Douro Valley Day 4

We wake up in paradise, aka the Douro Valley. I am struggling to comprehend that I am actually here, because my favorite joke in Portland has always been that one day I will go to the Douro Valley and drink all of their port. Now I am here, and ready to drink all of their port, so I figure that I am some sort of magical witch woman who can wish things into existence by saying them in jest. I tell Dan I would like a pony JUST KIDDING, but the joke is so painful I tell him I actually really want one, we can put it in the kitchen.

He says we should get breakfast instead.

Free things!

What I adore is the return of the Plate of Ham, which is a staple in both Spanish and Portuguese cultures. I made that up, but it's definitely a staple in my culture, which is the culture of enjoying entire plates of ham. The entire trip Dan and I have been trying to consider how it is possible to smuggle an entire leg of Iberico ham back home, because it is so delicious and so cheap. I tell him it is easy, I will put the leg under my jacket, and when the customs officers stop us, I will tell them it is my service animal, and I will look so crazy holding an entire leg of ham that they will have no choice to believe that I definitely need help, and if ham legs are what keep me from serial killing, well, it could be worse.

Dan is not certain that will work, but I am not listening to him because ham plate.

Hello, my pretties...

A little about Quinta do Vollado: it's fucking awesome. We are uncertain how we ended up in Portuguese farm-to-table paradise, but we discover that the majority of food that is offered is from their own gardens and farms. So every morning there is fresh goat cheese, fresh eggs, fruit from trees that you can pick yourself but they do it for you anyway. They tell us there is a garden and that we are welcome to traverse any area of the quinta (which is what they call the winery, way cooler word than winery) and any part of the vineyards. They strongly encourage us to visit the orange groves. I am having trouble listening because I have never seen an orange grove before in my life and I am certain orange trees only exist in books.

Or maybe over there.

After a sumptuous breakfast of hams and fresh cheese, we decide to go back to the room. This is because we made a funny mistake when we were booking our hotel, and that mistake was forgetting to book our room for the entirety of our trip. Somewhere in Lisbon we discovered our mistake and then were fortunate enough to find ONE room left for the day that we were technically homeless, and we booked it. That room was in the new wing of the hotel, which was fancy and pretty and brand new, created by a Portuguese architect that I think owns the quinta, or something.

The wall is a door. THE DOOR IS A WALL.

After breakfast, it is drinking time, in our lovely room where there is a complimentary bottle of wine waiting for us. Despite bottles of wine being 1 euro at the grocery store, free is still better, and so we take full advantage.

GET OUT OF MY PICTURESQUE TABLEAU, HEATHEN.

Ah, much better.

I berate Dan for trying to obscure my pictures with parts of himself, because everyone knows that pictures are not for people, they are for landscapes and food only. He ignores me and drinks the wine straight from the bottle, because we are fancy people who do fancy things. Then he settles in for some serene book reading, and I settle in for a nap.

Real book.

Fake nap.

OR I WOULD HAVE, but we are on the most absurd chairs to have ever been chaired into existence. At first glance, they appear to be gentle hammocks of chairdom, a fusion of two things that are amazing (hammocks and chairs). But much like the hot girl at the library whom you are instantly attracted to because, hey, hot girls and books, but then realize she was only there to steal your Adderall, we are equally attracted to these chairs only to find they are a goddamn clusterfuck of insanity. 

First of all, to even get in this chair, you have to carefully waddle backwards like your ass is a dumptruck trying to negotiate its way into a very small parking space. Then you have to try to squat lightly so as to not drop yourself heavily into the chair, because if you do, it will flatten out, and instead of sitting, you are now lying down flat, or lying on the ground because you fell out of the devil chair. Then, once you get yourself into the fucked up contraption, you have to try desperately to not move, lest the chair start leaning backward, and then instead of sitting you are now laying down.

If laying down is the end goal, the chair succeeds. But it is a very bizarre experience, like the first time you have sex and soft, awkward white arms are trying to lay you gently backwards, but you're like dude we're doing this standing up, I don't like you that much, and then after five minutes you leave. Much like that very hypothetical scenario, Dan and I give up on the chairs and go to find better things in life.

These things are good.

This is also good.

We exit the new wing of the hotel to visit the 18th century manor house. Quinta do Vallado was once the home of Dona Antonia Ferreira, one of the most famous port houses in Portugal, and her direct descendants still run the quinta. The Ferreira family eventually sold to a bigger company, and then reopened their ancestral home as Quinta do Vallado, focused on making table wines rather than port. I find this to be fucking blasphemy, but I forgive them because they actually do still make port, and also I've been drinking for weeks and am in no position to judge anyone on anything.

As such, despite my intense love for history and old things, my other intense love for drinking by a pool leads us to, well, the pool. We ask one of the hotel staff if we can have a bottle of wine that we will take with us over there, and she says, "Oh, shall I bring it for you?" and I say yes, yes beautiful bastion of all that is right in the world, yes you shall. She does not speak good enough English to identify whether those are words she should be offended by, but as with everyone in Portugal, she gives me a confused a smile and backs away slowly. I am starting to think it is less a Portuguese trait and more just a reaction to myself that causes this, but I do not dwell on those thoughts because our foray into Pool Land has led us right past the gardens.

Poppies: farm-to-table opium.

