culture – Taran's Tales

Italia e Portogallo 2018 Pt 2 – Lisboa no rio Tejo

Taranstales
October 7, 2018

Sitting on a luxury bus with thirty five or more potential American expats is a novel experience for this Brit, an inveterate loner, a traveller who takes masochistic enjoyment in spending hours organising his own trips abroad, scathingly pooh-poohing the concept of organised group travel. Yet there we were, our immediate future in the capable hands of the experts from International Living, heading south towards the Portuguese varsity town of Evora.
About two weeks ago we rose early and followed the sun west from Rome to land in Lisbon – Lisboa to the locals – the capital city of that great seafaring nation, Portugal, and the only European capital to directly face the New World far away across the Atlantic Ocean. Rather belittlingly sometimes referred to as “The Pond” that great expanse of sea presented a daunting vision to seafarers in the Middle Ages and taming it took tremendous courage on the part of seafarers such as Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus, encouraged by such visionaries as Henry the Navigator; and to celebrate their exploits,the city of Lisbon commissioned the massive monument, Padrao dos Descobrimentos, on the north bank of the Tagus.

Having organised ourselves for a couple of months exploring Italy, Celine and I learned about this group tour which slotted nicely into our dates, and we promptly decided, somewhat illogically, to back-track to Lisbon and take the opportunity to get a taste of Portugal, the other country that we believed should also be on our list of prospective root re-planting locales.

Rome had proven itself a great place to unwind and recover from our jet-lag; thus Lisbon became the starting point for this trip’s exploring, as we had six days there before joining the tour. We used AirBnB once again, this time to find a sixth floor “apartment with ocean views” in Costa da Caparica, a seaside suburb of Lisbon on the south side of the river Tagus, the aforementioned rio Tejo. The absentee owner is a much travelled town-planning architect, so we were met by his father who showed us around, explained how the roller shutters worked, showed us how to switch power between washing machine and dishwasher, indicated the hatch for the garbage chute beside the lift shaft and then left us to our own devices.

Lisbon is a city built on a series of steep hills, seven in number like Rome supposedly, but there seemed to be many more; you couldn’t go anywhere, except along the river’s edge, without climbing at least one hill. The public transport system in the city comprises a mix of a metro, buses, trams, both ancient and modern, and ferries across the Tagus. So our best route into the city was a ten minute drive from our apartment to catch the ferry from Trafaria to Belem, a suburb a couple of miles west of the city centre, and thence by bus or tram to our destination. A ticket costing a mere €1.75 enabled one to travel on any combination of the modes of transport for, I believe, an hour and a half. However, tickets usually had to be obtained before boarding at the start of the journey and it wasn’t always easy to find the appropriate place to do so. Most people used rechargeable VIVA cards to register as they boarded the bus, tram or ferry at the start of their journey. As well as simply charging the card with a cash value, it was also possible to charge it with a 24hr, go-anywhere pass but the places to do this were even scarcer and we spent quite a lot of time looking, oftentimes unsuccessfully, for the appropriate newsstand or better still a Metro station.

The beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist In Igreja de Sao Roque

In spite of the occasional transport related frustration we managed to visit lots of churches, including Lisbon Cathedral, halfway up the hill behind Alfama, the oldest district of the city, and Igreja de Sao Roque wherein one finds the beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist, its walls and pillars covered in lapis lazuli, alabaster and malachite. As recommended by many travel sites, we decided to take a trip on the ancient #28 tram which rattles its way through many of the smaller streets of the Bairro Alta and Alfama districts. This line terminates near another large religious edifice, the Basilica da Estrela, so one morning we walked up the hill in that general direction. Near the summit we were accosted by a typically helpful Portuguese gentleman who asked if we needed any assistance. We chatted for a few minutes and learnt about one or two towns further north that he reckoned were the sort of places we would well appreciate, and were also told that the Algarve was probably not what we were looking for – a prophecy that would turn out to be very accurate!

The #28 tram squeezing it’s way through the narrow streets of old Lisbon

As well as the couple of days we enjoyed tramping the streets of old Lisbon, admiring the many wonderful tiled buildings, experiencing an evening of Fado music (www.clube-de-fado.com), and being somewhat dismayed by the local cuisine, we made good use of our rental car to drive out into the countryside. Our first foray took us 150 km north-east of Lisbon to the Knights Templar stronghold in the small city of Tomar, and the Convento de Christo which it subsequently became after the Jesuits took power in the region. As well as giving us a good insight into early Jesuit teaching, and the life of the two hundred or more Jesuit monks who lived there, the town itself, situated between the castle/monastery and a pretty river, was also a very likeable place from what we gleaned after our short walk around; but as we have learnt so often in the past, it is easy to be seduced by initial impressions, especially when those revolve round the touristic old town centres.

