (now probably heaving with tourists like ourselves).

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (128)

Portugal Lisbon Feb 2019 (121)

We have a list of things we absolutely must do before we go home – drink vinho verde and Mateus Rosé. List ends.

Liz x