Honestly, the big city aspect of Lisbon caught us off guard this weekend. We found ourselves wanting to be somewhere a little smaller and less hectic, so we charted out a side trip to an inland town called Coimbra. Coimbra is about 2 hours north of Lisbon, and known for having the oldest university in Portugal. Secretly, Amy hoped the college town feeling would yield the Portuguese equivalents of the Taco Stand and the 40 Watt. I was just happy to take a short train trip and see more of the country. (see our Coimbra pics)

A waterside park.. Must be nice in the summer.

We had guidebook coverage of Coimbra, so we winged it and brought all our bags with the intention of staying the night. Sure enough, finding a hotel was easy, and we even got one with a balcony for cheap (40 Euros). We ditched the bags, got a quick lesson in Portuguese numbers from the super-nice hotel owner, and set out to explore the streets. We wandered all over the place before realizing that we were starving. It was beyond the lunching hours (3pm), but a local pizzeria along the river took us in. We would have felt worse about eating so late, but there were several European couples there as well, downing their lunch wine.

Let's see.. as for what we got out of Coimbra.. Well, we walked all around it, and then took a funicular up the hill to the University at the top (see their cool 360 pics). It was kind of interesting to walk around campus- especially since there was a bit more anti-USA graffiti around there than we'd been seeing in Portugal. And for those of you who couldn't guess, yes, there is a fair amount of anti-USA graffiti in Portugal, and it did feel like we got the cold shoulder more than a few times because we're obviously Americans. This could all just be in our heads, or simply an artifact of Portuguese culture which has traditionally been somber to strangers.

Up at the University. Reminds me of the Hall of Justice

The wind was pretty fierce on top of the hill, and the walk down was pretty cold. A nice view though, and it's always fascinating to wander down crazy crooked European streets. We went back to the room to warm up and rest after the long walk. When we went back out for dinner (8pm), the streets were deserted in all directions. It took a lot of searching to locate a restaurant. We wound up at a place that the guidebook said had traditional Portuguese Fado, but we decided against it when we heard a juke box playing 80's love songs. We opted for a Chinese restaurant nearby for something more familiar. A long walk home in the cold and empty streets and we called it a night.

Ouch. It was a rough night at the pension- I'd forgotten just how stiff a cheap bed can be. As a result, we were a bit sluggy all day Sunday and didn't push to do all that much. The main plan was to just go out and take a look at Lisbon in the daylight. To help get things rolling, we started the morning off by visiting a pasteria near our pension that looked straightforward enough for us to order at.

Gloomy skies, but warm coffee

It should be said that one of the great things about Portugal is that they are very serious about their pastries. Every town that we visited in Portugal had multiple pastry shops, which are called Pasterias. As I said a few days earlier, they really do an impressive job with the pastries. My favorite was the pastél de nata, which looks like a little quiche pie, but is filled with custard. Oh they're so good. Of course, the downside of going to the pasterias is trying to figure out the right way to order at them. In one of the trendier places it looked like you had to tell a guy at a lone cash register what you wanted, pay, and then take your receipt to the counter to have it picked out for you. Since we had no language confidence, we opted to move on to a smaller place where we could just point to what we wanted in the cabinet. Our surveillance led us to believe that the right thing to do was just order and eat standing up at the counter. We were kind of confused, but the pastries were worth it.

The big plaza by the water

Having received the morning's injections of sugar and caffeine, we set out to conquer the city. Our first course of action was to retrace the steps we took the night before to see what the main pedestrian strip looked liked in the daylight. The place was much more lively- there were a lot more buildings awake today, looking for our attention. We continued on down to the water, where we caught a glimpse of the Ponte 25 de Abril (the 25th of April bridge). Renamed for Carnation Revolution, this bridge is the longest suspension bridge in Europe and was made by some of the same people that built the Golden Gate bridge. The weather wasn't looking so good, so we set out to find a metro stop so we could go to a museum (museums are also free on Sundays). Our quest for a metro stop zig zagged us all over the place, and made us realize that tourist maps should also include altitude information (we wound up climbing a hill to get to what we thought was the closest metro stop).

