Bike Ride Day 1 - Villa Real de San Antonio to Olhao

First things first – prepare the bike and find the ocean so that I could make sure to keep it to my left for the next 5 days.














On these European bike rides I have been all kinds of lost; from slightly and briefly lost to profoundly lost. Today, about which I was a little nervous because I don’t speak the language, I’d saythat on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is “call 911” and 10 is “game on,” I did about a 7.5, which I’ll happily take any day.

This part of the coast has a lot of salt marshes. The ones that are protected have wildlife that people come from all over to see. I saw a few well-dressed people on bird safaris with binoculars and notebooks.








But where the marshes aren’t protected, people dig channels that funnel saltwater into what they call salt pans and make salt by drying the seawater, which I found really interesting.
These are what salt pans look like when they have fresh seawater in them.

Half done.















Ready for harvest (or whatever you call the process of collecting salt you grow yourself). I passed maybe a hundred of these on my ride. Miles of my ride were on the narrow dirt roads on the top of the salt pan retaining walls.

But a lot of my ride was in pretty isolated areas.



















When you’re on a narrow dirt path and you have only a vague idea where you are (even when you know the ocean is to your left, that leaves a lot of territory to get lost in), seeing signs like this every once in a while is very reassuring.








Some of my ride:

And it turns out that of all the Portuguese phrases I could have learned, I chose a great one. I’ve used “Good day” (bom dia) probably a hundred times and everyone is so nice and says “bom dia” back to me. These positive, peppy, four-word conversations make me think that people here really want me to have a good day. One of the papers in the package the bike tour company gave me has some other Portuguese phrases that they recommend I learn, like “I have had a stroke” (Eu sofri um aneurismo) and “I need an ambulance” (Preciso de uma ambulancia), but they’re just not for me. Even if I do have a stroke and need an ambulance, I’m going to stick to bom dia.

While the ride today was relatively incident free, the process of getting into my room in Olhao would itself take a good bit of writing to describe. But I’ll summarize. The bike guy booked me into a guest house that he’s never dealt with before in the “old town.” I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an old European town, but they purposely made the roads narrow, curvy and with no logical layout so that they would be hard to invade – only the people who live there know how to get anywhere. And the people who live here speak Portuguese (although in fairness to them, I don’t know how anyone could give directions to anyone in a place like this even if we did speak the same language). Anyway, he told me to call the owner when I was approaching Olhao. I did, and she didn’t answer so I decided to try to find the place. I figured anyone who knew where it was couldn’t describe the directions to me and anyone who could communicate with me wouldn’t know where it was. I had very limited connection to Google. During my aimless wandering in circles I passed the cultural museum at least 4 times. “Aha” I would think, “Here’s a new plaza that might give me some clue about where I am. Damn it’s the cultural museum again.” It was tough, because there really was no logical way to figure out where this place was. I finally reached the owner, who told me that she was out of town, but I could just find the mailboxes at the end of her street, open the first one and pull out the set of white keys. One of them was for each of the three doors I had to get through, and the last one was for my room, the number for which she couldn’t remember but she thought it might have my name on it (nope, it didn’t). Anyway, I did find the place and get to the room. If you really care how, I’ll tell you about it someday, but getting to my room took me about 1/3 of the time that it took to ride over 40 miles today.

Begins the Ride

This morning, my last in Lisbon, I got up very early and went to the café on the corner for some coffee and a baked thing before rushing off to the train. When the waiter brought my order, I realized that all the baked goods were cold white bread pressed into the shape of pastries. But I didn’t have time to fool around, so I walked over to A Padaria Portuguesa (basically Portugal’s version of Starbucks) and promptly remedied the whole thing.

Despite all the caffeine and sugar in my system, I found myself dozing off while standing, waiting in the Sete Rios train station for my train to southern Portugal. My attempts at healthy living have not prevented three days of sleep deprivation from catching up with me. Oddly, once I start my bike ride I may finally get a little rest.

Speaking of which, I traveled today to Villa Real de San Antonio from which my ride will start tomorrow.















