Portugal – Less Car, More Life

One night in Lisbon and on to the USA

Tap airways seems to have become our airline of choice to get from Europe to the USA. Their one way pricing and timing of flights works out well. Rich can buy extra leg room seats, and the planes they fly have a 2 4 2 seat configuration so we can sit just next to each other. No dreaded middle seat. Since TAP flights from Geneva go through Lisbon we can spend a night or few days there. This trip we spent just one night in Lisbon, at a hotel on the red line so it was easy to get from and back to the airport. This is what traveling with a master planner is like.

Enjoying a warm summer evening in Lisbon.

Hanging out at our favorite little park, Jardim Fialho de Almeida.

So what is it like coming back to USA? Busy. We try not to go crazy with over scheduling, but there are always so many people we want to visit. In the past we’ve landed in NY or Chicago and stayed with friends or at a house sit. This time, arrival June 1st, we stayed in a hotel in downtown SF for two nights (friends had come down with Covid so we pivoted). That gave us time to go out to our storage unit, recover from jet lag a bit, and have a wander around downtown before heading to our first house sit with two cats not far from Golden Gate Park.

Salesforce Park above the beautiful transit center in downtown SF.

The retired engineer reflects on his experience working on the transit center.

It’s an odd feeling to stay in a hotel in what was for so many years our hometown. It was the first time we’ve ever stayed in a hotel in SF so we leaned in. The Galleria Park Hotel had a nightly happy hour with a signature martini, or wine. We settled into cozy chairs and chatted with a fellow guest from Oroville, California. It’s a social buzz to get to the US and be able to talk to everyone again. Thankfully Californians are quite friendly.

These two were much friendlier than this photo makes them look.

Storage unit mayhem! It’s fun shopping for clothing in your storage unit – everything is your size and in your style.

Our summer schedule was built around our niece’s wedding. That was our first must not miss event. A stop by the storage unit to get clothes for the wedding was good timing, as we discovered that moths had moved in. We’ve had our things in this storage unit for almost three years and haven’t seen a moth. I assume they came in with someone else’s stuff and flitted around looking for tasty wool. I left a wool sweater loose on top of a bag last January. That obviously was like a formal invitation to dinner for moths. We spent a few hours moving our clothing from cardboard boxes to plastic containers with cedar blocks in them. Other than that one sweater we saw no visible damage. Hopefully we’ve made our storage unit inhospitable to the moths.

The cleaned up version of us. Clothes from the storage unit.

It was a little warm even up in the mountains, so a pre-wedding creek foot dip was welcome.

Our niece and her new husband. A gorgeous and fun filled wedding.

The wedding venue, Gordon’s Rim Rock Ranch.

Lights and fire pits as the sun went down and the fun continued.

The wedding was up near Mount Shasta, Old Station in Shasta County. It’s a beautiful area, shaped by the volcanic activity of nearby Mt. Lassen in Lassen National Park, and Mt. Shasta a bit further north.

Rich and his step mother out for a hike.

Information signs as you walk through and marvel at how a lava tube is created.

And out the other side a stunning view of Mt. Lassen. It’s actually named Lassen Peak and it’s a
10,457 ft (3,187 m) lava dome. Last eruption 1914 to 1921.

After the wedding and lovely visiting time with family we headed out to stay with friends near Redding before driving back to SF to catch a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado. If you’re wondering about logistics, at this point back in the US we took BART from the airport to downtown SF. A car share out to our storage unit, a MUNI bus to our first SF house sit and, then after our house sit a rental car to the wedding.

A stop by McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park and a peek at the 129 foot waterfall.

This osprey parent with chicks in the nest helpfully built their nest trailside. What a classic sight. Huge nest on a tall snag.

Mt. Shasta,
elevation of 14,179 ft (4,322 m). Last eruption 1250.

Grand Junction Colorado is another frequent stop for us, where my Mom and Sister live. It’s been another home for us during our three years of nomading. We are thrilled to have Breeze Airways flying directly from SF to Grand Junction now.

Kathy, Mom, Rich and Lorilie – the ranch Dalmatian.

Some sunset dog play time. The extra dog, Mo, belongs to a niece – he comes to ranch camp when she is traveling.

A cloudy day feels rare in the Grand Valley. Made for a nice hike in the canyons near Fruita.

Look at those lovely clouds. And handsome husband.

My sister getting the newly cut and baled hay in before the rain started.

Mom and I helping by staying hydrated. It was hot.

Kathy took some time away from work to take us up to the Grand Mesa where it was quite a bit cooler, and beautiful.

