Dad's Memories

- 27 August 98 - 27 August 98

"Bidets to Bullfights"

c - Arthur J. Langdon -1970

013l -- Lisbon - Saturday, a national holiday, no shopping, and "bait" for lunch -- 013l

Our next day, Saturday, was a national holiday in Portugal. This meant that none of the hundreds of shops with exotic materials for sale would be open. We tried to find out what the holiday was - like forth of July, or Christmas, of what else - and the only answer we could get was "National Holiday" and the city was closed tight as a drum. The Portuguese like holidays and even if it was the aniversary of the first native to try Wheaties for breakfast it still was a holiday - and lets close up shop.

With my everloving chomping at the bit to challange the local storekeepers with her supply of escudos and a card showing the proper exchange rate of dollars to escudos - the holiday on a Saturday was one completely wasted.

That the day should not be a total loss, we took a ferry trip across the river at the phenominal price of three and a half cents apiece. To a vacation area where fabulous seafood restaurants were to be found for luncheon. The restaurant we chose was two flights up with a clear view of the river and the stairway was completely covered with a marvelous design of sea shells set in an intricate mosaic pattern. This type of craftsmanship which involves much time consuming effort and particular skills, patience, and desire to accomplish a truly creative result is so lacking in our "hurry up quick" building operations - that it was truly refreshing to walk slowly up the stairs and contemplate on the care, skill, and considerations involved in their result.

I like bean soup. And, for the first time in our travels, bean soup was on the menu, only this was bean soup with cabbage. We were to hear many good reports on the bean soup with cabbage. The better half is fond of chicken and no matter how it is prepared, chicken is still chicken. I am more of the exploratory type and ordered "prawns" - which I expected to be somewhat related to shrimp. This proved to be a plate full of what we use for bait on going fishing and while with valient effort I unclamped the shells from some and chopped off the heads and legs of about half of them - they still tasted like bait material.

So - we splurged another three and a half cents and crossed on the Staten Island Ferry back to our point of departure.