I find they were not kidding around when they said they grew their own vegetables, unlike in other places where everyone has a "roof garden" but they won't show you what's on the roof because it's "unsafe" and "ma'am please you are not allowed back here." Quinta do Vallado does not fuck around with that American bullshit, and encourages you to stroll leisurely through their gardens and poke everything with a stick. Every tree is an orange tree, from which you are free to grab a piece of fruit and indulge in all of the earth's bounty. I do not trust these trees, because my mother told me there is no such thing as a free lunch, so I'm certain if I accept their oranges I'll probably have to go back to their apartment and "do stuff."

"Ever done it in a raised bed?"

Dan instructs me to stop being suspicious of inanimate objects, and we finally make it to the pool, which actually is a rather long walk, but completely worth it because POOL!

Where does it end?! 

And not only is there a pool, but there is a delightful bottle of wine sitting right where I totally want to sit, which is next to the bottle of wine. 

Hello, new best friend.

We get to work on the arduous tasks of drinking and sleeping. We congratulate ourselves for taking on this monumental hardship so that no one else has to. But eventually the strain of carrying the burdens of the world become too much, and we wake up and go back to the hotel, because it is basically dinner time, and by basically I mean it is a time of day in which I would like to be eating.

Quinta do Vallado has a lovely option of purchasing a four-course meal of standard Portuguese fare and all-you-can-drink Quina do Vallado wine. It is the greatest deal known to man, and because Dan is a smart man, he made us a reservation that we presently attend. 

Being in Europe, I convince myself that European glutens are different than American ones. In fact, it is probably gloutens over here, so I help myself to some delicious bread and olive oil that is made here at the quinta. I am happy with my choices and look to Dan for approval, only to find that he has made himself a majestic and beautiful plate of bread that looks nothing like mine.

The plate of a man who knows how to be happy.

I HAVE OTHER SKILLS OKAY

I glare at him, because he is a plate artist who constructs plates that look like people would want to eat off of them, and I am a garbage artist who piles garbage in front of her and then consumes it like some sort of garbage-eating lamprey.  I once again concede that if he were not feeding me I would be living inside a can of beans, literally inside it because I probably got stuck trying to scoop them out and then just accepted my fate as a can lady. He tells me that is not true because he does not date losers.

Dinner consists of multiple courses that come with multiple wines. The wine lady is a lovely person named Cristina, who, in typical Portuguese fashion, is extremely reserved when she visits our table. She begins pouring me a dry Muscat that is the most amazing white wine, and I effusively tell her, "Yes I love it! I had it last night!" Which prompts her to pull up short and say, "I will get you new wine."

NOOO!

My American exuberance nearly deprives me of my favorite wine, so I make a note to stop saying any words ever, because I am bad at it and have failed multiple times to communicate. Cristina pours me my wine, although with extreme skepticism because she is an astute woman and can tell she probably should not give me all the wine I can drink. Then they bring the first course, which is fresh goat's cheese and salmon on top of amazing oranges, and then something else that I don't remember because I was drinking all the wine nervously, and nervous drinking means excessive drinking.

It's like a sandwich or something?

For dinner, there is cod, because the Portuguese love cod. Cod is not native to Portugal, but so the story goes, the Portuguese sent some explorers to Nova Scotia, and they came back with cod, and the Portuguese were like YES THIS FOREVER. But of course cod does not transport very well, so all Portuguese recipes calling for cod are actually calling for salted cod, which makes for delicious, salty, bizarre food experiences, like this cod that is in a bread soup with an egg on it.

We also have veal, because veal is delicious.

Babies taste better.

We drink much delicious wine that all comes from the quinta, and dessert is so good that I fail to take a picture. It is thin orange slices candied in port and baked or drizzled in the fucking blood of angels, or something makes it taste insanely transcendent. We drink the 10 year old tawny port bottled basically next door, and then amble back to our room where I assume we pass out from happiness, but I can't be certain because, you know, wine.

Road Trip - Day 3

Dan and I awake on Day 3 and enjoy our final amazing breakfast at Valverde Hotel. The time has come to leave behind our angelic hotel staff, with their maudlin inevitabilities of never leaving their home town, and their sweet optimism about finding love with the hot fado singer in the lobby. I try not to cry too much into the pool, because this place is beautiful and amazing and all the buildings look like giant cakes.

I think this one is blueberry.

But, as the saying goes, all good cakes must come to end, so I pack my razor and my hair ties and prepare to leave Valverde behind, to find our place in the Douro Valley.

Not before leaving a parting gift.

I decide it is polite of me to leave behind my old hair tie, to give Portugal a gift that they know nothing of. A relic from another land, where things are, perhaps not better, but different, at least when it comes to the ability to keep hair off of your head. The mystery continues for me, because Portuguese women have these bountiful heads of hair, and sometimes I see them tied back, and I just wonder do you have to make your own hair ties or what? I haven't seen a place to buy strips of leather either, so maybe it's all just prize scrunchies here. Who knows, I certainly don't, and given our new journey we are about to embark on, I also don't care.

Side note: When we were at cooking class, I was regaling everyone with my absolutely fascinating, not at all ridiculously boring tale of how I spent the entire day looking for a small bit of elastic instead of giving good regard to a country full of wonders both natural and man-made. Margo said, "Oh, why don't you ask Kaitlyn? She always has a ton." My eyes snapped right to Kaitlyn's wrist, where, sure enough, there was a veritable treasure trove of hair ties encircling her arm like tiny hugs of joy. Sweet darling of heaven that she is, she offered me one free of charge, even though I felt compelled to tell her that the going rate is 0.50E. 