Sisters with a view. That’s the Grand Valley behind us.

Always take photos. It brings back the feel of the day.

The 500 square miles (1,300 km²) of the Mesa rises 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above the river valley. Since Grand Junction is already 4593 ft / 1400 m above sea level, you definitely notice the altitude.

A haircut for Mom. She’s a good sport and not too picky with the job I do.

After our Colorado stay it was back to California again to visit more friends and family. A night in Redwood City, two nights in San Luis Obispo, and on to Moorpark where my brother and sister-in-law live. It’s a good thing all our bike touring has made us good at packing and unpacking. It’s tempting when you have a rental car to gather more stuff to take with you, but we try and keep our life lived from a rental car as minimal as possible.

With our friend Jim hiking the coast near San Luis Obispo.

With Chuck and Linda in downtown Ventura, a nice pedestrian street with cute local shops.

From Moorpark we took the Metrolink train to downtown LA to visit the Broad Museum and have a wander around.

Always check out the bike car, even when we don’t have bikes. Nice. A very good use of space.

We were post rush hour so the train was not crowded.

The Broad Museum. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. It’s a stunning building and entry is free by timed reservations.

Under the Table, by Robert Therrien. Or, as I called it, Rich gets to feel like a cat.

Red Block. Born in Ghana and based in Nigeria, El Anatsui crafts bottle caps, reused aluminum commercial packaging, copper wire, and other materials into giant shimmering sheets of what he calls “cloths.” We saw another of this artist’s works at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

A day at the coast and time to enjoy the newly renovated Point Dume State Park in Malibu.

We saw workers continuing to remove invasive plants and encourage the native plants.

After a great stay in Moorpark it was back in the rental car and back to the Bay Area. We’ve been eagerly awaiting a house and cat sit for friends for the entire month of July in our old neighborhood in San Francisco. Our second summer must do. That’s where are now. Not only do we have two wonderful goofball cats to live with and love, but it’s Tour de France time, so, after fetching our big screen from the storage unit we introduced the cats to the joy of watching the tour.

The great thing about the Tour, according to the kitties, is loads of lap time.

Rich and his riding buddy Fred at a foggy Golden Gate Bridge.

So what’s next? After a wonderful month in SF full of catching up with friends and being happily in one place for a change, we’re headed to Seattle for the month of August. We have friends to visit and one house sit lined up. Have a wonderful summer.

The happy travelers having a chill summer.

Lisbon attitude adjustment.

Rich surveying the city on our way to the train station.

How much does your mental state affect your enjoyment of a place? For us in Lisbon the answer was ‘a lot’. Our mental and physical states had taken a beating by the time we got to our apartment hotel and made an initial grocery run. The positive Covid tests the first morning certainly didn’t help. Sometimes when traveling you just have to give yourself a mental shake, a stern talking to, and push through an attitude adjustment.

The Citymapper city logos make me smile every time.

You head out looking for beauty. Shake off your negative attitude and stride out, well, kind of limp out in our case. Spending two or three days inside while we tested positive didn’t help. Thankfully the rain made it easier to just hang out. A short careful walk, a quick masked grocery store run, and more resting – that was the extent of our first few days in Lisbon.

Starting to notice the white walls and colored flowers.

Oh yes, this is helping my beaten down Covid brain.

The small streets are quiet and charming.

The mosaic sidewalks and plazas of Lisbon are beautiful. Under your feet is craftsmanship of a high quality.

The black basalt worked into the white limestone. Stunning.

It is called calçada portuguesa or simply ***calçada.***

The calçada has a lot of positives, in addition to being beautiful it can adapt to uneven ground, or rise and fall with tree roots without cracking like concrete.

The calçada around the tree wells is not level., but still intact.

Stopping to appreciate the work and imagine what a tough job this is, to piece together a mosaic sidewalk.

The slightly undulating calçada, and the diamond pattern made me feel as if I were walking on a giant snake. (Imaginative or Covid brain?)

When this snakeskin gets wet – watch out!

We had some rain while in Lisbon, and that brought out the negative side of limestone snakeskin sidewalks- they get so slippery! We quickly learned to judge how slippery a stretch was likely to be based on how polished the white stones looked. The more shine, the higher your chance of losing your footing. If the sidewalks had the black basalt squares they were less slippery, or your foot wouldn’t slide as far since it would come into contact with a black stone and stop.

Apparently there just aren’t as many craftspeople available to keep the sidewalks in good shape, which means you have situations like the above photo. When it’s rainy people tend to walk in the street to stay upright. The car drivers seem quite used to it, but it’s still uncomfortable to have to watch out for cars while picking your way along the cobbled street.

