Just getting settled into Lisbon tonight. We had a torturous bus ride due solely to the lack of motor coordination by the driver. This may be paybacks for all the people that I’ve passengered and have tortured similarly? The agony as a passenger was caused by stepping on the gas and letting off every 3 seconds causing the bus to lurch forward everytime the engine engaged causing a jerking motion that rivaled someone shaking the beejeezus out of you. I really didn’t think you could get nauseous on a bus traveling on a stick-straight highway. On the eternal list of things that would be best not be learned, this one was added hand-written in the left-hand margin.
We made a first pass at the Barrio this afternoon, and on first glance without a guidebook in tow haven’t been too impressed. Lots of litter floating around, seven offers of hashish, touristy restaurants serving lots of fried things (many with a fin or eyeball sticking out from the batter). But y’know this was a travel day and my disposition towards just about anything in the afternoon is a bit low when nausea is still lingering.
We have better hopes for tomorrow when we run the standard tourist route through the city. This evening started to look up once we hit the Barrio, a second time. (Although, there are waaaay too many steps in this neighborhood… hundreds it seems.) The restaurants opening up for the evening have perked up the area, despite it being a Monday. We are sitting in a Web@Cafe with a Mojito, really weird ambient music playing very loudly, and can see a meager amount of foot traffic wandering past us through the alleys.
The downside of having spent four nights in a beach town is that you end up reading a lot while kicking back on the beach in the afternoon. This causes you to actually, uh, finish the novels you are reading. This in turn causes you to run out of literature to read. This causes you to check out the one bookstore that carries a small selection of English books. This causes a shudder of fear down your spine when you see the selection is only crime mystery novels… space, romance, history.. they all are about psychopathic crimes. In Lagos, we back shuffled out of the bookstore keeping the shop owner in sight as we left. I wonder if there is a small blip in crime statistics in this part of the coast?
So in summary, when only one of you has half a novel left to read, this will get you out of the hotel into a deadbeat Monday night hunting down an Internet cafe for the evening. As far as Internet cafes go, though, this isn’t too darn bad. A Mojito nearby, a weird 20 year old with a pierced nose peering in at me through the window (I stare back and he jumped a bit, looked embarassed.. bet he was looking for the garlic pizza smell that keeps wafting through this alley making him believe one could actually find the pizza restaurant.. hah!), good backbeat to the equivalently weird music.. not bad at all. And, no, we didn’t buy any hashish tonight.
