THE ROAD LES TRAVELLED

Lisboa- day whatever…..(day 3 for Canadians)

“The Traveller Sets Out Again

But that is not true. The journey is never over. Only travellers come to an end. But even then,  they can prolong their voyage in their memories, in recollections, in stories. When the traveller sat in the sand and declared: “There’s nothing more to see,” he knew it wasn’t true. The end of one journey is simply the start of another. You have to see what you missed the first time, see again what you already saw, see in springtime what you saw in summer, in daylight what you saw at night, see the sun shining where you saw the rain falling, see the crops growing, the fruit ripen, the stone which has moved, the shadow that was not there before. You have to go back to the footsteps already taken, to go over them again or add fresh ones alongside them. You have to start the journey anew. Always. The traveller sets out once more.”

Jose Saramago-from his book Journey to Portugal

When we move beyond binary thinking, our concepts of beginnings and endings, good and evil, man and woman, Vancouver and Surrey, these markers all disappear, and a whole new world opens up to us.

Whether you see the world in shades of grey, or as a brilliant rainbow is up to you. We can create our own reality to some extent. At the very least, we can influence, or program, ourselves into seeing and experiencing differences in life as diversity,  and not as conflict.

Many see the world as rich and poor, but there are many sad rich people and conversely there are many more poor people, whose wisdoms and joy raise them above their economic stations.   

We say “Them’s the breaks.”

Like it’s a bad thing.  But sometimes braking is a good thing. When I am about to cross the road, my better half  grabs my forearm, as if to say stop dummy, look both ways, and listen. She is braking me.

She is not breaking me; she is guiding me with her love.  That is how I take it.

Travelling is like a production; all the costs are in the set up and the clean up.  What’s in the middle is pure profit. What’s in the middle is the ever elusive “sweet spot”, it’s the money, it’s the honey, it’s the Crème in the Oreo..

It’s what we call enjoyment.

Today is day zero -zero.  Today is the salty goodness and the sweet hallelujah.  Today the order is up and the Time is Now!

We had carbs and coffee for breakfast, then hit it hard, following the sound of 20 year old students still celebrating from the previous two nights of pub crawling. Today, they were having a noisy sit-in on a main boulevard.

Before the Hogwarts generation got out of hand, Michelle directed us to Luvari Ulisses, a luxury glove store.

First, they cleaned her hand. Measured it. Touched it. She selected a pair to try on.  They use their special glove stretching tool to stretch the glove, and ask you to place your elbow on the designated pad, and then they do a fitting.

It is a special kind of luxury that is not super expensive to indulge.

We then found our way to the subway. The Lisbon subway could be the quietest, most open, and super clean subway that I have  experienced.

Witness the cork seats.  Besides tile and port, cork is a major local crop.  Please, no jokes about Portugal being corked.

We went to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, one of the most renowned in Portugal.  All of the art was privately owned by an Armenian industrialist, who was nicknamed "Mr Five Per Cent.”

Calouste Gulbenkian was a British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He basically invented the trade in Middle Eastern oil, and founded Dutch Shell Oil. Thankfully for the preservation of art history, his passion was to buy collections of art, ranging from Islamic treasures to Monet.

For more photos of the art, visit my Instagram.

Next up was more walking, bringing us to this incredible view of the city.

Cocktails anyone? We had been recommended by a few friends to visit The Chinese Pavilion Bar.

We have found that if you walk long enough, you sometimes end up right back where to started. So we changed clothes and went back to the Bica Sour, enjoyed more tapas, saw a retirement party, and met some very amusing twenty year olds from Bavaria, Felix, Sophia, and Nicholas.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and we leave Lisbon very early Sunday morning -5am.

We are in the home stretch. From Lisbon, we go back to London, catch some theatre, and leave for home on Tuesday.