Certainly not slippery. We didn’t get to see this street during a rainy period but I imagine it drains well.

Even with our positive mental attitude firmly in place we just could not enjoy walking around Lisbon. The sidewalks are simply too narrow, and not in great repair. In the more modern part of town, upslope, the traffic signals are set in favor of moving car traffic which means long long waits for pedestrians to get a crossing signal. The intersections can be huge, with so much extra pavement that car drivers have the ability to whip around corners at fairly high speed. We haven’t seen any of what we call Covid-era street improvements like we see in so many other cities, where street space has been reapportioned to give pedestrians and bikes more space, and increase safety.

That’s a narrow sidewalk. Not much that can be done here with the streetcar tracks.

A beautiful sidewalk. The more historic downtown area has sidewalks in better repair.

What can cheer up some slightly cranky post Covid travelers? A lovely lunch with adult beverages.

Lisbon really is beautiful. All those tourists can’t be wrong about that.

Part of our sour attitudes definitely came from the fact that a planned 3 night stay turned into 8 nights. Our positive Covid tests, coupled with the challenge of re-booking our flights on TAP airlines, kept us in town for the longest stretch we’ve spent in an A list tourist city since Copenhagen for the start of the Tour de France. We’re not always huge fans of A list cities, as they expose the negatives of concentrated tourism.

Keep that positive mental attitude going. A lovely almost 3 hour lunch in Cascais, a short train ride from Lisbon. We chatted for ages with a super nice Canadian/British couple at the next table.

Symmetrical potbellied trees. I think they are Queensland Bottle trees. Whatever they are – cute!

Since this was our second time in Lisbon we do know one place that is guaranteed to make us smile. Parque Infantil da praça das Flores. We first visited this park on a trip to Cervecta Lisboa, in search of craft beer. We walked here from our Covid hotel nest/room and sat and enjoyed the calm. After testing negative we came and sat in the park with beer from the Cervecta. The calm attitude towards alcohol in parks, with kiosks offering coffee, snacks and drinks, and the local cafes allowing you to take your drink out to the park, is wonderful. It ensures there are always people around enjoying the parks. I would always rather sit in a park.

A happy traveler. You can see the kiosk in the background, and the beer place is to the left of the park.

Tired of beer? The kiosk has wine in little reusable plastic cups.

The happy travelers. Negative tests and ready to move on.

Farewell Lisbon, we intend to come back to Portugal and explore the B and C places, get off the beaten track a bit and spread the tourist love. Our travel world was not done throwing us curveballs yet, though. More on that in the next post from Brooklyn, NY.

Laying Low in Lisbon

Well, it was bound to happen. After over 14 months of travel, Covid finally caught up to us. Being really sick is definitely a low point of extended (or even short) travels. You just want to be home, have all your comforts, and be better. Luckily, our nomadic lifestyle has prepared us to deal with travel uncertainties a bit better and stay calm when a hiccup develops…even major ones.

It’s easy to find the charm of Lisbon, even recovering from a bout of Covid.

After we tested positive earlier this week, we immediately prioritized our next steps: push back the flight to the NYC, extend our lodging in Lisbon, notify our friends we were to stay with in the US, and think about contingencies.

So leafy and with a mild Mediterranean climate, Lisbon feels so much like San Francisco

We respect this new virus and know that it has brought untold misery on the world, and uncertain outcomes to even the healthiest. And although Covid hit us hard for a few days, the worst soon passed. We are lucky to be quite healthy, with daily exercise, good sleep habits, and a good diet (mostly, as we do indulge in local foods that may not be on any top 10 health food lists).

Our big adventure to the grocery store to stock up for an unknown duration of hunkering down. Rain and slippery limestone not helping!

Of course stomach ailments are a part of travel too, and we’ve had our share of them over many years, including India, Mexico, and Morocco. But one of the only nice things about stomach bugs is that they are usually over very suddenly. You often go from wanting to die on the toilet to wanting a double cheeseburger and a beer in hours. And we’ve always been lucky enough to only have one of us down and out at once. The other person is available to get hydration, meds, and make any travel changes.

Although revitalization and gentrification has spruced up most buildings in Lisbon, there are still a few fixer uppers available.

But this hit us both at almost the same time. We were a bit fatigued as we left Bilbao, and fully masked on our travels, but it didn’t feel like anything more than maybe some post-Camino tiredness and a little stuffy head (No cough, no fever.). But it had settled in deeper by the time we got to Lisbon and we both woke up Wednesday morning with brain fog, extreme tiredness, more congestion, and some decent aches and pains. The Covid rapid tests an hour later confirmed what we already suspected…we both had it.