This town is a small beach resort on the Guadiana River that separates Spain and Portugal.

I discovered today that the company I booked the ride with believes in the “free spirit” approach to these types of rides, which means that their route maps are more like rough recommendations. The guy told me that getting lost is part of the fun and that I should just remember to keep the ocean on my left. So tomorrow I set off with nothing to guide me other than my wits and the stars. Along with a pre-programmed Garmin and 14 pages of maps from the bike company, Google Maps on my phone and the several hundred other bikers who will probably be doing the same route as me this week. But other than that, just my wits and the stars.





The biggest challenge is what to take and what to leave. I have decided to pare my tech down to a single laptop and my phone, which makes me feel vulnerable, but getting down to what really matters in life is what these trips are all about. And given the weather forecast, I’m also not going to bring my raincoat. If anyone around here could understand anything I’m saying, I would tell them that this is what we call in America “tempting fate.”

Tomorrow, I ride. If I just remember to keep the ocean to my left, everything will be just fine.

Lisbon Day 2

I’m generally opposed to doing anything educational on these trips, but today I opted to go on a bike tour of Lisbon. It’s the highlight of my trip so far, primarily because I got to ride a bike on terrifyingly steep, narrow winding streets full of people and animals. But I also learned some things. Despite everything I’d always believed, it turns out that learning new things can be fun!

The bike ride looked like this.















And this – which is actually a very terrible video, but in all the pretty areas we rode through I really needed to keep both hands on the bike. I will have better videos later in the trip when I'm on less scary roads.

These are a few of the things I learned:

1. On the day that I get to Europe, if I take a short nap and go to sleep early instead of walking around all day getting nothing to eat or drink except for bar food and alcohol at 11:00 at night, I will be much better prepared for day 2.

2. Portugal only became a democracy in 1974. Which seemed like history to the tour leader but seems like just the day before yesterday to me.


3. The Portuguese national pastry Patel de Nata (which along with sardines comprise the two
keystone culinary dishes of Portugal) is basically custard in dough. It was invented by the poor people who used to have to starch the priests’ robes using egg whites. One day one of them thought “Hey, call me crazy, but maybe there’s something useful we can do with all of the egg yolks we don’t need for doing the laundry.” And those yolks went right into Patel de Nata, where they have been raising cholesterol ever since.

Every pastelería has its special secret Patel de Nata recipe and people living in Lisbon all have their favorite Nata place. The picture at left shows a bunch of hipsters waiting in line at 10:00 at night to buy a few artisanal Patel de Natas (they pleaded with me to hang out with them, but I just don't have time right now).  However, I’ve eaten a few myself in the interest of blending in.










The store at right is called The Fantastic World of Portuguese Sardines. I'm not sure what they sell, but the messaging is pretty clear. On a side note, the third major component of the triumvirate of Portuguese cultural staples is cork. It’s hard to think of any single keepsake that could incorporate all three (Natas, sardines and cork) but I did see lots of sardine-shaped cork souvenirs, like bookmarks, so . . . good job Portugal.



4. There is a mild sub-surface enmity between Portugal and Spain, probably because in the old days Spain kept invading Portugal in attempts to conquer it (these Portuguese really know how to hold a grudge). This makes it not the best place to practice my Spanish. I have finally found a country where the natives prefer Americans to something.

And now I’m packing to leave Lisbon. Despite the deep and complex relationship Lisbon and I have developed in the roughly 24 hours I have been here, Lisbon still has some secrets. Like,

1. In almost every public parking lot there is a disheveled man pointing out available spaces to people driving in. Is that a job, or is it more like when I go to Baltimore sometimes and a guy walks up and explains that I’m not in the best neighborhood but for $5.00 he’ll hang around and make sure nothing happens to my car?

2. There is a large orange metal suspension bridge here, built by the same San Francisco company that built the Golden Gate Bridge, and it looks exactly like the Golden Gate Bridge but it’s smaller. There is a Christ the Redeemer statute on a hill in Lisbon that is a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue on the hill in Rio de Janeiro, but the Lisbon one is smaller. There is a large park in Lisbon that people commonly refer to as “Central Park,” because it reminds them of Central Park in New York, but it’s . . . smaller. What does this all mean?

