Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

After flying all night, I arrived at the York Hotel at 10:30 this morning. The hotel is beautiful: a thoroughly modern, elegant room in an old structure gained by climbing foliage-covered steps. I slept for a couple of hours and then went out to see a bit of the city before the taxi my hosts have arranged — thank you very much! — was scheduled to pick me up. I spent 1.25 hours stumbling onto banks, trying to find one that changes US dollars, and finally did. Then I steeled myself to try to find a cheese sandwich in a town that's apparently been certified 100% Atkins compliant. Mission accomplished. You know changing money and finding cheese aren't such bad ways of seeing a city.

I spent the next four hours visiting highlights on the tourist menu. This took me across the expanse of the city, but of course in four hours, I'm willing to admit that I haven't exhausted the riches of Lisbon. Nevertheless, I cling to the foolish belief that in a few hours of walking around, you can learn a lot about a city. You can, so to speak, hear some of its music, the rhythms and sounds and smells that the inhabitants take for granted. (Someday remind me to tell you why the Harmony of the Spheres is the most beautiful idea in Western history.) Of course, if you live longer in a city, you end up unlearning a lot of what you learned at first.

In terms of defined locales, I saw the Castelo de Sao Jorge, the outside of the Torre de Belem aand the Monisteiro dos Jeronimos, and the inside of the Museum of Archaeology. (I only saw the outsides because the insides were closed when I got there.) And I walked a lot. I learned that the bends in the streets are older than the streets.