Qunita da Regaleira, otherwise known as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire”

Another day, after crossing the Ponte de 25 Abril, the splendid 1.5km long suspension bridge across the Tagus, we headed west towards Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, where several palaces and pseudo-palaces that contribute to the area’s World Heritage status are to be found. I plugged Castelo dos Mouros into Google maps optimistically thinking that we might start the day by climbing the couple of hundred stairs to reach this 10th century Moorish stronghold. What we didn’t plan for was the long slow line of one-way traffic through the surrounding forest, the distinct lack of available parking and, indeed, any signpost indicating when we were in the right place to commence our hike. Eventually we found ourselves on the outskirts of the town of Sintra, and realising we were very close to Quinta da Regaleira, found a handy place to park, and walked back a couple of hundred yards to the entrance. This pseudo-palace has a long and varied history of ownership, but is now sometimes referred to as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire” after the best known former owner, Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. Monteiro was a man of many interests and ideologies and he decided to build a bewildering palace and estate that would reflect and showcase much of this eclectic collection of beliefs. The four hectare estate is a lovely place to wander through and forget all the troubles of the world among caves, grottoes, waterfalls and a multitude of footpaths going hither and thither. The house also comprises some delightful architecture and together with the garden, the whole place is truly the work of an extraordinary visionary mind, that of Luigi Manini, the architect who so ably interpreted Monteiro’s ideas.
With plenty of energy still in our travel-hardened limbs we then walked the three kilometres, mostly uphill, to Monserrate Palace, another dreamlike building, this time in the Moorish style, that sits above a more conventional garden full of waterfalls, fishponds and beautiful plants and trees from all over the world. It was a horticultural delight that satisfied all one’s senses, smell, visual and tactile, and even aural as there was also plenty of birdlife in the trees. A very interesting video was being screened in one of the rooms, of an interview with an elderly gentleman who, as a child, lived in the palace during the late 30’s and early 40’s, his father having managed the property for Francis Cooke, who owned the palace between the wars. We finished that very worthwhile day by walking back into Sintra where we rewarded ourselves with Tapas and low-alcohol beers, before driving back to the rather more mundane architecture of Costa da Caparica, south of the river Tagus.
Then the day arrived for us to return our rental car and join the tour that prompted this little detour to the Iberian Peninsular. In some ways it felt like we were losing our freedom but we would very soon realise the advantages of handing over to someone else all responsibilities for our wellbeing!

Cat-sitting in Montpellier.

It was a big wrench leaving Ospedaletti and returning to France again. Something magical there had grabbed both of us and, as we got into our car to drive away, our final memory of our Italian tryst was the beautiful sound of waves crashing against the rocks twenty feet away. So, long before we arrived at our next destination, we were quite convinced that we had to spend more time in La Bella Italia and had already started planning our next trip to Europe!

Alas that was not to be for a while – hopefully in the last quarter of 2018 – and we had to focus our minds on living for three weeks in a stranger’s home, and looking after their beloved cat. Montpellier is a five-hour drive and we arrived there in the early evening darkness, eventually finding a parking space a short walk from the apartment building. We soon discovered that on-street parking is a major problem for Montpellier residents, and the locals were extremely adept at squeezing into the tightest of spaces, using a little gentle bumper contact to assist them as necessary, a technique we approached warily in our lease car!

Tight parking – the driver of the VW had carefully placed some sort of cushion between his rear bumper and the utilities box and then more or less levered his car into the space, leaving his paint on my rear bumper!

We dined well that evening at Bistro Alco, with Kevin our host, while his wife Sheila stayed home finishing off some on-line business before their departure the following morning. Our charge, a black house-cat named Mr.D’Arcy, was not overly excited by our arrival and immediately hid under the bed, quite obviously well aware that his “parents” were departing imminently; animals have an uncanny understanding of the meaning of a pile of suitcases by the front door!

The second floor apartment on rue de Barcelone was only a ten-minute walk from Place de la Comédie and yet, surprisingly quiet, which was a relief for my city-living phobia. With about a third of the city’s population being university students, there was always lots of life centred around the many cafes and bars in the old town. The University of Montpellier, officially established in 1289, is one of the oldest in the world and has been a centre of medical excellence from an even earlier date. The city is, of course, very much more than just a university town, but the atmosphere of studious, intellectual, youthful activity pervades many aspects of the life there and made for an agreeable ambience for this worldly pair of travellers. Which was just as well, as with the problem of parking, we were loath to lose our spot any more than necessary and spent much of our stay on Shanks’ pony, exercising my deteriorating knees to the max, but at the same time getting a good feel of the city-dwelling life. Actually this was quite a good experience, residing as we were in a city with so much to see and appreciate.