3. A woman with a bag of bird seed goes to a tiny park surrounded by busy roads. She is immediately besieged by pigeons. And geese, roosters and a peacock. No one bats an eye.





Solving these puzzles will have to wait for my next visit; tomorrow I’m off to the Spanish border to start my bike ride.

Lisbon Day 1

I made it to my Lisbon hotel which is in the Chiado neighborhood near the water and the nightlife. I’ve read that this neighborhood used to be a little beat up, but with the benefit of investment and city backing, it now has some very upscale places that attracts our kind of people. This seems to be a recurring theme in many Lisbon neighborhoods, which makes me think that at some point recently a lot of Lisbon was pretty beat up.

I had lunch here, which is a huge market with about 25 different stalls with food prepared by area chefs who were invited to participate in the project.











Then off to a walk along the river and the downtown. . .












. . .

which is full of these trams from the 1930’s. On paper, they actually play a role in the city’s public transportation infrastructure. But from what I could see, they mostly carry tourists with selfie sticks in big loops around the city.











They are pretty charming though, and it beats walking up the hills.

Speaking of which, Lisbon is all hills. I haven’t found a single level street yet. Which makes all the views pretty unusual, because wherever you are, you always see buildings above you and below you.












And rather than make people walk up and down the streets all the time, why not create a giant outdoor elevator where they can just go straight up and down. That’s what this is (the Santa Justa lift), which was built by one of Gustave Eiffel’s students after he completed the Eiffel Tower (but unlike the Eiffel Tower, the Santa Justa lift, you know, actually does something useful). When it was first built, they had a huge container under the cabin that they would fill with water and the weight made it go down. They’d drain the water to make it go up. This was 1902, when I’m pretty sure western civilization was farther along than that, but who am I to judge?

And finally, if you were wondering how sad clown conventions happen, I now know. It starts as a bachelorette party where everyone dresses up as clowns, they start drinking in the morning, and then they walk around town and continue drinking in 90+ degree heat. And by 2 o’clock or so it deteriorates into a low-energy collection of sad, tired clowns with headaches. That is exactly what happened here.

Ibéria, Capítulo Quatro

Having benefited from lessons learned on past Spain trips, I am extremely excited about my flight tonight.

Last year I discovered that I could pay $100 extra for two extra inches of legroom. I don’t know of many things in this world that are worth $50 an inch (clean thoughts please), but legroom is definitely one of them. The year before, I learned that no matter how great an idea it seems to stay up all night watching movies about the world being destroyed in plumes of smoke and fire, it is really not a great idea. And this year, I invested in a sleep mask and neck pillow so that I could possibly get 3 or 4 hours of sleep (which I actually might get, because I got extremely lucky and have no one siting next to me - image at left), which would be 3 or 4 more hours than I’ve had on any of the previous trips. And I will need some sleep, because:

1. I am starting my trip in Portugal. Unlike French and Italian, which I can kind of imagine I understand a tiny bit of, Portuguese sounds to me like a cross between a language I’ve never heard and another, different language I’ve never heard. To prepare, I’ve learned how to say “good morning” and “thank you.” That and a credit card comprise the bulk of my plan for getting through the first week.

2. I don’t do enough research before planning these trips and now that I’m irrevocably committed to spending 1 ½ days in Lisbon, I have learned that Lisbon is a city that one needs to spend many days in. So I plan to pack a lot of living into those 36 hours. Not much time for sleeping there.

3. Once my 36-hour Lisbon meter expires, I immediately hop on a southbound train to start a bike ride along the entire Portuguese southern coast from Spain to a cliff on the Atlantic Ocean, and I need to be pretty awake for that too. On a side note, I just read that they closed a large beach along my bike ride because of e coli contamination. But they assured everyone that it is the sand that is contaminated, not the water. To me this is not at all comforting and raises more questions than it answers.

But for now, I can’t see you. Because I’m putting on my sleep mask.