Quick note about this post: Apparently, I took very few pictures on our first day in Lisbon. David took several, though. Unfortunately, he has no cell service at our current location, so he can’t send them to me to add to this post. Hopefully, I’ll be able to add some more pictures later.

I slept in! Sleeping is not something I’m particularly good at, so when I sleep without waking for hours and hours, I feel nearly celebratory! By the time I bounced out of bed, David had been up for a while and he was ready to go for some coffee. I jumped in a quick shower and got ready while he went to scout out a place. Just about a block and a bit away he found Copenhagen Coffee Lab which looked appealing. He came back to the apartment, where I was ready in record time (to my mind, anyway), and we set off.

At Copenhagen, we enjoyed yummy cappuccinos and a breakfast pastry. The atmosphere was relaxed; the shop mainly full of the teleworking crowd, getting some work done while they sipped and snacked. We talked about our plans for the day with the sounds of Portuguese and English conversations in the background. We then thought we’d better be on our way to our first destination, a public market near the waterfront.

The public market was only a few kilometers away, so we decided to walk. My first impressions of the city in the daylight were a little mixed. The city was crowded and hectic and the traffic seemed incomprehensible. Cars, motorbikes, and scooters zoomed by on the tiny streets. Pedestrians mostly kept to the narrow sidewalks, but crossed the streets, seemingly without a glance at traffic, whenever they needed to. The buildings were a few stories tall and many of the windows sported clotheslines laden with laundry drying in the city air. The streets and sidewalks were cobblestoned and clean, but the feeling of cleanliness was challenged by the graffiti that adorned nearly every wall. I felt a little overwhelmed, but also excited to be experiencing such an environment.

Unfortunately, the public market was getting ready to close, as it was now almost 2:00PM. We did get to make one trip around, though, which gave us a feel for what might be locally available. Lots of produce (including Persimmons!) looked fresh and yummy to us. The fish merchants sold a few things that were familiar to us, but also some items that were new to us, including something that looked like a blob of intestines to me. Hmmm. Not sure I wanted to try that one.

On the way down to the public market, David (okay, both of us) had been on the lookout for a mercado and we’d found one that was small, but seemed to have most of the items we needed. We decided we’d stop there on the way back up the hill to our apartment. And this was when we discovered that everything seems to close for sesta (siesta is the Spanish word) in the afternoon. Lots of places were closed and set to re-open at 3 or 4. We did find that a tiny mercado near our apartment was open and we were able to purchase a few necessities.

“When in Rome”, I thought, and back at the apartment I had a quick rest. Feeling mildly refreshed, we were off again. This time on a mission to find a Portuguese guitar for David. I know, I know, he has lots of guitars already, but due to airline restrictions, he couldn’t bring his travel guitar on this trip, though he did bring his ukulele. We’d decided before we left Fallbrook, that the only sensible thing to do was to purchase a new guitar while we were here.

The music store was about 1.5 km away in Bairro Alto, so off we went. Along the way, we took in some of our first distant views of the big city. It really is beautiful, with the colorful houses and buildings lining the rolling hills.

We found the music store with no problem and immediately saw a selection of what we were looking for. A beautiful, young Portuguese woman came over to help David find his guitar and she was a little surprised, I think, to find that he already knew about the 2 varieties of Portuguese guitars – Lisbon & Coimbra. As David settled in to tune a beautiful Lisbon, the woman told me in broken English that I would have to sing while he played, because that is how Fado (traditional Portuguese music) is done. I laughingly declined, telling her I have a terrible voice. She charmingly tried to commiserate, but couldn’t find the exact word she was looking for, eventually saying that she was sure that I am “worse” than she is. 😂 It was clear that she was trying to say “better”, but that’s only because she’s never heard me sing and the language got the best of her. The conversation reminded me of my dad’s “me neither!” story, which some of you may be familiar with. For worse or better, the woman and the store were delightful and David decided which guitar he would purchase.

On the way back up the hill to get David’s passport (to avoid tax on the guitar purchase), I began to be charmed by the city. As we walked along the narrow, cobblestone sidewalk, we passed beneath some fresh laundry hung from a window one story above. The smell of the city was suddenly usurped by the fresh scent of newly washed linens and I was taken by the full experience of this place, so old, yet so new to me.