cascais, portugal

Before my two days of indulgence in Lisbon last weekend, I actually spent several days working in Cascais, an enormously picturesque coastal town just outside Portugal's capital. It's a lovely place, a small settlement which arches around a plush marina, a picturesque seafront and some charming cobbled streets in the town centre. It's an ideal work conference venue, somewhere lovely, cosmopolitan and temperate, just diverting enough to provide a much needed counter-balance to work duties, but not so fascinating as to be actually distracting. Except...

Except it rained all week. Still, here are a couple of nice pictures, taken in moments of calm.

alfama, lisbon

Like San Francisco, the city it very much reminds me of, Lisbon is built on a series of hills and its geography contributes much to the feeling of the city; it's many wonderful views need to be earned through punishing climbs, but are worth the effort many times over. The houses are built in a jumbled, haphazard fashion, their positions dictated by the contours of the hills.

Perhaps the most beautiful district I encounter during my few days in Lisbon is the Alfama, a dense labyrinth of buildings on the steep slope between the mediaeval Castle of São Jorge and the river, which consists of narrow streets of terraced homes, baroque churches and the remnants of the city walls which, during the city's Moorish past, constituted the boundaries of this now hugely grown capital.

Historically the part of the city where the poorest are most densely populated, Alfama remains a beguiling combination of picturesque and down-at-heel. Unlike the Bairro Alto, it is free of grafitti and its colour palatte is restricted to whitewash and terracotta, which - lit up by the sun - creates an impression of a Mediterranean paradise. Step a little closer and the buildings are worn and crumbling, yet this part of the city is actually evidence of an incredible sturdiness; this 12th century district easily survived the great Earthquake of 1755. Goodness knows how.

I walk through its streets, sweltering as I clamber uphill, noticing the crowds growing with every step. Before long, police are stood managing the traffic, and I realise that even by the district's normal standards it is unusually busy today.

Then I'm astonished to see a bicycle race past me at an angle not far from vertical. The sound of whistling and cheering surrounds me. So as I climb higher, past iron fences, I discover that I have timed my visit to Alfama to co-incide with the much celebrated - and ludicrously dangerous - downhill, which consists of cyclists racing at full pelt downhill through the narrow cobbled streets. To make matters worse, they do so navigating not just eager locals and tourists, but a series of jumps and steep stairs, too. It's an incredible sight - of which more later.

One thing I like about Portugal is the ease with which people move from bar to bar; there are no cover charges, so it's perfectly okay to buy a beer in one place and wander to another without having to down it or leave it behind. In Alfama, everyone - perhaps because of the climb or the now sweltering heat - has a plastic glass of beer and the atmosphere is celebratory. I sit in a crowded square watching the cyclists clatter past and drink in the good mood. What wonderful timing.

lisbon walls

When I first visited Lisbon, aged about fifteen, I traipsed around the city for several hours taking photographs of every single piece of graffiti I could find; I loved the way the bright, severe colours of the paint interacted with the subtle colours of the city, and I also loved the huge collages of peeling posters found all over the walls. In that respect, Lisbon has hardly changed - there are wonderful, vivid textures everywhere. I could probably find things to photograph all day here.

thoughts on travelling

Of course, if I was a genuine traveller, rather than a tourist-fraud, I'd immerse myself completely in the culture I encounter when I'm abroad. Here's an example: one thing I've noticed since I've been in Lisbon is the extent of the Brazilian influence in the city - and several times while I've been out I've noted a band playing the country's music in the street. And each time I've walked by all but oblivious, hearing not their undoubtedly beautiful music but rather the bass pounding in my headphones. Equally, I've sat outside cafes with a stunning view before me, basking in the Portugese sun, but at least half my consciousness has been wrapped up in thoughts of post-war Tokyo, because I've perpetually got my head in a book about the city at the moment.

Obviously this isn't constant - so I have spent hours admiring the city for what it is, enjoying the local food and beer, listening to the fado players in the Bairro Alto. But equally, when I look back on Lisbon, I suspect mixed in with the genuine observations will be flashes of Tokyo, played out on a soundtrack of the three records I've had on constant rotation: Supa D's joyful Rinse mix of house and garage, Uusitalo's Karhunainen LP, and the more-stunning-with-every-listen Think Tank, Blur's last album.