Save the capitalism for America.

The point of that side note is now laden with two hair ties, Dan and I are realizing we're running out of room in our luggage. But that's okay, we are about to get a car! And then it can carry our things for us.

We have a plan perfectly laid out: we shall call a taxi, pick up the car, come back to the hotel, load our things, and be on our way. Confident in our ability to put tasks in an order that makes sense, we ask Fernand to call us a taxi to the car rental place. He looks surprised and says, "But it is such a short walk!" I trust him implicitly, because our hotel angels would never do anything to lead us astray. Dan mentions when we walk away that it seems like the walk is twenty minutes or longer, but I say that they said short walk, and if those sweet paragons of virtue and goodness at the front desk say it's a short walk, it's a short walk, dammit.

Dan says that Google maps says it's twenty minutes. I say that is probably shorter time on the metric system and before he can tell me that is not how that works we are off walking, the opposite direction up Avenida da Liberdade than we have usually been going, that is to say, up the fucking hill.

"For the millionth time, no, you will 

not die from walking."

FINE. It is a short walk, everyone in Portugal knows this, so we press on, Dan keeping a pace that makes me suspect he secretly hates me, also known as 'normal walking speed.' It is warm, and the cobblestones are out in full force, and we are going uphill, so I pray to the gods of laziness that this all ends soon. 

We pass by a Hertz rental center. Our place?! We consult the map and it does not seem to be so. I try not to fling myself at the Hertz like the last woman against the last man in a bar after all the other men have been like nevermind, I guess I prefer loneliness after all. But at this point we honestly have no idea where our rental place is. What we do know is that we are standing at the beginnings of another hill, with no way to know if our things are beyond it. To compel myself to move forward, I pretend that we are fleeing the Inquisition and that if I don't walk up the hill I will be caught by Catholics and tortured. But then that sounds nice too, so I am stuck deciding what I would prefer when Dan has the sensible idea to just walk to the end of the block and if we cannot find the place we'll grab a taxi.

So we walk another ten minutes and I continue to ponder Inquisition torture methods and whether walking was one of them until we finally come to the conclusion that we just have no idea where we are or what we are doing. We double back, consulting our map the whole way. I figure this is a good time to actually check street signs, which is very difficult in Portugal because they are only on the side of the building, and most of them are very poorly kept, I assume because the Portuguese don't really care if they ever get anywhere, life's good anyway.

I pop over to the other side of the street and look for the sign we need, and return back to Dan, whereby we discover the Hertz is actually the rental company we're looking for, even though we rented from a different company and there are no indicating factors on the building that it is what we're looking for, except for a small, so small sticker set far away from the door saying that is where we're supposed to be. 

Hertz is a black bird shitting all over my heart.

There is a brief celebration as we high-five over our unerring skills of locating, comparing ourselves to dolphins and Batman, or at least I do, at length, while Dan goes to get our car. 

He finagles an automatic in a country of standards, because he is awesome and good things always happen to him. I am pleased that he was the negotiator instead of me, because inevitably we would have ended up with some sort of airplane and I would say but I am not a pilot and they would say well you ordered this and I would say no I ordered a sandwich, seriously, what is the Portuguese word for that? But we procure instead a BMW that has a GPS and Bluetooth capabilities, which was my only request so that I could blast The Lumineers and fado music interchangeably.

Perfect for any road trip.

By the time we get our car, it has been more than an hour, much longer than the less than an hour we were expecting. So we get on the road, and it is a terrifying experience for me because Portugal does not seem to have any discernible traffic laws that we can suss out, having eschewed turn signals for sheer intuition. Lisbon driving is a delicate ballet between all the drivers who seem to know exactly who to let through and who to not, of people gunning their gas and pulling up short to wave through a pedestrian that they saw three miles away, switching lanes at seemingly ridiculous moments but being yielded to, and I have no idea where the speed limit signs are. Which means that driving in Lisbon, you need Counter-Strike levels of paying-attentioness, or you will accidentally go through the rotary at the wrong wave-through and get squished like a Portuguese banana.

Only sometimes a good thing.

Dan, of course, is just good at doing stuff, so he maneuvers us back to Valverde like he's been co-driving with Lisboans his whole life, and I pretend like we're not driving in a city-wide death trap. We get back to the hotel, load up our luggage, and say goodbye to Lisbon.

Elijah rides bitch.

For some reason, we were under the impression it took five hours to get from Lisbon to the Douro Valley, but it really only takes three. 

Just enough time for a detour.

Our first choice seems a little ominous, so we decide to stop in Sintra, which is a quaint little seaside village full of house-cake confections and lots of castles. 

Another good place to put a castle.

Two things become apparent in Sintra: 

1. The class system made it possible to build these amazing structures in improbable places, because when human lives are not valued, who cares how many hills you send them up with how many stones? 

2. It's not a seaside town.

I will take this moment to say that I have tried tirelessly to procure a guidebook on Portugal, but only after I already arrived and the possibilities were next to zero to do so. Therefore much of my knowledge of Portugal is based on a general idea of what the country is shaped like (a rectangle), and historical fiction in which Portugal might be shipping over a princess to marry the hot English prince but he just wants to be freeeee! 