So it was back to a life of wandering the streets, seeking culture wherever we could, window shopping mindful of the approach of Christmas, and of course, enjoying French café culture yet again. But having said that, our first attempt to partake of same was a failure. On our second or third day, having finally made friends with Mr D’Arcy, we walked up to Place de la Comedie, thinking we would enjoy a brief late morning coffee and watch the world go by awhile, before taking an afternoon drive to the seaside. But our choice of venue was marred by a waiter who seemed to have no idea of time whatsoever, and after waiting more than fifteen minutes for our order to arrive, our patience frayed and, remembering our midday date with the parking meter, we upped sticks and hot-footed it back to rescue our car from imminent clamping or, worse still, being towed.

The nearest seaside in Montpellier entails a fifteen minute drive to Palavas-les-Flots. However we decided to go a few minutes further to the fishing village of Le Grau-du-Roi, the driver not wishing to stop at La Grande Motte, a purpose-built resort from the sixties, full of concrete apartment buildings, the only redeeming feature of which was the avant-garde architecture.

Avant-garde architecture of La Grande Motte

Le Grau-du-Roi was much more traditional, and hence more to our liking. We walked along the seafront, neatly paved with modern mosaics, braving the brisk wintry breeze raising white caps on the bay, until we came to a touching statue of a mother and her child peering into the distance, searching the horizon for their husband/father’s fishing boat; it was yet another reminder of this coast’s strong traditions with seafaring.

Statue of mother and child in Le-Grau-du-Roi

A canal passes right through the centre of the village, its banks lined with fishing boats, old and new and various pleasure craft and tour boats; tours into the étangs (lagoons) of the nearby Camargue are popular tourist activities, though not such an attractive proposition in early winter. We stopped awhile at one of the cafes lining the quay on the right bank (that’s the bank on your right as you float downstream!), before a late afternoon drive through La Petite Camargue, where we were happy to see some of the famous pink flamingoes.

Another day we drove to Sète, an interesting town built upon and around a hill, Mont St Clair, that was a separate island until the mid-seventeenth century when Louis XIV decreed that the town and port be built to provide an outlet to the sea for the Canal du Midi. This work included reclaiming land between the north-east corner of the island and the mainland, building canals and bridges, and constructing a long isthmus connecting the southwest corner to the land and effectively creating the sea-water lagoon, Étang deThau. The reclaimed land is where most of the town’s industry is found, and the isthmus has nature reserves and vineyards planted in the sand, the wines from which are said to have a distinct flavour of the sea. We spent an hour or more wandering the paths of the small wooded park that covers the peak of the hill, and enjoying the views. Eventually we drove back down into the port area, and looked around the shops before having our usual afternoon coffee break at a café on Quai de la Résistance, overlooking the fishing boats moored either side of the main Royal Canal.

One more trip to the seaside found us making a return visit to the Camargue, on a glorious, sunny, windless autumn day, stopping first to befriend, and feed with fresh green grass from our side of the fence, one of the handsome white horses for which the Camargue is so famous, before arriving at the quiet little low-key tourist village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where we hoped to find a place to eat a late lunch. In this we were totally thwarted, as everything closes down at 3pm sharp, so we contented ourselves with admiring the impressive old church that had been built to be as much a place of refuge as a house of religion.

From there we drove back through the Petite Camargue in the late afternoon sunshine, towards the splendid, small, medieval walled town of Aigues-Mortes, hoping, in vain sadly, to see some of the powerful Camarguaise black bulls, bred for the corridas in both France and Spain. This drive included taking the ferry across Le Petit Rhone, on a most unusual ferry that is guided by a cable strung across the river upstream from the boat; a simple effective idea as long as the river is always flowing seawards. It wasn’t clear how they handled an incoming tide!

It was getting dark when we arrived at Aigues-Mortes and we restricted our stay to a walk along the main street, Grande Rue Jean-Jaurès, stopping for a much-needed coffee at Café Express on Place St-Louis, and then succumbing to the temptations at La Cure Gourmande, famous for its sugar cookies, a tasty end to an enjoyable day away from the big city.

