Wow. Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love this country. The people, their language, the food, and just about everything else in Portugal is elegant and astoundingly beautiful. So far I haven’t had a moment where I didn’t feel like I was on a strange sort of high. I literally cannot stop myself from smiling and enjoying every second of this place in a way that I’ve never really felt before. I am the happiest I’ve ever been and it’s only been a little over a day. Allison and I couldn’t have picked a more perfect place to spend our honeymoon.
The point of writing all of this stuff down is so that I won’t forget all of the wonderful things that I encounter while I am here, so let me take a couple steps back and start from the beginning.
After a sad goodbye to the cats, Allison and I arrived at SFO in style via a towncar that we got from a deal on yelp. We made it past security with no issues (although she did get “felt up” ßher words, not mine) and grabbed breakfast at a little restaurant in the airport. Allison wasn’t hungry but I ordered eggs benedict and a coffee; it was delicious. While we were sitting in the restaurant we decided that it would be a good time to pop our drugs. Allison was given a few Xanax by her doctor to ease her flight anxiety, and I took two Klonopin. Neither of us had ever taken a benzo before but we had heard that they were the shit. We heard correctly. Not only did I feel completely relaxed but I was extremely happy and ready to take on our adventure.
The first flight from SFO to Newark, NJ took about five hours. I played Catan on my iPhone for the first two hours and slept the rest of the flight. I saw Manhattan from my my seat which was kinda cool since I’ve never seen New York before. From the air it certainly didn’t seem like such a massive city.
Once we arrived in Newark it was a bit of a clusterfuck finding our next departure gate. United Airlines made us go on two different shuttles even though our terminal was perpendicular from the one we had arrived at. You gotta love the inefficiency of airports.
Once we found our next departure gate we had about two hours to kill so we decided to see if we could upgrade our seats. The woman that we spoke to at United was a total biatch and rudely told us that we could upgrade to first class for another thousand dollars apiece. New Jersey seems like a total piece of shit and I hope that I never have to go there again. In fact, the people there seemed so rude that I hope I never have to go to New Jersey again, period. That place seriously sucks. We grabbed a bite to eat, stopped by a bookstore to get some reading material, and hit up the “Guiness bar”, the bar that was recommended to us by the bookstore dude. I had a beer and Allison watched me (I’m starting to notice a trend here).
The flight from Newark to Lisbon was mostly uneventful. Bad food, sleep, blah blah blah, etc etc. Allison and I opted to not sit next to each other which ended up working out in my favor. My row had an empty seat in the middle and a grumpy old Portuguese grandma in the aisle seat, so I had plenty of room to stretch. I watched Fargo and slept. When I woke up, we were thirty minutes from landing.
Lisbon was absolutely breathtaking as we flew over it and I could already tell that this was going to be an amazing vacation. The city was fairly sprawled out but still appeared to have that big city feel to it. This was my first trip to Europe and I half expected to see castles and cathedrals all over the place. Obviously, this was not the case.
The Lisbon airport was extremely modern and well designed. The second we walked up to the luggage carrier our luggage arrived and we were on our way. We immediately saw the driver that we had booked, so we forgot to exchange our money into Euros. This proved to be a bit of a problem, but I’ll talk about that more later on.
The driver introduced himself and greeted us in perfect English. Allison and I were both extremely happy because neither of us speaks any Portuguese, so we were both relieved that our first experience in Portugal was going smoothly. It turns out the driver basically knew the two sentences that he greeted us with, and nothing else. He didn’t understand a word of the next question we asked him and he asked if perhaps we could communicate in Spanish. We spent the rest of the drive to the hotel looking up how to ask him where we could exchange our American dollars to Euros because we weren’t sure how we were going to pay him. It was actually pretty funny and everything worked out fine. The drive from the airport to the city of Cascais was only about twenty minutes and the bellhop at the hotel spoke English. He told us that we could charge it to the room, and he helped get our bags.
For the first 5 days of our trip, we are staying at the beautiful Viva Marinha hotel. The guy at the front desk spoke English and was really nice/helpful. The hotel lobby was really elegant and I knew that we had picked a great spot to stay. We headed up to our room and were thrilled once we stepped inside. Yes, this is our honeymoon, but I seriously didn’t expect the kind of luxury that we were about to experience. Our room was breathtaking. I will include some photos to save myself from having to explain everything, but I absolutely love the simple and elegant style that seems to embody Cascais.
Once we got unpacked and took a quick shower to wash off the travel grossness, we decided to take a walk around the hotel and check everything out. The Viva Marinha is about a half a mile away from the coast and has a really tropical feel to it. The weather was in the mid to low eighties and it felt amazing. The hotel has two pools (one heated, one not) with a wooden walkway between them. The pools are situated several hundred feet away from the hotel buildings which, was kinda neat. The hotel grounds are covered with beautiful trees and grass and plants, and had such a Portuguese feel to it. Again, photos are worth a thousand words.
Once we did a proper tour of the grounds, we decided to borrow two of the mountain bikes that the hotel has available for its guests. We headed off towards downtown Cascais along the coast on a path that was specifically designed for cyclists. The water was so beautiful and the sun felt so much more intense than it does in California. We rode down to the marina and saw some amazing architecture. Portugal is much more modern than I expected, with stunning architecture that I’ve never seen before. The buildings were all a mix of two different styles. The more modern style consisted of tall concrete buildings with tall windows and minimal paint. Everything is very tall and lean looking, and you could tell that the insides were very spacious. The other style of architecture was the old world style, with ornate looking fixtures and paint that has been chipped away by the salty sea air. The mix of modern and old world added a sense of modernity as well as the city having a rich history of wealthy folks building their summer houses near the ocean. It’s always been my dream to live in a place like this. During our bike ride, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I never wanted to leave this place.