So, you know, more than some, less than others. 

It is the exact opposite of the way I usually travel, which is to research heavily the entire plane ride over and land with a good understanding of where I am and what I should be doing. This, on the other hand, has been a singularly strange experience, to be in a country with no knowledge of the language, culture, sights, amount of hills, and location of the ocean. It is like you are in middle school again and all of the things you have learned in life are no longer true and you're wearing the wrong things and saying the wrong words and having absolutely no idea any of those things are true until days later when that weird look someone gave you finally slides into place and you realize ohhh, it's because they thought I was a fucking idiot, well that makes sense.

Which is how I came to think Sintra was a seaside town, because all of the buildings were high up, and the only reason to build things that high is if they are on a cliff, probably overlooking the ocean. But they are not on cliffs, they are on hills (of course) and we are going to climb those hills because looking at things from high up is how you enjoy yourself in Portugal.

The iron maidens were under construction.

Happy fortunes mean Eric and Margo and their family are in Sintra the same day as us, so we all plan to climb the Castelo dos Mouros together, because every experience I've had with a Moorish castle has been varied and unique. I am of course kidding, they are all very high up and require a lot of walking and one would think at this point I know myself well enough to know that hanging out at the bar at the bottom is a much more unique experience, but learning is not the theme of this trip. If it were, I would have consulted Wikipedia for this picture and noped right the fuck out of there.

There's a bar at the top too, right?

Instead, I yep right the fuck up there, following my feet in the hot sun to take this picture.

Majestic.

We waffle around in the sun at the top of the Moorish castle, because the alternative is walking down, and that just seems like a lot to ask. I read a plaque that says the castle was not defensive, it was just a lookout, so the Moors did much as we are doing, which is just standing around and staring, hoping that's all you have to do for the rest of the day, I guess. I imagine the Moors had more turnips and shit to snack on up there, which would have been a nice treat at the top of that godforsaken hike, but very little looks edible. 

Pretty sure feral cat is a delicacy here.

Hungry and confused, I begin my dubious descent down the castle steps, which are made for people much more adept at movement than I am. I wonder how anyone wearing jerkins and boots could even maneuver on this, but maybe back then their feet were not as big as mine. I consider that maybe pitching myself off the top of a staircase would mean I would not have to walk down, because either I would bounce to the bottom or be dead.

Either way is fine.

Though both seem like valid and very adult options to pursue, three children and three other adults are making their way down the steps, so I figure I am able to do so too. We reach the bottom and ask Eric and Margo what they are doing, and they say they are visiting the palace that was the first thing I saw and took a picture of on top of a hill. 

I say a silent prayer for their walking souls. 

Dan says the single most beautiful words I've ever heard, those being, "We're going to get lunch instead." With a song in my heart and a sandwich on my mind, we head back to the car and continue our journey.

Our plan had been to get lunch in Sintra, but the insane warren of hillish backstreets upon which many a tourist has parked means that there is absolutely no place to put our new BMW, so we drive out of town and toward the Douro Valley along some highway. About ten minutes outside of Sintra proper, I see a parking spot and a cafe, and we quickly stop for some food.

It is essentially the recreation of our experience at O Beny's, only this place is called Blitz Cafe. I make a note to never enter anywhere with a B in the name again. This time I have my stock phrase (falas ingles?) and employ it handily. The girl looks at me and says, "No." 

WELL FUCK I DID NOT PREPARE FOR THIS EVENTUALITY.

I say the only words on the menu I know, which are 'ham and cheese sandwich,' although that once got me an omelette, so I pray it does not happen again. Dan seconds my order, and she says, "Two?" and I nod and she stares at me like I'm an idiot, so I keep nodding, because that always fills people with confidence about one's intelligence. She shrugs and puts the order in, and then we get this.

That's two sandwiches, twice.

What happened here, I like to believe, is that this woman saw the desperate look of hunger on my face, and realized somewhere, somehow, Portugal had shorted us one sandwich (possibly in exchange for an omelette, which is no exchange at all). And as such, it was her honor-bound duty to supply us with enough sandwiches, commensurate with the looks of tragedy and idiocy crossing my face. Dan, who always looks normal, got one sandwich. I, who looks like PLEASE FEED ME all the time, got three.

I ain't even mad. I fucking love sandwiches.

We eat our tostas and get on the road. Time is a'wastin' and we have a Douro Valley to get to. 

If Florida and Montana had a baby.

I try very hard to stay awake, but that seems like a bad idea, so I fall asleep instead. When I wake up, Dan is struggling desperately to not kill us by falling asleep at the wheel. We think some coffee is in order, but given our failed experiences everywhere that is not a city proper, we are uncertain about pulling over in a small town to find an espresso. 

It eventually becomes a physical necessity to pull over though, and fortunately there are along Portuguese highways little service areas that are right on the road and do not necessitate actually going into a town. We pull off, and don't even need to use any of our terrible Portuguese to get by, because there is this magical robot available.

Tell me what you desire, I'll pee it out.

Robot excretions in hand, we get back on the road. After lengthy discussions wherein I force Dan to unpack every poetic implication of every Lumineers song, we come upon the Douro Valley. 