Feeling Lisbon’s nautical roots on the Tagus

Luckily, we had booked an apart-hotel room for our 3 day stay and we were able to extend to 8 days in the same unit. It’s quiet and has two big windows looking at trees, and over 500 sq ft in two rooms, including (crucially) a kitchenette. So we are able to adventure out to grocery stores for supplies and have all our meals here, as well as lots of healthy fruit and veg, comfort food, and juices.

The iconic tram cars of Lisbon look like cute toys, but are still as functional as ever.

The two rooms allowed some space for us to relax separately in such cosy quarters. By Friday morning we both felt noticeably better, so Cheryl took another test. If she was still a strong positive, then we wouldn’t waste another test. So we were both thrilled when she tested negative, and I decided to test as well. Still somewhat positive…Today it was an almost imperceivable line, so I’m almost certain to be 100% negative by tomorrow!

Look, real laundry drying in the Alfama! Maybe a family still lives here….

So we are happy with our decision to push back our flights to the US to this Wednesday, as we’ve actually been able to start going out and enjoying some of this very beautiful city. We also had masked all day on our way to Lisbon, including the plane, and taxis, so hopefully we did not infect others, but it’s also made us realize that the virus is out there everywhere, and continuing our cautious ways in the future is smart, not to mention getting all the available boosters we can. We don’t want to go through this again (too soon) and don’t want to put anyone else unnecessarily at risk. But the virus is now a part of life, and part of travel, like it or not.

Cheryl’s negative test smile with the Ponte 25 de Abril Bridge…always a double take for our beloved Golden Gate

Another item of note is the fact that we’ll be on Day 89 of 90 allowable Schengen days this Wednesday, so we’re also really glad that we left 6 visa days of validity slack in our plans. For those who don’t recall, a U.S. citizen can only be in the 26 country border-free Schengen Zone of Europe for up to 90 days out of any 180 day contiguous period without a country-specific extended stay visa. It’s a rule that catches a lot of long term travelers out.

This is our second visit to Lisbon, as we were last here for 4 nights in early 2018, along with visits to Porto, and Coimbra. It’s still charming, and I especially love the extreme vertical terrain, where you never quite know which way is out of a valley. Surprises await if you get off the beaten track, but one thing that’s noticeable from even our last stay, is that the penetration of tourism seems even deeper into the neighborhoods.

Keeping my distance for other tourists catching shots of the funicular in the Alfama

It’s the age old conundrum of tourism development: by coming to see what everyone else wants to see, you are slowly changing it, and before long, the native and organic neighborhood elements are completely flushed out. Lisbon is still real, and there are Portuguese tourists here as well, but the relentless conversion of neighborhood properties into short term rentals via AirBnB, new boutique hotels and spas, and easy air access for cheap weekend visits, has made much of it feel a bit overrun.

Lisbon’s revitalized waterfront includes this cool bio-algae pond with floating cork islands. (The Vino Verde corks have a home now!)

The grittiness of the the western port area was refreshing after the heavily touristed core

It feels like a City fighting to keep its character. We recognize this from San Francisco, and know that locals will always know how to avoid the tourists and the touristy restaurants, etc. But San Francisco had a big advantage over Lisbon in the past 40 years, it was much more expensive to buy property, had strict development rules, and better tenant protections. As the Alfama neighborhood struggled and investment waned, rules were adopted that if someone would buy a property and renovate it, then all the tenants could be evicted. Period. It saved a lot of the buildings from ruin, but apparently decimated the local neighborhood.

Blue skies and an ageless charm in the Alfama

It’s very evident today that only a few pockets of “authentic” neighborhood exist in the Alfama. But cities are always changing and Lisbon is adapting as well. Free transit for seniors and those under 23, a new waterfront revitalization, and a focus on preserving the unique culture.

Way to go Lisbon…free transit is a great way to encourage car free habits at a young age and make sure seniors are mobile

There are also stricter rules on foreign Golden Visas, which have allowed many foreigners to settle in Portugal, but have really changed many neighborhoods in Lisbon, Porto, and smaller towns in the Algarve to expat enclaves. It’s a tough balance for a developing country that had a lot of debt and challenges in the past, but has an amazing extremely welcoming culture, good education and healthcare systems, and a fantastic climate.

But I have meandered a bit too far off track but do promise that next time we come to Portugal, we will see even more of it, and try to spread the tourism love further….perhaps walking along 200km of the Camino Portuguese.

Happy fall and looking forward to seeing some of you soon back in the USA!