A Sunday morning in Lisbon

Neither typical nor surprising (89)

We had it pretty awesome in St. Louis. Sundays would usually find us headed to a great church and then to somewhere like the Missouri Botanical Garden or settling in for a long day of board gaming with friends.¹ We didn’t know what life in Lisbon would be like here on a granular level so we thought we’d offer this peek at our most recent Sunday. While it’s not a totally typical day, it doesn’t hit 10 on the surprise meter either.

We traveled to church by way of the blue line (with a transfer to the red line) - since it’s straight downhill to get to the Avenida stop. About 20 minutes later we’d traveled 3.1 km - aka 12 min by car or 28 minutes by foot, says Google. One of our favorite things to do at a metro station is to translate the ads.

Super Bock beer (the Bud of Portugal) was particularly prolific this Sunday. Plugging this ad word-for-word into DeepL yields: Beer what says of the what no you get out. Or, as a phrase: Beer that tells you what doesn’t come out. Did we mention Portuguese is a hard language to learn?

The red line’s Alameda station puts you out at the astonishing Parque de Fonte Luminosa. The namesake fountain seems to be turned on mostly in the summer and at prime times - Sunday mornings before noon not being one of them. Except for this morning. Even on the stairs coming up from the metro you could hear the rushing water, it’s that impressive.

It looks even more amazing at night - Luminosa.

This morning the street was filled with box vans. We took a detour and they were clearly set up for filming. We skipped some of the pre-worship breakfast at church to watch the goings-on.

The cluster at the top seems to be a triangle of dancers. There’s a long black boom hanging over the next largest mass of people and umbrellas on the left. The fan on the right seemed to blow at the dancers as the camera zipped by. The rest are hangers on of one variety or another. It was quite the entertainment.

When they asked us to move because we would be in the shot, we headed to church, and listened to the as-usual excellent service.

This was Mother’s Day in Portugal. Interestingly, it was handled differently than we are used to. First, we forgot. No one wished Amy “Happy Mother’s Day” on the way in to church; flowers weren’t handed out to all women - regardless of mother status - upon arrival; and the day was mentioned only once, in the service, when all mothers stood and were applauded and prayed for. For Amy this was a pleasant change as Mother’s Day is challenging. She’s not a mom and feels awkward receiving Mother’s Day wishes. And it’s hard because she misses her mom. So not having Mother’s Day quite so in your face was helpful. We’re sure some people would miss the way we’ve become accustomed to, but for us it was nice.

We normally stay after church for lunch with friends, but Amy had a headache so we decided to meander home. On the way we checked to see if the filming was done. The entire Parque was crammed, with the film crew and dancers by the fountain and scads of bicyclists in the middle gathering for a weekly ride and dogs bringing their people out for an early afternoon in the sun. It’s a really big park.

We started first with the filming. We were able to see one of the takes. A camera on an atv whizzed across the plaza before the fountain while the dancers did their thing. Five seconds, tops. And then it was reset time. Umbrellas came out to cover the dancers, the atv had to return; it seemed they would take a while.

So we wandered down and found a mess of booths selling food and goods. Lunch time, handled. Amy ordered a hot dog at one of the vendors and Scott ordered the bifana (sans bun) at another and we reconvened at the picnic tables to compare our purchases. Scott won hands-down.

Amy’s hot dog (overpriced at 6€) consisted of a large bun, perfect for a grinder, with a lukewarm hot dog fresh from the jar and kissed by the grill.

Yep. You read that right. Hot dogs here tend to come in jars.

To her surprise it came topped with mounds of potato sticks and possibly bacon bits - hard to tell what they were since they had no flavor.

Somewhere, buried under all that tastelessness, is a lukewarm & (also) tasteless hotdog. From a jar.

Scott’s (also overpriced at 12€ for a plate including salad and French fries) bifana meat was tender, juicy, and bursting with flavor, and the salad on the side was fresh.²

During our meal we had entertainment: a family of one dad, three women, and four or five children. He was very busy ferrying food to their table, as were two of different booth vendors. Three dishes of mussels started them off, and the plates just kept coming. Some sort of fatty meat and potato (all dishes came in threes), grilled sausage and potato, French fries, crawfish that smelled divine, three kinds of skewers (three each, naturally, and there were more they didn’t set out), smashed yellow potatoes, skewered fruit, and that’s not to mention the giant bouquets delivered last to each of the ladies.

Our home is between the blue line and green line. We are used to accessing the blue line, but the green line is more of a mystery to us. Getting comfortable with that one will really open up our options, so we decided to come home that way and get off at the Intendente station. Outside the closest stop to the green line, Arrois station, we found this jaunty fellow.

Fernão de Magalhães, looking ready to take on the world. Perhaps that’s because he’s better known as famed Ferdinand Magellan, the first man to circumnavigate the globe.

The walk home from the green line station is definitely longer than from the blue line’s Avenida. It isn’t as steep an uphill, but it’s no stroll in the park either. It’s Lisbon, after all. And it does goes by Pingo Doce, our main grocery store.

There’s also a lovely tile-lined section of street along the way.

The big win, though, is that the route home cuts through the Campo dos Mártires da Pátria. There are many names for sections of the park, like Parque Canino (dog park) and Campo Mártires Basketball Court, Jardim Braancamp Freire, and a variety of historical monuments.

Newsstand outside the park.

Roosters, pigeons, and a variety of water fowl roam freely - and fearlessly - through a section of the park. Josie has expressed interest in having up close and personal conversations with these birds. We have discouraged this type of interaction. They would take her down so fast …

This cobblestone design greets you at one of the entrances.

What ho! Goslings! A cute and surprising capper for the “morning.”

We got home around 14h (2 pm for those having trouble with the 24-hour conversion) and admired the view out our apartment windows (it never gets old) on yet another sunny day in Portugal’s capital city.

That’s all for now.

Love from Lisbon,

Amy & Scott

1. Right now, Mobot is hosting a major Dale Chihuly exhibit - check it out!

2. Too hungry to take photos, he dived right into the food. But the salad was a pretty typical “pile of lettuce with a couple of tomato slices on top” affair, though this one had a nice sprinkle of herbs to add a little variety. The fries were oversalted.