To describe coming up on the Douro Valley is like trying to describe a particularly good piece of chocolate cake. You can't do it. Why? Because your mouth is full of cake. But also because it's just brilliant, beautiful, unimaginably vast and surreal. So here's this video instead:

Someone tell Morgan Freeman 

his narration days are over.

Lisbon - Day 2 Part 2

With my intense love of dessert satisfied in the usual way (horking it down like a pelican), we find ourselves with some free time. Dan and I figure this is a good opportunity to procure some necessary items. Our one transformer decided that suicide was preferable to charging our goods, so we make a note to go to a hardware store. But more important than our electronics is the fact that the housekeeping staff at our last location broke my razor, and to be clear, it is the butterfingered fools of the SS Voyager, not the hallowed angels of Valverde.

I require a new razor. On top of that, my one single hair tie is more stretched out than the star of an octuplet birth video. My needs are great.

We have found Lisbon to be deeply hospitable and that most people speak very good English, so we figure it should not be so difficult to procure all of our items. We go and sit at a cafe and try to order a sandwich, and receive an omelette. If I were a smarter man, I would take this as a sign, but instead I take it as an omelette and ask for two pieces of bread and make an omelette sandwich. I am pleased with my decision and decide I shall embroider a pillow that says, "When life gives you omelettes, make sandwiches," but then I figure that's redundant, because when life gives you anything, you should make sandwiches, and I can't make a pillow for everything, I am a very busy person who needs general toiletries.

We ask our nice server who does not have enough of the language to understand the difference between omelette and sandwich where we should go to find a transformer, and optimistically follow his clear instructions down the avenida to...honestly, I have no idea where we're going.

Please be in here.

None of our items, strangely, it seems to be, are in the gun and knife store populated only by two old men who are clearly confused as to why we're interrupting their afternoon chat. I curse Dan for not looking more his age, otherwise we would be clearly welcomed into these old men chats, and blithely ignore the fact that I still would not be invited because I am small, and a woman, and neither of us speak Portuguese. 

We continue on our quest, trying to follow the directions of "go two squares over and it's on the right in the phone store." We've passed one square, and don't really know where another one might be. Our only option is start walking uphill, and that sounds fucking terrible, so I point across the street to a Vodafone, which is a phone store, so maybe that's what he meant.

If it was, no one at the Vodafone gives a fuck about where we're going to procure a transformer, except one girl who tells us the name of the main shopping mall. Only everything in Portugal does not sound the way it is spelled, so we stare like particularly dim cows who are listening to Portuguese, and she stares back like a very normal person talking in their language in their country, and then sighs and says, "It's the big mall over there, and you'll find it in...the only store that sells things like that."

OH WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO IN THE FIRST PLACE.

She is delightfully helpful, and we thank her (obrigada!) and continue on our way. Since we are now passing a multitude of stores that look as if they contain hair ties and things of that nature, I suggest we do a side-quest and find my things first. I suggest this by walking into random stores without telling Dan, so that he threatens to put a homing beacon on me, and I tell him shock collar, and he says stop asking for that, he already said no. Disappointed, I enter the farmacia and look for hair ties.

One thing that I have remarked on is that Lisbon, and even Spain, is absolutely loaded with orthopedic shops. I see as many orthopedic shops as I do bakeries, and that's a lot of fucking orthopedic shops. So when I enter the farmacia, I am not surprised that there is a giant section of foot pain correcting materials, but I am surprised by how extensive and amazing they seem. I get distracted by trying to diagnose and fix my feet, and Dan reminds me that we have actual things to do, so we look around the shop. We find prenatal and postnatal items, lots of skincare products, more foot things, every drug imaginable, a hairbrush, and zero other things for your hair, whether to tie it up or cut it off your body with tiny little blades. 

Lesson learned: Portuguese farmacia does not equal American farmacia.

But maybe a grocery store does? We pop into a little market that looks akin to something that would sell hair ties, like a very tiny Safeway. There I find a couple of women stocking up on bottled water and deodorant, and I wonder if there is a very weird apocalypse about to strike that I should be preparing for, like we will all be running out of water and body odors will attract vampire robots. I cannot dwell too long on this because I am learning that this store also does not have hair ties.

I tell Dan that I think Portugal does not have hair ties. He says he might have told me that was silly an hour ago, but is starting to suspect the same thing. We find that all stores are deeply specialized, and that we will not be able to find our items unless we're in the exact store that sells them.

Unless you want port, which is everywhere.

We decide to return to our original quest, but we have no idea where this mall is still. We turn down the Rua do Carmo, but this is up a hill, and Dan is now determined that we find a transformer, so he is walking at a pace that I would describe as 'please let me die.' It is on this hill, and he knows it. But it is not on this hill, and we cannot find it, and we walk a little farther up, our optimism still burning in our hearts, but then we kick the optimism to the curb because we're on a really shitty hill and we don't even remember what words the lady in the phone store said, so what are we even looking for?

And then there it is! Not what we were actually looking for, but a place that has hair things in it! MY THIIIIINGS!

