Well, upon closer inspection, Lisbon is still a bit rough around the edges. This city feels like it is not fully part of the EU yet. Much of the downtown is peeling and in need of tile work. The sidewalks have large gaps in them. Yet, you can see the money that is coming into the city over the past few years. They have a Hard Rock Cafe and a handful of new malls, and major global stores appearing across town (the anti-globalization movement hasn’t caught on here). The Metro subway system is modern and clean.
For one day, we wandered up to the castle for a fantastic view of the city and of a bridge built by the same company that built the Golden Gate bridge leading across a huge river to more neighborhoods and a huge stone cross on the hill. The weather was alternating between clear and semi-cloudy on a near hourly basis. This has some strong winds from the Atlantic.
We wandered down through the Almafa district which was once a medina (think Moors/Morocco… then think mideval city… then think rough windy sailor neighborhood). It is now a home to an older generation that is extremely short (a bit of a shortage of food when they were growing up), and the doorways match the height of the people (at 5′6″, I’d have hit my head on many entryways). While walking down through the neighborhood, it became apparent that we just missed a festival. The streets had lights and streamers still decorating the alleyways. Two five year olds held us captive at an alley crossing with some of the dangling garland laughing and shouting loudly in Spanish. The sailor mentality is still in the neighborhood. On an odd note, we read that many of the homes in the neighborhood don’t have toilets and each section has a community bathroom. This may explain why we saw mostly an older generation in the neighborhood? Indoor plumbing really is a nice thing to take for granted.
The following day we checked out the ‘largest aquarium in Europe’ at the site of the Lisbon’s ‘98 World Expo. The aquarium had a nice layout of a huge center global tank complete with the Pedaglic Sun Fish that the Monterey Bay aquarium has (those are some funky looking creatures). And four seperate ocean tanks that had an above ground and underground view representing each of the four major oceans. The above ground exhibits were so close to the otters and penguins you could reach out at touch them, and the snow-ice they made for the penguins. Europe is different in that regard, they seem to still have a small ounce of belief that aquarium visitors will actually not touch the creatures. A favorite side exhibit was of a couple of yellow Leafy Seadragons and Grass Seadragons. They had spectacular wavey branches with minature aspen leafs floating in the water surrounding a sea horse like body. And finally, they had a hapless octopus pulled from Puget Sound that looked quite healthy and colorful, which made me swear off eating octopus, and cuttlefish for that matter (both popular dishes around here.. shudder).