We seem to be going up..

The museum was a good way to spend a chunk of Sunday afternoon- there were some cool collections and by the time we got out, the clouds were starting to clear up. We made our way back to the Pension to freshen up, and then headed out to find a way to get to the top of the neighboring hill, where there was a large castle-like building. We followed the guidebook's advice and hopped onto an old electric trolley, which clanked around the streets and slowly started making its way up the hill. Unfortunately, we didn't know when to get off, and by the time we noticed that we were leaving the interesting stuff behind, the trolley started going downhill fast and we were back where we started. Doah.

Rather than admit that we'd missed the stop and change trolleys, we stayed on to see where the ride would take us. There were about seven other dumb tourists that did the same thing, so we didn't feel too bad about the whole thing. Well.. The trolley just kept going and going, until we were a long way away from where we wanted to be. And then.. we hit the end of the line and the conductor booted everyone off. Amy and I wandered around the area a bit, trying to look like we'd meant to do this. We tried to find a good place to get a picture of the 25 de Abril, but there were too many buildings in the way. We admitted defeat and headed back to the trolley stand- just in time to see our trolley (and our former trolley mates) clanging down the road. But.. the joke was on them because some guy had illegally parked his car on the trolley tracks just down the street. The trolley had to stop and call in some police to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, Amy and I spied a bus stop that just happened to have a bus route that went back downtown. It was hard not to smirk as we rode by our former trolley mates. So we did just that, mouthing the word "ssssuckkkerrrsss".

The Great Car-Trolley Standoff. Ha ha!

Ahh.. Back in tourist land we opted for an Italian dinner (next to Indian, Italian is a vegetarian traveler's best friend). Pretty good stuff, plus we ordered a bottle of the "green wine". Unlike green beer, green wine is a legitimate drink in Portugal. Sort of bubbly, a bit like champagne, and slightly green. Having had so much success with the port, I think Portugal's trying to branch out and try pushing new beverages. Based on our experiences (port, Ginjinha, and now green wine), they're making good with the drinks.

At long last it was time to move out of our resort hotel and head out for some unchartered travel. We threw everything into our 30,000 Euro liability, and made the drive back to Faro. While I can't say that I was ever fully comfortable with driving in Europe, I did get the hang of it after a couple of days. Things make sense, you just have to read the signs and expect the important things to be in small writing. They throw round-abouts all over the place, which get freaking annoying when you're trying to take a major road somewhere. At the same time, I can appreciate how these can help with traffic, assuming everyone plays fair and does what they're supposed to do. Of course, there were a lot of road signs showing a stick figure being hit by a car, so maybe not everyone knows what they're doing.

We got gas near the airport (half a tank of petro cost.. 40 Euros, or $52), and returned the 30,000 Euro liability to Avis. While it was good to finally be free of the liability, we knew different travel times were ahead, where we would have to start lugging our bags from place to place and haggle with taxi drivers. This started in Faro, where a 10 minute trip from the Airport to the railroad station cost us about $12. It seemed kind of steep, but we didn't have many options and we figured we could use the experience handling a cab driver.

We booked tickets from Faro to Lisbon using an automated ticket machine. The ticket machine is something that is a dream in the sense that it is multi-lingual and easy to use. Still, it makes me kind of sad to go to the box, because for me, traveling in Europe is all about having some train official yelling at you because you're trying to do something wrong, or something that doesn't make any sense (You want to go to Paris? But you're already IN Paris..?). We bought the tickets for the next train, which was two hours in the future. To kill time, we took turns wandering around by the train station, while one of us watched the bags.

The ride to Lisbon was rather refreshing. It felt good to be back on a train in Europe. The only thing that would have felt righter would have been if I could have gotten the conductor to shake his head in disapproval over something I'd done, but alas, that wasn't in the cards this trip.I whipped out the laptop and got a good chunk of writing done on that paper I'm working on. What a difference a few years make. I wonder what I could have gotten done if I'd had a laptop with me in '98. Eh.. I probably would have just written more travel notes and gotten a lot better at solitaire.