I dart in, forgetting that I'm supposed to use our agreed-upon word for when I would like to disappear into shops with no warning (shiny!) and Dan has to locate me sans homing beacon and sans shock collar (his fault, really). The sweet ladies who work in this sunscreen and hairbrush store do not speak very much English, so I pull out my hair tie and point to it with the universal look that says, "For the love of God SELL ME THIS," and she smiles and says, "Ah yes!" and pulls out a jar from under the counter and I wonder if I have enough tickets to trade for a prize, because this is a prize jar and it is full of a hodgepodge of scrunchies, rubber bands, and pink sparkly elastics, everything clearly for little girls, and I confirm with Dan that yes, Portugal is completely devoid of regular hair ties.

I pick out the least offensive one, thank her deeply, and pay .50 euro for the pleasure. 

We exit the shop with one razor and one hair tie, and I feel victorious, as if I have conquered the most Moorish of hills. And when we come out, our view on life is fresh and new and wonderful, and with our new vision we see that the mall is literally right next to us and we've been walking past it the whole time.

I commend us as gods of location who can find anything in any town, regardless of how many wrong stores you have to enter, and we go into the mall and pick a direction at random, and it's the electronic store! Which we then traverse the entirety of before Dan asks a security guard where a transformer is, and the guy points to literally the front of the store where there is a whole row. No matter, we are the gods of location. Obviously we found them.

We return to Valverde with our purchases, victorious over the day. Only we are supposed to meet up with some friends of ours who are in Lisbon so that Dan can enjoy a Portuguese cooking class and I can try to avoid work of any kind. We assumed it would take us half an hour to find all of our items and it has actually taken an hour and a half, so we do the very exciting walk-run that Dan has introduced to my life, which I'm super grateful for and not at all upset about, throw our things in the room and then zip back downstairs to ask one of our bathed-in-heaven's-light hotel men to find us a taxi. 

He pops downstairs and tries to wave a cab, but it was picking someone else up, so he then runs across the avenida to the busy side and I see him ask the taxi to come to our side of the street so we can be on our way. Then he jogs back over like that's not the worst activity in the world, and happily asks us how our day was. I tell him it was very easy and we had a very good time doing things we were very good at, and he is delighted, and tells us he is sorry that we have to wait for the cab. Dan says no worries, we're all always waiting for something, and the sweet cherub says, "Ah! Yes, I am waiting for love, but I think I have found it!" and asks us if we are going to listen to the fado music at the hotel tonight, because the woman who sings is beautiful, and he does not even like fado but mysteriously he likes it when she sings it, and it is adorably romantic and we wish him well in his quest for love.

May it end better than this.

We get in the cab, and tell the taxi that we are going to Rua Cidade de Liverpool, which sounds friendly enough, except that our cab driver argues with our sweet hotel angel, saying that's probably not what we mean. We say yes, we are going to Cooking Lisbon, and he pauses, then shrugs as if to say, "Sure, if that's really what you want." 

With that glowing recommendation of our choices in life, we start driving to a part of town we've never been in before. The taxi driver actually has no idea where we're going, so we just tell him to drop us in the middle of the street and we will find the place, because we are masters at finding things, as our day has taught us. He seems concerned about our well-being as people, but I reject his compassion, for we are intrepid explorers who have located hair ties and transformers, and surely can locate a cooking class.

Which we do! Quite handily, because it is literally the only door on the street that doesn't look like a burned out bomb shelter or someone's home. It is then that we realize we may have erred in our plan, which was to find the cooking class, and then find a place to have a quick drink beforehand. 

Why have we erred? Because Dan and I are now clearly standing in a part of town that people do not go. People live there, sure, but people don't go there. The presence of multiple Persian rug stores confirms my suspicions. Following the Law of Persian Rug economics, one Persian rug store means you're in a nice area. Multiple Persian rug stores means you're definitely not. 

So Dan and I pass by pastelaria after pastelaria, those wonderful little cafeteria-type shops where you can get a sandwich, a plate of ham, sixty different pastries and a bottle of port or a 3 euro glass of wine, wondering which one we should pick that will house four adults and three children comfortably. The answer is none of them, because they all have a maximum of three tables and zero patrons. 

As is the case when faced with any situation with which I am not familiar, I decide we should pick the place with the most inviting sign, which is a place called O Beny's. We are certain this is it, our unicorn bar, the one shining diamond among a shelf of rocks, and we walk in.

Two old men are at the bar, one sitting, one behind. An old woman sits at a table, watching the Syfy channel with Portuguese subtitles. As we file in, a vague sense of unease fills the place. The proprietor, whom I assume is the man behind the bar, stares at us for a while before offering a half-hearted 'ola.' We ask apologetically if he speaks English. I imagine that he has never heard that question before, because he only stares at us, slightly surprised, shaking his head. 

So we sit, and order vinho, and pray that it does not come out as an omelette. The man stares some more, and the old woman mutters and retreats to the back kitchen to hit something loudly with a wooden mallet, which I know, because I can see her through a little window. The man who is sitting at the bar casts the occasional glance in our direction while the proprietor furrows his brow and brings two glasses of red wine.

Now, I have been alive a marginal amount of time, but in that time, I have learned one thing very well, and that thing is when I should not be in a place. A lifetime of social awkwardness can either inure you to when you're not wanted, or make you hyper aware of it, and I have absorbed the latter. So when the man sets the wine down and shuffles back behind the bar to stare at us from a safe distance, I am confident that what the man said at the beginning of us arriving was, "What the fuck are you doing here?" and that I smiled and bobbed my head and sat down and waited for him to ply me with alcohol. 