With Nîmes being slightly less than an hour’s drive from Montpellier, we arranged to meet my step-sister Selina for lunch one day, and unfortunately, chose a very damp rainy day, prompting us to drive straight to Parking de l’Arènes in the centre of town. We did a bit of shopping before the appointed hour, successfully finding Berenice Nîmes, a milliner we had patronised a couple of years earlier and, naturally, we failed to come away empty-handed . . . either of us this time! We had a good lunch at Ciel de Nîmes, personally waited on by the proprietor, one of Selina’s neighbours; the restaurant is located on the rooftop of the fine new library on one side of Place de la Maison Carré, its ultra-modern architecture being an interesting juxtaposition with the wonderfully preserved Roman temple which gives the square its name. On the drive back to Montpellier we stopped off at Sommières, a medieval fortified village, that I had believed could be a good place to live. This time the grey weather made the place seem a little less desirable, and we contented ourselves watching a huge flock of starlings doing their dramatic flying sculptures, catching sight of a couple of rare coypus along the riverbank, and admiring the graceful passage of a small group of swans which included a black one, another comparative rarity.

We returned to Sommières for a second look a few days later, seeing the town under clear blue skies and bright sunshine. As we were crossing the pedestrian causeway across the river, Le Vidourle, a hot-air balloon arrived, seemingly low on gas as it skimmed the treetops seeking a safe place to land. Nice day as it was, the town still seemed rather gloomy, and somewhat limited in what it offered, so we crossed it off our list of nest sites!

Apart from these few sorties to the countryside, we easily filled our time in Montpellier, strolling around that lively, elegant city. Celine’s niece, Martinka, joined us for one weekend and we enjoyed her young company as we discovered more and more new places.

The neo-classic architecture of Antigone.

Antigone is a new neighbourhood built in the early 1980’s, mostly comprising low-income housing (proving that where there’s a socially conscious will, even the less well off in society can live in attractive surroundings) plus public facilities and local shops. Designed by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, it is an extraordinary collection of “grand neo-classical structures, enlarging classical motifs such as pediments, entablatures and pilasters to a gigantic scale” [Wikipaedia], and yet complimenting the aging grandeur of much of the town centre.

More classical imagery at the entrance to Le Polygone shopping centre.

It is definitely worth taking a couple of hours to stroll around, ending up at the Polygone shopping centre.

Another morning we chose to join a guided tour around the Faculty of Medicin. As we were the only non-Francophones in the group, the French-speaking guide kindly assured us that he would be happy to describe in English anything that we didn’t understand; but when we tried him out on that a couple of times, his English was far more difficult to understand than his French and we reckoned we would do better to rely on our own translations.

The imposing front door of La Faculté de Médecine.

The main building is very impressive with a lot of history and the portrait gallery of past professors includes such worthies as Francois Rabelais. However, it was Le Musée d’Anatomie that was perhaps the most memorable part of the tour. Glass cabinets lining the walls of the long hall, displayed an extraordinary collection of bits of bodies that have been preserved as exhibits for the students to study, dating back to the days when surgery was still very much the domain of those known affectionately as “sawbones”.

Cases of body parts lined the walls of La Conservatoire d’Anatomie.

And nothing was left to the imagination. Veneral disease was rife among students in the nineteenth century and all those stricken were required to make a very realistic scale model of their affected parts for the educational benefit of their colleagues; thus one fairly large case contained well over sixty scarily detailed models of genitalia in various stages of the diseases, which must surely have frightened many a young man away from the joys of casual sexual encounters! However, the display that particularly interested me was a case of dissected knee joints, making me realise just what I was letting myself in for, having committed to bilateral knee replacement surgery upon our return to California.

Two other places well worthy of a visit in this historic city of learning and culture are the beautiful elegant Opera House and La Musee Farbre. The latter includes in its treasures, a fine collection of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces, as well as various French works of art. The museum was practically deserted apart from us and several security guards who seemed to pop up around every corner. We chatted to one, an Englishman in his sixties who seemed to have a somewhat obscure past; he told us that he liked the work there as there was so little violence in art galleries . . . compared to???! Attached to the museum is L’Hôtel de Cabrières-Sabatier d’Espeyran, a lavish nineteenth century mansion, that gives the visitor a good taste of what life was like for the upper classes in those days.

Preparations for the holiday season were well under way by the end of our stay. The Jardin du Champs de Mars was filled with the little huts that are so much a part of Christmas markets everywhere, “Les Hivernales” as they called it in Montpellier, and we spent a couple of evenings supping gluhwein and consuming hot sausages as we perused the many stalls displaying the usual collection of seasonal offerings. A twenty-foot high, brightly illuminated globe, and giant inflated clowns wandering around, added to the festive atmosphere for the delightfully cosmopolitan crowd of revellers of all ages and from all walks of life, that crowded the square. The city also had its own take on the Festival of Lights, Coeur de Ville en Lumières. A dozen or more of the more significant public buildings were used as the backdrop for a series of excellent audio-video presentations that combined musical scores, both modern rock and classical, with graphics that ingeniously used the architectural details, to tell different stories, some historical and some pure fantasy. Each presentation lasted five minutes or more and they were phased so that we had time to stroll from one to the other; it was very impressive.

