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.
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