I write on Dan's phone that we should probably pick a different place, because though I believe if Eric joins us with his family that we will have strength in numbers, some more surly old men are arriving and I don't know how long that fact will last. Dan accedes to my crazy as per usual, and now we are in the delicate situation of drinking our wine as fast as possible without seeming like we are trying to drink our wine as fast as possible. The woman catches my eye through the window and does break her stride of whacking something with a mallet. I am not even sure she's hitting anything back there, just assuring me that she can. I tell Dan to get the check. He asks the man, 'preco?' and the man says $1.60.

That price makes me think maybe we should stay after all, but the lady catches my eye again and I quaff the rest of my wine and stand and say obrigada, which earns me stares from everyone in the bar, so I shuffle out onto the industrial street, Dan following. It feels akin to if someone brought their fish tank to a dog park and sat on the table with their fish tank full of fish, like no one is going to ask them to leave, but really, don't you think you and your English-speaking fish would be happier somewhere else?

The answer is yes, and we take our fish selves down the street where we meet up with Eric and Margo and their adorable cadre of children, and go to a hotel where they are much happier to serve us cocktails and take our money.

By the time all of this has happened, it is pretty much time for our cooking class, so we down our drinks and head over to Cooking Lisbon, which is a beautiful and modern looking kitchen and eating area, the absolute antithesis of O Beny's and every pasteleria on the street. 

We are thrilled.

Except Olin, because the 

bar had candy.

A jovial man named Philip and a nice young kid named Tomas are our guides for the evening. I like them immediately, until Philip tells me if you do not cook, you do not eat.

I hate Philip.

Guess this is dinner then.

Everyone settles into their task at hand. I try to avoid doing anything at all, until Tomas tells me to mince some garlic. I do not like mincing garlic because it is a. cooking b. something that requires fine motor skills and I do not truck with either A or B. 

Two things kids 

are better than me at.

I wait patiently for the torture to end, while Eric and Margo and their children make the majority of the meal I am about to consume. Dan is also contributing. But, as they say at an orgy, someone has to hold the camera.

An important contribution.

Chef Olin telling his sous chef to get the fuck in line.

Sous Chef Dan finally doing his job.

I slave away and break some eggs and take some pictures. I don't know what everyone else is doing but it can't be more important than that. The beauty of Cooking Lisbon is by the time you've cracked the first egg, you're hammered. Or, at least, that is the beauty of my experience with Cooking Lisbon. We repair to the table to eat cod fritters, chicken that has...things, and a souffle-type cake that has cinnamon on top and tastes like a cloud had sex with a feather pillow and then their child grew up rebellious and slept with a bag of sugar. By this point I have had enough wine that I take no pictures of anything we've created and instead just do this.

I'm a Portuguese chef!

Dinner conversation with Philip and Tomas tells me that Portuguese cooks make about three euro an hour, so I immediately relinquish my title and go back to being an unemployed American instead. 

When we have drank all the wine and the kids have drank all the juice, we all part ways because Dan and I have vowed that we are going to Hot Clube, which is not, in fact, a Portuguese sex club (boo) but is the oldest jazz club in Portugal, founded in 1948 by Luiz Villas-Boas (yay!). 

Too drunk for a picture, 

thank you, internet.

Hot Clube is one block away from our hotel, which means we absolutely have to go. And it is awesome. A small, well-kept room with a small bar and a small stage, that is populated by the students of the Escola de Jazz Luiz Villas-Boas who are playing big band music and where two adorable young women are singing fantastic jazz standards. I am incredibly impressed, because they are singing jazz better than a lot of people in the US, and all in a foreign language. 

We stay for a few numbers, and then wine sleepy sets in and we decide that bed is more important than culture. 

Hehe, sex hotel.

We get back to Valverde, and there is our hotel angel man, flirting with his fado singer in the foyer. 

She seems into him and that is nice. 

Lisbon - Day 2 Part 1

Day 2 starts off with a breakfast that continues a trend that I have found very exciting, namely having a large plate of ham present at every meal. Our trip has been replete with large pork legs hanging from every edifice, asking to be thinly sliced and presented in a circular pattern on a plate for my eating pleasure. Valverde Hotel does not disappoint, and awakens me with ham.

Our server is a sweet and delightful Portuguese girl who laments her position in life. We are not sure if it is Valverde Hotel in particular or all of Portugal, but the young folks are very free with their emotions. When we ask her where in Portugal she is from, she smiles effusively and says, "Lisbon. I am from Lisbon. I was born here, and I will surely die here!" And then asks us if we'd like some eggs.  Her adorable maudlin nature makes me want to take her home, but I've already filled my suitcase with wine bottles so I'm not sure how to accomplish this. I get eggs.

We have decided to spend time with Dan's parents, as it is their last day in Portugal. Dan's mom was hoping for a hop-on, hop-off tour, so Dan's dad hires a dude in a Mercedes to drive us around and point at things. Close enough.

The driver agrees that he will be our shining chariot to take us to the one place I thought we might not make it to, but I desperately need to be at: Pasteis de Belem. It is the goal of the day, and the goal of my life, so I jump into the middle seat and put some fado music on my headphones and patiently wait for pastries to arrive in my face.

