Photo Pest: Saturday in Lisbon

Saturday, May 20, 2023

Saturday in Lisbon

It was good to get outside after a morning spent in the Gulbenkian. This ferry terminal looked brand new.

It's just across the street from Praca do Comercio, Lisbon's waterfront square. Some ridiculously costumed man with a pot belly inserted himself into every tourist's photos of the equestrian monument to Jose I. He was king when the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (and tsunami!) struck, nearly leveling the city.

Walk through the arch and you're in the city's historic center which is a lot sleazier than I expected.

Like Porto, Lisbon has many hills. We took an elevator instead of the stairs to the Sé de Lisboa which has survived many earthquakes.

This Sebastian--minus the arrows, if not the stigmata--looks like he should be in a Derek Jarman film, not a church.

Then again, church officials used flabellas (fan chairs embellished with white ostrich feathers) to transport bishops. As Mary Louise Parker said so memorably centuries later in Longtime Companion, "You tell me."

The birds at either end of this carrack explain what the image is doing on the cathedral wall. It's carrying the remains of Vincent of Saragossa, a Spanish martyr beatified for his refusal to worship Roman gods in the fourth century. Portugal's first king vowed to bring his remains to Lisbon if he could defeat the Moors in the 12th century. Legend has it that two ravens protected the ship on its journey.

None of us were in the mood to stand in line for the Santa Justa Lift. It has taken Lisboans and tourists from the lower streets of Baixa to Carmo Square since 1902, when steam powered it. Electricity came five years later.

People have been enjoying Rossio since the Middle Ages.

This friendly fella put me in the mood for bacalao later.

And not because it looked so appetizing!

St. Dominic's Church, built in 1241, housed Portugal's Inquisition. It's also where a Jesuit priest, who described the Lisbon earthquake as "God's wrath," was executed for heresy in 1761.

What goes around, comes around. Fire completely gutted the interior of the church in 1959. Two firemen were killed fighting the blaze.

But Jesus is love.

The streets got a lot nicer and less crowded as we walked farther north.

I celebrated an early happy hour with a delicious glass of sangria.

We dined in Sao Miguel.

The relaxed man in red has a terrific view of the Lisbon's terra cotta tiles--which reminded me of flying over Paris in 1963--and the Tagus River.

Patron saints, like clothes, go in and out of fashion if not their statues. Popular vote replaced the looming Vincent, who long held the honorific (see above) with Anthony, a local, in 1981. The monastery in the background, also named for Vincent, perfectly caught the setting sun.

Comic book-like tiles depicted Lisbon's history nearby. Vasco da Gama set sail for India on July 8, 1497. It looks as if it took at least six months to land in Kolkata.

Farol Santa Luzia served a very pretty cocktail, although I didn't much care for the peppercorns in my gin and tonic. Maybe I shouldn't have chewed them.