My memories of other places work in the same way - in fact in many ways the sounds I remember become a distinctive feature of the city, even if their relationship to the city is entirely imposed. I remember listening to The Wave Pictures in Florence, Prodigy of Mobb Deep in Croatia, and The Silver Jews in San Francisco.

Am I in some way polluting the purity of my experiences? Or doesn't it matter at all?

gobsmacked...

...by how lovely Lisbon is today. I should be having a beer in this picture.

thought #1

In the absense of anything poetic to say, please can I try out a few thoughts on you?

- Portugese readers. Help me here, because I fear I am about to say something horribly insensitive. I've had a lovely few days in Cascais and am enjoying myself enormously, in between long, hypnotic lectures on agent technology, but I've noticed something I feel quite sure is an abherration, but noticeable nonetheless.

I've now counted three people - lovely, all - who have looked askance at me in conversation. What I mean is emphatically not that they have been judgemental or suspicious, but literally that they have failed to make eye contact with me while talking. Am I that freakishly odd-looking? So handsome they can't bring themselves to look? (Shut up).

There's one chap at the desk of my hotel who keeps throwing me off by looking directly over my right shoulder while he talks to me. Does he have a glass eye? Is this a recognised phenonemon? Some kind of Portugese tic? I don't believe for a moment that it is, but I like recording these oddities, so thought it worth mentioning.

Portugese readers who have taken offence: I'm sorry. I'd like to make it clear that I like you very much, much more than the awful Italians, let alone the French.

jonathan is...

I arrived in Lisbon today for another work conference, faintly piqued to be leaving behind a somewhat warmer Britain, which seems profoundly counter-intuitive. But it's lovely here, the sky pastel blue and the countryside peppered with terracotta and army green. Portugese driving, meanwhile, is as colourful as ever - my taxi driver at the airport (having informed me that my journey would cost 50,000 Euros!) veered off into busy traffic and left me sweating and swearing as we rushed West past kilometres of fading high rises, building sites and narrow, beautiful crevices of exposed rock, which intersect stunning villages as incongrously as a railway line in an English town.

My hotel is almost exactly like every hotel I've ever stayed around the Meditteranean, which is exactly as it should be, for I feel instantly relaxed and at home - although of course work starts tomorrow morning, bah. I've just thrown myself into the heated indoor pool and lurched from shelf to shelf, hanging my arms over the divide which separates the warmed water from the cold pool outside. And now I'm sitting in the hotel bar drinking a beer and wondering what to do for dinner. So that's where we are.

Apologies if this post has read like a long facebook status update.

~

Around the pool the white hotel
looks like a series of shoe boxes lined up
in a Habitat shop window.
It is so staggeringly uniform
that the hanging of towels from balcony rails
is strictly prohibited. Anyone who breaks the rule
is forced to wear water wings and is
banished to the children's pool
for the rest of the holiday.

portugal

When I was about sixteen I went on my last family holiday - to Cintra, where we stayed with an artist friend. I breezed down corridors lined with watercolours, filled disposable cameras with photographs of communist street grafitti, and wrote songs on my acoustic guitar, pausing occasionally to stare meaningfully at the horizon.

This weekend I travelled back to Lisbon for a work conference, and discovered that in a little over ten years my creative energies have dwindled to a general desire to sit around in the sun not doing anything (which sadly was not much permitted) and a more specific desire to steal a golf-buggy and drive into a bunker.

On our trips into Lisbon the coach journey was enlivened by the very charming conference host, who insisted on pointing out every single hut and fishing boat, as well as the highly regarded (but now sadly closed) Lisbon lung hospital ("for tuberculosis").

The weather was wonderful and the air conditioning startlingly efficient (bordering on a bit chilly). Back in my kitchen I am hot and uncomfortable. I would swap their coast for my coast, or my air for theirs. On the other hand, my time is my own and I may sit where I choose. Hurray, then.