But alas there are other things to see before we get there. The driver starts out by asking if we'd like to visit the Castelo de Sao Jorge. There is a resounding no from all patrons of the vehicle, and the driver stutters a bit, wondering what the hell a castle could have done to insult us so badly. Of course, everyone in the car is Jewish, so he likely assumes they just hate Moors. My presence probably complicates the matter, but he decides to take us to a different hill and ignore the issue altogether.

Anti-Moor People, Pro-Blue People.

The only thing about our driver is he is not really a tour guide, nor does he give a shit about the city of Lisbon. Every question about where we are or what's nice about it is met with a half-hearted, "Ehh..it's..this place.." Which leads me to rank it as the second best tour on the trip, seconded only by a jovial man in Gibraltar who gave us a tour that consisted only about facts about his family, such as, "Ah, there is the hospital where my dad is! I'll probably visit him later," and, "That's the university where my daughter Jodi goes! She'll probably graduate." As such, if anyone asks me where to point out the hospital and university in Gibraltar, or where absolutely nothing is in Lisbon, I am perfectly equipped to do both.

The vantage point the driver takes us to does happen to have my two favorite pieces of graffiti thus far.

I think this is supposed to represent tourists.

Or Moors.

I see this brain and wolf thingy around the city, so I assume it is a very benign gang that likes to take selfies at vantage points in the city.

Or something.

After that, we drive to what is my favorite thing in Lisbon. As per my standard practice, I neglect to take any pictures of the things I actually like, preferring instead to have a multitude of red rooftops fill my camera. You can never have too many red rooftops.

Still, I manage to capture a few reminders that we went to something called Feira da Ladra, which is a giant flea market in one of the old neighborhoods. It is a hodgepodge of local artisans, bric a brac, tourist bullshit, and vintage items that teeter heavily between being awesome and being awesome garbage.

I never knew how much I needed a 

ceramic sardine until this moment.

Our driver says that it is the best place in town to sell your old things, "Or your, um," and here, he waggles all five fingers and laughs, and I love that five-finger discount is a universal signal. Apparently it is well-known that half the shit in Feira da Ladra is stolen. 

So do I just take this?

Alas, Dan's family is growing tired and does not want to spend the entire day and also the rest of their life rifling through tiny dollhouse furniture, doorknobs, and ceramic tiles from the 1840s. I am like a kid in a very dusty candy shop where someone should have thrown all this candy away but now I NEED IT and so I dart from table to table and blanket to blanket with a time limit in place, trying to find Just The Right Thing to take back and display on my mantle as my very clever vintage purchase from a Portuguese flea market, but everything is just the right thing and Dan doesn't think a ceramic sardine is really in the spirit of our decorating style (apparently Idiot Child's Bedroom isn't in vogue anymore), so I buy some earrings and sulk all the way to the next place because what is better than garage droppings sold at a discount? 

Oh right, custard tarts.

Let's get fucking going.

Actually, hold that thought.

At our next stop, I abandon my embryonic dream to become a traveling gypsy sitting on the street selling her wares when I see this genius invention, which is a cocktail cart and four folding chairs. Talk about best business model ever. The person sitting in the cart is just chilling reading a book, waiting to pour batched cocktails into a mason jar and charge you an extra dollar to sit in a nice chair and stare at the river. I would have given her all my money, but we had a prior engagement with desserts.

Are they in here?

I honestly have no idea where the tarts are, or where we are. Somewhere on the river, looking at cocktail carts and the Torre de Belem. Like the tarts! I look around, but see only men trying to sell me selfie sticks, as if they have no idea that I don't know how or when it is appropriate to take pictures. I try to make the universal symbol for custard tart, but there is no universal signal, and they wander away to find someone less confused about what a selfie stick is for.

Are they in here?!

We walk across the street to the monastery, and the Church of St. Jerome, which is great, because that's Dan's dad's name, and I tease him about having such a stupid gorgeous house of worship, since I don't know how jokes work. We ponder going inside to see what is probably a large Jesus, but Dan's dad has put a moratorium on church viewing, since when you've seen one Jesus, you've seen 'em all. This suits me fine, because I can smell something wonderful and exciting over the tour bus fumes, and it is motherflipping custard tarts.

The Church of Chubby Happiness.

As is appropriate for any house of worship, there are lines out the door to pay respects to the little custards of legend. I immediately queue up, but Dan points out we've lost his parents. I point out that he should probably go find them while I stand in this line and inch myself closer to the fucking pastries that are five feet away. We have a silent pact, he and I, whereby he knows full well that I would leave him for a case full of pastries, so he never asks me to choose him over them, and with that knowledge he leaves me to stand in vibrating anticipation for tarts in my face.

The place is a hectic zoo of glorious angels stuffing pastries into boxes and handing them over the counter. You pay up front, and then hand this beautiful man a little ticket and he hands you desserts. Given that everyone in the store is a tourist, people are unsure of how the process works, but I am long practiced at getting desserts into me as quickly as possible, so I kindly show everyone how t's done by elbowing around them all and shoving my ticket forward first. 

Give me your treasures, Rumpletartskin!

And, at long last, success is within my grasp, in a warm, effusive cylinder of tiny egg tarts. I pose for a picture, because things are about to get weird.

Everyone look away, I need to be alone.

(To be continued in Part 2, where we go on a quest for normal household items and it is much harder than it should be)