It was a bit oppressing to roll into Lisbon. There seem to be about five different train stations scattered across the city, and not all of them have subway stops. We overshot the city and stopped at the Oriente station, which connects with the subway. We followed the guidebook's advice and made our way to Rossio, which is a big tourist area that has a bunch of hotels and pensions. We popped out of the subway in the middle of a packed European city, and then rounded a corner and climbed a hill to Pensao Geres. It was getting late so we were worried about finding a place, but PG's had a small, prison-cell like room available for cheap (35 Euros). We checked in and set off to explore the surrounding area before it got dark.

Pensao Geres

Lisbon was quite the contrast to the Algarve. It's a big city, filled with all the good and bad stuff you'd expect. Big, scenic streets with tons of shops and people, but also the occasional shady looking folks trying to sell a watch, or muttering "hash" under their breath. We bought both and had ourselves a grand time. Ho ho! Just kidding (do security background checkers ever grep weblogs?), we tried not to make eye contact with anyone. We wandered around for a long time- impressed by the wide long streets and the bustle of the city. Eventually we consulted the guidebook to find "restaurant row for travelers", which happened to be just around the corner from our hotel.

Embarrassed by our inability to interact with non-English speaking folks, we looked at many (or, according to Amy, "all of the") shops before deciding on this place that fit what we were looking for. The inside was a bit different than what the outside hinted at. They sat us down at a six person table and then put a pair of French women at the other end. We gave up on manners and pointed at the things on the menu that had appealing English translations. This worked just fine, and led to a pretty happy meal with a couple big mugs of beer. Our French counterparts on the other hand tried to remain French, and as a result got frustrated with the service. We finished dinner and left, noticing that they were trying to attract a waiter, menus open, calling "garcon! garcon!". We chuckled to ourselves, and thought about telling them in our beersh voices "pssht- you gotta close the menu in Europe or they won't pay attention to you". It felt good to see other Europeans getting frustrated in a restaurant. Especially since they were French and had given us the cold shoulder when they sat down.

We started the stroll home when we noticed a little bar nook that had people shuffling in off the street for drinks of Ginjinha. Ginjinha is a cherry liquor that we had read about that is the drink of choice in Lisbon. We had read that there are two things you need to say when you go into one of these bar nooks- how many, and with or without cherries in the drink. Still a little buzzed from the beer and confident that alcohol only improved my sloshing of Portugal phonetics, I confidently ordered Doish (two), Com (with). We took our shots to the street and watched a couple of guys on the street sing sad Fado songs about jilted love (or missed bus transfers, for all we know). Ah.. a nice night. And being a little tipsy didn't hurt when it came to sleeping in our tiny room.

Friday was the last day we'd have a car in Portugal, so we decided to make the most of it and do some exploring in the Algarve. We got off to a late start since we were still recovering from Thursday's adventure, but we were excited to be going to places that would be difficult to get to without our 30,000 Euro liability on wheels. Our first stop was the nearby town of Silves (see our pictures).

Silves is an old town that has an old Moorish castle on the top of a hill. From what we've read, that's a big deal because the Crusaders basically bulldozed everything that looked Moorish when they re-took Portugal. After a siege that went on for months, the Moors negotiated a surrender with the crusaders after their water supply started to give out. Unfortunately, word of this peaceful surrender didn't filter down the ranks, and the crusader army went in and slaughtered the Moors. What a surprise.

Upon arrival, Amy and I parked the 30k liability and made our way into town. During our trek uphill towards the castle, we stumbled into this nice little courtyard that had a cute little cafe. We stopped in to get some pastries and coffee, and were met by a shopkeeper lady that had a sour look on her face for us. Somehow we pieced together an order that she pieced together for us. Before leaving the shop, I put our tray down on a table so I could get a better grip on things. It must have looked like we were going to eat inside, because the lady began to scold us in Portuguese (good naturedly). We figured she had to be saying something along the lines of "eh, what are you, a bunch of idiots? Can't you see what a nice freakin' day is outside? Go outside and eat, it's a lovely freakin' day out, don't waste it in here." Heh, it was the kind of voice a cranky, grandmother would use and it made us smirk to ourselves.

