I'll blame the heat in Lisbon for the wilted dispatch last week and will now attempt to recount a few other interesting moments of the trip. If you didn't get the last dispatch, don't worry, this is all you need to know...click on this...Tochapestana. I saw them live, I'm proud to say.
Painting for dummies
By myself and with nothing to do and no camera in a beautiful town, I dropped into an art shop and bought a canvas. I had brought paints and brushes with me and had the ambitious goal of completing one painting a day for the first four days of my trip. This seemed reasonable.
So I climbed up to the highest hill I could find and sat down to do an oil color of the castle and the river and bridge in the background.
I started by laying down a bunch of light blue paint that was going to be the sky. It didn't get much better after that. I am just too rusty after not having painted in about a decade.
Also not helping matters was an Indian guy selling small paintings to tourists right next to me. This meant that people would look at his paintings and then at my piece of "work" and laugh, I'm sure. By then, when it was apparent that this painting and I were not going to get along, I was laughing at how bad it was even while I was painting.
After some contemplation, I stuff the canvas with paint on it -- using the description painting is not fair -- in a nearby trash can I then plopped down at the terrace bar and drank a few beers.
The next day I went and bought a camera.
Water World
One of my favorite things to do in cities that are on the coast is to visit their aquarium. Barcelona has an excellent one with a moving sidewalk that takes you through a shark tank. It's amazing.
So I thought that Lisbon must have an excellent one as well. Off to Casa de Aqua I went. It was a bit hard to find, but after much searching I came upon the spot on the map where what I thought was the aquarium was located.
This is the strangest one I've ever seen. And the price, under 3 euros, was quite a bargain.
This all made much more sense when I realized that the Casa de Aqua was actually a museum about how the city gets it water. Apparently it was, at some point, on the cutting edge in this regard. I tried to be interested in this, but it was tough.
Mainly, I just laughed at myself for being such an idiot and enjoyed being the only tourist in the place and probably the only one that day, possibly that week.
What a boring job that poor girl who took my money must have.
After that, I went got a traditional lunch of sausage, rice and a fried egg. And I drank a couple of beers.
EasyJet is not the right name
Once, on the way home from Barcelona, the airline EasyJet, a discount airline like Southwest, delayed my 11 o'clock flight for about three hours so that they could combine me and fellow passengers with the 2 o'clock flight. That's good for them and good for the environment, but pretty tough to swallow for any one in a hurry.
So I wasn't too surprised when I checked in for my return flight to Paris and the flight was delayed for an hour. I was, however, quick to ask if there was another flight that day to try and see if they were going to pull the same trick on me again. No, the man at the counter said, it's the only one.
But EasyJet has tricks galgalorer>The hour-long delay turned into about a 90-minute delay. My favorite part was how one of the counter clerks walked around the waiting area checking everyone's tickets. Really? Like someone can't read the sign over there? And it was twice as pointless since they checked our tickets again when we made our way, finally, to the plane. I think it just gave him something to do.
So then everyone enjoyed the scenic bus ride to the plane that featured lots of views of pavement along with all the unwanted contact with strangers you could handle.
After about 10 minutes of sitting on the plane the captain came on and announced in English that there was some kind of strike in Brussels or Paris and we were going to have to sit on the plane for an hour. The other passengers were French apparently because they seemed to take this quite well considering the temperature on the un-air conditioned plane was easily 100 degrees. Wearing jeans was a bad idea.
A moment later, however, he repeated this news in French and was greeted with general rage, moaning and the quintessential French groan of "Aie, Aie, Aie!"
To their credit, the flight crew was quick with free glasses of water that they delivered every few minutes. Sitting in the back of the plane near the kitchen was a good idea.
Going back to the terminal wasn't an option I guess since we took a bus to the plane. And doing so would possibly make us miss our chance to take off when it came. So we waited in the sauna-like cabin.
My main concerns were that I was going to sweat through my shirt and that I was going to finish my book and be left with nothing to read. Otherwise, it wasn't that bad. Sitting next to a pretty woman was also a good idea. On second thought, it always is.
Once we took off the crew gave everyone credit of up to 5 euros to spend on the drink cart. So that was nice of them.
To end the journey, we executed a landing that featured one of the scariest landings I've ever been a party to. The plane slammed on the ground and then lunched violently to the left. It was bad enough that I emitted some kind of shriek, thus making me look like a wimp in front of that pretty woman sitting next to me. Oh well.
By 11 o'clock, 10 or so hours after starting the journey, I was in my apartment, fresh out of the shower and drinking a beer.
Take care,
Brett