Once we got back from our ride, we decided to grab a bite to eat from the restaurant at the hotel. The restaurant had a “garden section”, which consisted of covered tables on a beautiful lawn overlooking the grounds of the hotel. I ordered a sandwich with cured ham, garlic, arugula and toasted sourdough; it was amazing. Allison had a mozzarella/tomato/basil sandwich on a delicious looking seed baquette and we both ordered cervejas (that’s beers, if you didn’t know). Up to his point, I had been too embarrassed to speak a word a Portuguese to anyone in fear of looking like an idiot, but I actually said “obrigado” (thank you) to the waiter and I felt really cool.
We headed back to the room and took a nap that ended up lasting until the next morning. Jetlag is a helluva drug! Our goal was to stay up until around nine o’clock and then go to bed early, but we only made it until about 5pm. Both of us woke up at 1am and felt wide awake, but we were able to get back to sleep with relative ease.
When we woke up, we decided to order room service to our room. They have these little cards that you can fill out with what you want, and you just hang it on your door. It said it could take up to an hour to receive our food, but I don’t think it took a minute over 30 minutes. We had the most incredible breakfast! Again, look at the pics. We were only able to eat about a third of the stuff that we ordered. The coffee was amazing, and the pastries and cheese and meats were the perfect start the day. I told Allison that I wanted to live the rest of my life like this, and she told me that I better get rich soon. At least I’ll always have this vacation.
Allison and I got dressed and decided that we had better get our money exchanged so we could actually leave the hotel grounds and pay for things. The hotel provides a free shuttle (and by shuttle, I mean a Mercedes minivan) that will take guests anywhere they want to go. It only took about twenty minutes for him to arrive, and in the mean time I talked to the super cool bellboys that we had met the day before. I told them that I wanted to catch a futbol match (soccer, for you Americans not in the know) while I was in Portugal, and I wanted to know what the best way of going about getting tickets was. The guys told me that they had a friend that used to work at the hotel that could get us tickets for half price (!!!!) so they would have it all arranged for us. They only needed to know our room number and they would leave all of the information in our room for us. We still haven’t gotten the tickets at this point, but I think those guys liked us and I’m extremely optimistic that I will be able to see a match before we leave. Europe rules!
Our shuttle arrived and drove us down to downtown Cascais. He dropped us off and we arranged to have him pick us up at 5pm. It felt like such a luxury to have our own personal driver, and he was a really nice guy. Allison said his arms looked exactly like my arms, which served as further proof of my Portuguese heritage, right?!
We found a Barclay’s bank close to where we were dropped off, and used the ATM just like we would anywhere else. It was a huge relief to finally have some Euros, since we weren’t able to even tip anyone up to this point.
The spent an hour exploring downtown Cascais and it was everything and more than we expected. Shops, restaurants, beaches and other curiosities were set along the stone streets filled with other Europeans on vacations. I particularly enjoyed hearing everyone speak Portuguese as I find it to be the most beautiful of all the languages.
[The beach was packed!]
[Even the McDonalds is cute! - Al.]
It was extremely hot out, so we decided to have a rest at a nice little park near the water and sit in the shade for a bit. From there we headed out to the Cultural Center that ended up having free admission! The docent spoke English, was extremely attractive (Allison agrees) and had lots of great information about the four artists that were currently being displayed.
The first artist was a Portuguese woman that made ceramic images of American fairytales. They weren’t that good, but it was fun trying to guess which fairytale she was trying to portray by translating the title or looking at the piece. We managed to figure out most of them.
The second exhibit was a series of love letters written by a Portuguese artist to his girlfriend-then-wife while he was serving in the second World War. The letters were voiced by two actors and played over a speaker while we sat and listened to them in a cool, air conditioned room (a television with closed captioning did the translating for us).
From there we moved on to the artist whom made large paintings of animals and humans on stage. Here is a pic of me admiring one of them
The final exhibit was by far the best, and it was by an artist named George Grosz. He did sketches of political material circa the second World War and Allison and I both found his work to be amazing. He criticized the bourgeois and rooted for the proletariat (as many artists do) in a way that really made me think of a political satirist. He was amazing and I will definitely be looking up more of his work when I get back home and have an Internet connection again.
After the cultural center, we decided to grab a drink at an outdoor English pub called the John Bull. It was situated in a small square with lots of other restaurants and lots of hustle and bustle. We sat outside under an umbrella and drank a few beers and enjoyed the warm weather (it made the beers taste especially satisfying after all the walking we had done). We said a few things to the waiters in Portuguese, which they seemed to appreciate, and we listened to a lively street performer play songs that ranged from Oasis to Van Morrison. It was a picture perfect version of a European vacation. We even met an old English couple that stumbled over their Portuguese even worse than ours.
After our beers we decided to head to Jumbo, aka the Portuguese version of Walmart. We shopped for lunch items and booze (lots and lots of booze) so that our room would be fully stocked and we wouldn‘t have to buy everything from the hotel. It was interesting to see what their grocery stores look like and Allison and I both had a great time browsing all of their goods. It’s abundantly clear that Portuguese people enjoy wine, ham and fish much more than Americans do.
[Our shopping basket full of booz-i-cals]
We made it through the checkout line without having to mutter a word a Portuguese and headed back to the agreed upon meeting spot of our shuttle driver. Within seconds of arriving at the spot, we saw the forest green Mercedes pull up and we headed back to the hotel. Allison and I were both happy that we could finally tip him, and I’m sure he appreciated it as well.
Right now we are lounging in our beautiful room enjoying some cheap Portuguese wine and thinking about what we’ll do next. I’ll be back later with more of our adventures tomorrow!