And, it seemed, no sooner had we arrived than it was time to move on again. Kevin and Sheila were on their way home and we started our own preparations to hit the road again.

Mr Darcy relaxing with his stuffed animals.

Mr.Darcy had been a very easy feline to sit for; he seemed content in his life as a housebound cat, was clean and tidy, and showed no inclination to follow us out into the great outdoors. As long as we fed him regularly and emptied his litter box, his only slight sign of frustration was a tendency to hump his stuffed animals, which was probably more his daily equivalent of an early morning stretch for us mere humans. And I have to say that, with its large balcony and views over the nearby rooftops towards the rising sun, their compact apartment was actually a very easy place to live. Being so close to such a vibrant city centre, I came to understand what attracts people to live like that. However, it didn’t dissuade me from my need to once more feel the freedom of living life in a smaller community with views of sea or countryside, and I looked forward to our next destination, Calella de Palafrugell in the Costa Brava of Spain . . .

PS Writing this over a year later, I am very conscious that the photos do not always do justice to the subject matter. I have told my Facebook friends earlier about my frustrations at having had a catastrophe with our HDD holding our enormous collection of travel pictures. Luckily we recovered perhaps 80% of the files, but the random way the damage affected them has left me without some of our best images. So, my apologies!

Lyon – finale – A city of dance, murals and street art

Lyon has a lot of cultural activities going on throughout the year and during our stay in September, it was the turn of the 17^e Bienniale de La Danse, with everything from impromptu displays of break dancing and hip-hop on the verandah along the front of L’Opera to more formal concerts at a variety of venues. Through our studies at L’Inflexyon we were able to attend what was perhaps one of the stranger events, a piece called simply Corbeaux (Crows), staged in the Roman Théatre des 3 Gauls, built in 19A.D. at the foot of La Croix Rousse. In this somewhat bizarre performance a troupe of twenty-five performers from Morocco, all dressed simply in black, put themselves into a trance through a choreographed trembling of their heads and the continuous chanting of a psalmodie. I don’t believe we were alone in finding the spectacle completely incomprehensible. However, it was eerie to be sitting where delegations from the 60 Gallic tribes who paid allegiance to their Roman conquerors, would also have sat and watched the type of entertainment much favoured by the imperial cult in those days, and, perhaps, finding those games equally bizarre! On a more somber note, the amphitheatre was also the scene, in 177AD of the first sacrifices of Christian martyrs on behalf of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who treated Christianity as a ‘problem’ to be dealt with ‘locally’, by his subordinates!

No description of Lyon would be complete without a mention of the endless array of street art. From officially sanctioned murals such as the amazing full building works of a bookstore and an apartment dwelling occupied by Lyon’s famous characters on every balcony, to celebrity murals such as that of Paul Bocuse, and lots of very amusing graffiti, solid sculptures like a pair of legs or half a bicycle sticking out from walls and small pieces of mosaic tucked here and there. One street in Vieux Lyon has shields painted with family coats of arms hanging from wall brackets at just about every building. The observant eye will see sculptures of strange creatures hanging off window sills and beautiful brass knockers adorn many a doorway. It’s almost as if it would be a greater challenge to find a street bereft of such art and artifacts.

Thus our month in Lyon was well occupied, the September weather was delightful, with just a little light rain on a couple to days to freshen the air and make the streets shine. We reached the end of our stay with a long list of places and events we hadn’t seen and for which we should have made time, but it is always good to have reasons enough to go back again to such a lovely city some day hence. And then there is all the surrounding countryside with the Beaujolais vineyards to north and west, other fine cities such as Grenoble and Geneva, and the foothills of the Alps a short drive away to the east, giving us yet more incentives to return. It probably isn’t somewhere that we will consider living one day, for from all accounts the winter weather is probably more severe than this couple of South Californian softies want to live with.

And with that thought in mind our next destination was 400 kilometres closer to the equator, still in France, but bordering the attractions of the Mediterranean sea, a region of the country much eulogized by a host of writers in the past, and for many years one of the essential elements of that soul-searching, educational rite of passage known as the “Grand Tour” by so many artists, writers, and carefree young gentlemen, and ladies, of means in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; I refer, of course, to “La Provence”.