Many of my friends are moving around at the moment, making me curious about the places I yet haven’t visited. Here’s a great, short guide of the different neighbourhoods, the pro’s and con’s of them and also other cool spots to visit. I’ve decided that I’ll discover even more places this year than the last one and this small guide got me making a good plan. Neighbourhoods of Lisbon
Enjoy!
A desire I’ve had for quite some time now but sound strange. But I do really miss walking in high heels. For two reasons I don’t do it here.
I. I am already taller than average.
II. It’s physically hard to walk in high heels on these streets.
II is really the one to blame. The pavements here are filled with stones which in most cases make beautiful patterns. Beautiful yes but impossible to walk on with heels. One gets stuck in between the stones or the pavement as such is just not straight enough for one to walk normally. Just a minor issue, that’s all because all the million hills in this city is just a matter of your own fitness 😉
Nevertheless, still enjoying life here. It’s quality time for sure when the sun is shining, no cloud in the sky and about 18 degrees in the beginning of January. I’ve had worst days than these for sure and ladies: there are really nice flat shoes to wear here. What ever you do, leave your Manolos at home.
Tomorrow doesn’t always imply really tomorrow here. More often it does actually and compared to Spain, for sure tomorrow is tomorrow. But my own “tomorrow” has been about a few months long. This is really what Lisbon is about. Life. You cannot escape it, it just happens.
Many are the topics I’ve been wanting to write about and instead of bragging about how many they are, I’ll just select one. And by that I want to say Até a proxima!
Hey, wow does time fly by fast. 2 weeks passed already at the new job and I’m still alive 😉
Last week passed by amazingly fast, with all new info, all new info and not to forget the hill I have to climb in the mornings to catch my bus… You get quite exhausted knowing you’re late and the next bus is in 40min… You do all you can to catch even if it means you’ll be dead arriving to the bus stop..
Anyhow, what I like is that I can see Lisbon in the morning. It’s still quite calm and not so much traffic out but all the birds. The street after mine usually have the standard 3 older men and the strange coffee place just around the corner seems to have people there nevertheless the hour. Once stepping out from the house I get struck by the light, not pure sunlight as I’m still hidden but the light of the “awakening hours” when it starts smoothly to only increase during the day.
It only takes me about 20-30min from door to door but I pass one of the most amazing views of the city with the water on the left side and the amazing and extremely beautiful viaduct on the right. And all surrounded by the colourful houses and Boa Lisboa. I like getting to work because it’s like entering a park, it’s green with houses on different spots at the camp and then the nice hill with the mill on top and a view of the water… the beach… Caparica… Now beat that 😉
Boa Lisboa
In this windy but incredibly nice park, I was enjoying a book and also did some writing. Thank you Cecilia for taking me to this place which is now one of my top favourites.
Write soon. Started a new job and a portugese class at the same time, so a bit busy these days, but update is coming =)
Today Wednesday, we had 28 degrees, just for your notice…
Woke up yesterday quite early and opened the door to the hallway and noticed something was different. It was too dark and there were a pair of white sneakers by the door… Hmmm Don’t recognise this, but walked through the hallway anyway and noticed the door to the living room was closed. Figured out then that we had guests spending the night here.
Got back to my room and slept a bit more and then got hungry and went to the kitchen to meet my flatmate who said her Dutch friends were spending the night here as they missed their train home. Fair enough, they’re adorable so the next minute they wake up and I enter the room and say: What the fuck are you doing in my house?! David replies: oh fuck not youuuu!!
Haha this is how we treat guests in this house. Well only this couple hahaha. We ended up having one of those long, chatty breakfasts and talked about future party plans to mention some. My flatmate and I wanted to have a Midsummer party in some friend’s backyard but now those friends woun’t be living in that house so need to rearrange plans. Then David and Laura left and me and my flatmate walked down town. It was strange weather, warm but still a bit chilly. Once down town, it was packed with people! Amazing! I guess tourist season has started… We took it tranquillo and did some shopping and then got nuts hungry and went to Largo do Carmo, where some guys were playing really nice African music. Had some food and live music before hitting back home. Oh yeah we had pizzas at Indian restaurant, two swedes in Portugal… If that’s not multiculti I don’t know what is 😉
Stopped by in Amoreiras and catched ticket to a movie which was hilarious! It was us and a bunch of elder couples. This is a sight you don’t see often in Sweden. Elder people hanging out in weekends, having dinners out, catching movies etc. haven’t seen much of that at home. Well on the other hand, people don’t hang out so much at home either. Probably too cold 😉
I on the other hand jumped happily home after the movies yesterday. I’m sooooo happy to be here and tomorrow I start yet another new chapter of my life, or maybe even a new book; First day at the new job =)
Loja da cidadao is the place to be. It is also one of the reasons why this country is in crisis. I spent almost 4 hours there. waiting, standing, for a piece of paper that took less than 5 min to get. The government earned 3,5€ on me, but probably loss more because if I had been working this day, I would have needed to take the day off to take care of this paper and in that case I wouldn’t have earned any money and therefore paid nothing in taxes. Many people need to take the day off work to go there to get papers fixed and regarding the fact I went for one of the most common papers, a paper stating all my crimes in Portugal, it took 4 hours. When I was at Loja da cidadao last time to get a fiscal number, it took me 15min. So you actually never know how old you’ll get at this place. I thought once it’s my turn yesterday I’ll turn in my papers for retirement.