Energized by the sugar and caffeine, we renewed our assault on the town's hill and took the castle. We had it a lot easier than the crusaders- we bribed our way in through the front gate, passing a couple of Euros to a guy who gave us a small ticket stub. Inside the walls there wasn't much to report on- it was basically just a small field with a lot of healthy weeds. We walked along the castle walls and looked at the grounds, which were being dug through in a new archaeology effort. Still, the place was kind of interesting to walk around. Plus, there was a nice little snack-a-teria next door (Cafe di Inglish, ho ho), that had nice little sandwiches for the both of us (mmm.. thinly sliced Portuguese salami).

Having seen a decent amount of Silves, we hopped back into the car and started driving west again. This time instead of stopping at Lagos, we pushed on to the edge of the world, which happens to reside in a small town called Sagres our pictures). Sagres is basically the South-Western most point of Portugal. Back in the exploring and conquest days, this is the last part of Europe you'd probably see before you fell off the pancake. In a way, Sagres really did feel like it was the end of the world- it reminded me of those desolate outposts you see in Antarctica that feel like they're a million miles away from civilization. It was something else.

There wasn't much to the town itself. In fact we drove right through it and found ourselves staring right at a big white fort at the end of the road. We got out and had a look, egged on by Rick Steves's ramblings about how there was some ancient structure there that people suspected was a wind compass. As we stepped out of the car, we realized why people would assume that anything on the peninsula would have something to do with the wind- the wind was so strong that it was difficult to walk straight. We paid the admission and went in to the fort to see what was up. Hurrumph. The wind compass turned out to be a bunch of small rocks arranged in a circle with radial lines. Yahoo. Besides the fort walls and the compass, the only other thing out there was a lighthouse at the end of a very long walk. Sure, the view from the cliffs was pretty, but it was freakin' cold and there wasn't much payoff for all the walking we had to do. I guess being able to say that you've been to the edge of the known world makes up for the harsh walk.

We fought the wind and made our way back to the car. Along the way we noticed that there were several people fishing off the cliffs, which is just crazy if you ask me. We figure that once you catch a fish, the trick is hauling it up to the top of the cliff before the numerous sea gulls pick it off your line. Anyways, there was another lighthouse the next cliff over, so we got back in the car and drove over that way. We got there just as people were starting to close up shop and head home. Sadly, this meant we could not enjoy a hot dog from the place that advertises "Last sausage stand before America".

Amy was feeling cold from the wind and yesterday's diving, so we decided to call it a day and head home for the warmth of our hotel room. On the way back, we saw modern windmills along the coast that were giant (and that's saying something, since Livermore is just a couple of miles away from the world's largest wind farm). The drive back from the edge of the world was otherwise uneventful (thankfully), and we settled in for the night after an overpriced meal at our hotel.

Thursday and Friday we mostly putzed around in the Algarve some more. As usual the conference renewed me with a sense of urgency for writing papers. It's the "holy crap, someone wrote a paper about that? I can do something better" feeling you get when you listen to what other people are up to. I spent a chunk of time Thursday and Friday working on my next paper, which I've had in the works for over a year now. I also have to admit that there is a kick to writing while in Europe. It makes you feel like an expatriate working on your next novel. Er, of course, Amy reminds me that novels are fiction, which I hope doesn't describe my research.

The little inlet by the hotel

Thursday afternoon we took a break from the writing to look at the hotel's dive shop. The guys in the shop were super friendly (like most divers seem to be) and fluent in English. The head dive guy (a Norwegian) told us about the beach dive you could do from the hotel, and said it was a pretty good dive (as far as beach entries go). He warned us that the water was very cold (15 degrees?) and that there was a long walk down to the water. We were a little nervous about the whole thing, but we decided to give it a try. After all, who knows when we'll be out here again. Our dive master was a friendly German guy who understood our nervousness and patiently worked with us to get everything right for the dive. He also had a good sense of humor, and only politely chuckled when both he and I realized that I had put my wetsuit on backwards in the shop (hmm.. why are the kneepads on the back of my legs?). We got all our gear squared away and put on properly before we started the long trip down stairs to the beach.

