Lisbon

and the hills weren't too bad the rest of the day, at least until we reached Lisbon itself. We stopped frequently for drinks and rests at town plazas and sometimes just at bus stop shelters.

The traffic was heavy all day. Sometimes the road had an excellent, wide, smooth shoulder. Sometimes no shoulder at all. Near Vila Franca we got in a three kilometer traffic jam. The sun was hot. The cars and trucks were completely stopped. We snuck around them to the left and to the right. The hold up was a 500-meter long one lane section where they were repaving the road. On the other side of the construction was another three kilometer long traffic jam not going the other way.

Ten kilometers later we, near Alverca, there was another traffic jam, though not quite so long. Portugal, we heard later, has a reputation for legendary traffic jams almost as much as legendary explorers.

Finally we reached the dreaded urban ring and we got rather lost for an hour or so in some hills nearly as steep as San Francisco's.

I wrote a bad sort of poem in my head while we rode in:

DAGOBA: ODE TO THE URBAN RING

You're not quite on the map, but you're teeming with life.

You're the place to go for things in bulk - flooring tile, dry wall, and calk. You're criss-crossed with railroads and awkward underpasses, Angry drivers honking and causing screeching crashes.

You're just passed the last subway stop, Just before the first train station.

No rental cars here, not a tourist in sight, except the ones that missed the sign, "Lisbon, next right" Lots of concrete, cement trucks and cranes; dust, six way intersections and low flying planes.

Yes, someone put the international airport on you, You wanted the income from all those cars parking.


We survived all this eventually and made our way into the city center. As we crossed the huge plaza on the water front, I saw a man waving his arms at us. I figured he was trying to tell us to walk our bikes. I couldn't have been more wrong. He was a Belgian guy, about 30ish, making a movie about Portugal for the Belgian army. Sort of cultural introduction to the country for the young recruits apparently, and he wanted us in it! We rode in front of the cameras then headed into town.

Lisbon also had the usual scaffolding and jack hammers we are so accustom to in Iberian cities and towns. Our first choice hotel was entirely behind scaffolding, though it was still open. We didn't want a room behind a green tarp so we went to another hotel, the Borges, where we got a fantastic huge corner room with four large windows. It was one of our favorite rooms ever.

The Borges is also one of the most eccentric hotels we've every stayed in (though nothing comes anywhere near the Tenzin hotel in Shigatse, Tibet). For years they had been doing half-assed remodeling jobs resulting in strangely shaped rooms, excellent bathroom fixtures but broken shower holders, nice old furniture with graffiti in the drawers. It seemed to be somewhere between the old days of grandeur and more recent past days of dilapidation. We loved it.

After settling in and taking showers, we decided to treat ourselves to a dinner at a restaurant. Except coffee and pastries, we had not eaten a meal in a single restaurant in Portugal. We had made all our own food.

Unfortunately we chose a mediocre restaurant. At least the deserts were excellent.

Next: Atlantic Coast

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