So it’s designed like this. The Loja da cidadao is where you go for all things regarding you and state controlled stuff; gas, electricity, fiscal numbers, identity cards, ministry of justice, social security papers, you name it. Only thing missing there is the unemployment office. Once you get in you have to find the right floor, then the right encounter and then get a number and wait for your turn. Now it seems to be so badly designed that the encounters having most people are those with less assistants helping you and also with the least seats to sit. So not only are you going to get old there, you’ll probably have to get old standing.Most amusing part was that when it was getting closer to my number, a woman on the speaker phone announced that issues regarding finances could not be handled anymore that day due to technical problems. She said “we’re sorry for the inconvenience” and that was it. Yaaaay, that must be fun waiting for some hours there only to find out you can do a damn thing but have to return… I’m surprised there are any fights in that house.
I went to a dinner in the evening and told my (portuguese) friend about this and she said that she called there once to ask something for a contract. They had then told her that she has to go to the Loja da cidadao to ask this. So she did and she waited about 2 hours only to get an answer in a minute. Now this is not efficiency neither effectiveness. I don’t know if I might have missed out something here, the one who has most papers when they die wins?
Haha! So I did it!! I so rock! 😀 Many are those who have doubted, many are those who thought and probably still think I’m completely crazy doing this but there are also people who have been kicking my but to do this and to those I say thank you! I am now living my dream that I have had already for several years.
In 2006 I was in Lisbon for the first time. I didn’t know anything about the city neither the country. All that was important for me was sun and close to the beach. After only a few hours in the city I was in love. With the city. I felt like home for the first time ever in my life, even though I had already been travelling a lot before coming to Lisbon. However this might have been different if destiny hadn’t put me together with my two absolutely best friends here Joao and Pedro, who in that first day showed me more of the city than tourists do in a few days and who welcomed me with open arms even though they had no clue who I was or even the fact that I’m not really representative for my country haha. I am so glad for this and thankful, they are my family now and I love them just as I have known them all my life. Without having their support the decision of coming back would have been harder.
My happiness today is due to the fact that the happiness is already one week old and one hangover later, but I managed to get quite a good job in this country of crisis! Woohooo!!! In your faaaace! I am really happy for this because it means I don’t have to worry of not being able to stay here and also that I’ll have things to do during the day. I’m starting on Monday and looking forward to that. There’s a great team waiting for me and I’m eager to get to know them better.
Of course nothing passes by without celebration and on Friday we celebrated a friend of my flatmate for his birthday and I managed to really celebrate the fact that I trusted myself and being strong enough and having the courage to do this! So believe me Friday was r o u g h! Hahaha That’s actually all I’m saying! 🙂 I bought this bracelet in winter, at a small shop very up north in Sweden where it says: “Sing like no one is listening. Dance like no one is watching”. The latter goes for Friday. There was definitely no one in the bar just me and my mooooves! 🙂
Some other day I’ll give you the story of what actually made me come back and no, there is not a boy involved in this story. Sorry but you’re not gonna get a soap opera here.. 😉
Wish I could say I woke up peacefully today but I didn’t wake at all. I’ve been awake all night. Sleepless in Seattle, or Lisbon better said 🙂 Don’t know what the body wants when it you can’t sleep, i feel like smashed potato now so that’s nowhere near fine. Weekend was good though, or excellent I’d say. There is something really really good that has happened and I’ll write an individual post about it, until now, I’ll give you the moods of this Monday. Soon to take off downtown to get my box of paper really filled, yaaay!
This tune is one of my favourites and the good vibes that come with it may give you a hint of the past weekend.
Jonathan Richman was also dancing
In the first bar folks were drinking sips
But in this bar they could shake their hips,
In the first bar they were drinking sips
In this bar they could shake their hips.
Yesterday Portugal’s prime minister finally resigned. I say finally because people here don’t like him. They actually hate him. I haven’t been following the politics that well but in this country you hear about it nevertheless and honestly, I’ve never seen a public figure giving a speech in the morning saying one thing, then when he appears again in the news in the evening, he claims he never said what he said that same morning.
It’s actually an amusement watching when the government have these meetings. Socrates, the prime minister talks, and the rest of the room sits and laughs of him. I’m serious, this is how this country is ruled. Sorry was ruled. Everyone is hoping for changes now. There’s not anyone who’s actually ready to take over or who is strong enough but the current leader of the opposition party will probably be the one.
I spoke to a friend about this last night and I asked if there’s any chance Socrates can pay for what he has caused this country (poor people are getting poorer and rich richer and Socrates has 20 chauffeurs so go figure) and my friend says he has been free f charge when it comes to corruption as he has been the prime minister but now when he no longer is, the opposition will probably get to him. I’m glad there’s a bit of justice in this story.
Want to tell you something else about this. The VAT here for food is about 20%, unless it’s not basic food such as bread, milk etc. So what the government has done lately is to lower the VAT for golfing (?!) to 6% but have increase some VAT when it comes to some food. Ehm do you see any good coming out of this? I certainly don’t. The guys who play golf will have the money to still do it even if you increase the VAT to 100% but the poor people who count every dime they have, suffer harder with increased food VAT. The justification about this decrease for golfing was that it should be better for the tourism… Well tourism brings money, but maybe only a small part of the tourists actually play golf. I certainly don’t.
Here are news about the resignation in (randomly picked online):
From conversations with friends and people chatting in the metro, in restaurants, on the streets etc, I can conclude that people don’t think it can get worse than Socrates. Hopefully there’ll be elections coming up soon. So times are exciting here in Portugal!
Galão claro 