Long stairwell to the beach

The trip down (and back up) the stairs to the beach was an adventure in itself. As I've pointed out before, dive equipment is not light weight. Things were particularly rough on this trip because we had to bring along wetsuits that were very thick, and extra weight to counter the added buoyancy of these suits. My weight belt along was 40 pounds. Throw in the air tank, fins, tubes, and gloves, and you're talking a lot of weight to lug down to the beach. And look at that picture- it's a long freaking way down. Ooof. The worst part was the last 10 feet. We had to climb down an aluminum ladder to get from the rocks to the water. By the time I was on the beach I was so sweaty in my wetsuit that all that cold water didn't look so bad.

Finally, a ladder to the beach

It took a lot of work to get our gear on at the beach. We were tired and there wasn't much room to stand on because it was high tide. Amy and I both fell down into the surf as we were trying to get into the water, so we had to waddle out and leave our dignity at the beach. Once in deeper water, the three of us regrouped and did a final check on all our gear before going under. Well, before I tried to go under. My initial 30 pounds of weight wasn't enough to keep me under so the divemaster gave me an extra 10. I also found that I had somehow burned up 50 bars of air out of 200 just getting ready to go (note to self: try not to flounder so much when you first get in the water). My wetsuit worked well though- the water was cold, but it was nowhere near the face-smashing cold that Monterey was last year. Our poor divemaster- in all the hustle of getting down to the beach, he managed to forget his wetsuit hood. He was a trooper through, saying he'd rather be cold than go up those stairs any more than he had to. Throughout all of this, Amy seemed to be as happy as a clam. She's a pro compared to me.

We set off on a simple course that took us around the rock you see in the picture, and then out of the harbor to a nearby reef. We saw a lot of little fish along the path, but nothing all that special. Maybe we've just been spoiled by our dives in the Caribbean . The reef was kind of interesting- there were some natural formations that geologists say had to have been created from rainfall on unsubmerged rocks. Our divemaster had us swim through a wide, underwater tunnel that I think was one of these formations. From there we headed back to the coast, and which guided us way back in. Just as I was thinking that we weren't going to see any wildlife that was all that memorable, our instructor pointed out an octopus that was hanging out in some of the sea grass. I'd never seen an octopus in the wild before, so I was very happy to see him scooting around. The divemaster went to see if it was in a playful mood (they say some are), but this one wasn't. We later found out that a fisherman had caught three other that morning, so I can see why it'd be somber.

Getting out of the water was awful. Our plan was to take the flippers off as soon as we could touch bottom, and try walking out. The problem was that neither of us could get our fingers under the flipper straps because of our thick gloves. Then the strong tide started pushing us into shallower water. It was a terrible struggle. We tried helping each other, but the weight of our gear kept getting in the way. In my head I remembered Jeff, the divemaster that trained me, telling me that there was an important trick to getting out on a beach, or else you'd wind up with "diver bowling". This bowling is where a diver starts rolling around in the surf on the beach and wipes out other divers that have managed to stand up. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what the trick was, and the next thing I knew, I was rolling in the surf, tumbling towards Amy. Fortunately, I was a gutterball. Eventually I got my fins off and managed to crawl to the beach. Augh.. Just for the record, the trick for not doing this is to take your fins off before it gets shallow. Doah. I guess we couldn't win here.

But.. the fun wasn't over yet- we still needed to climb out of this hole and get all our gear back to the dive shop. This meant that we first had to climb up the ladder with all our gear, which was much harder than going down the ladder. Amy and I both did it though, and then slowly made our way back up the steps to the dive shop. It was a long hike, especially after having gone through a cold water dive. It all turned out well in the end though. Any dive that you don't lose equipment or people is a good dive to me.

It's an ex-pat life, for us.

We lounged about in the heated indoor pool, and then celebrated our survival by going to town to have dinner at an Italian place. Ok, by celebrated I really mean that we went to the first place that looked open and had food that didn't look too exotic. We knew it wouldn't be hard to go to sleep that night, but we took the precaution of ordering a bottle of red wine at dinner to help speed things along. It's an expat's life for us.