Portugal: An Ambiguity for Happiness

October 12 - October 19 2013

Ever since we had gone to Spain, tackling the other part of the Iberian Peninsula had been something that we wanted to do. Friends would come back, raving about Lisbon and Porto, its food, and of course, the wine. We had booked these flights months in advance and were very excited about the trip. We had 9 days to spend making our way along the length and breadth of the country to see why everyone loved it so much and to imbibe its famous libations.

We had to book separate flights on the way there so I got in 6 hours earlier, checked into our hotel and walked around the beautiful promenade streets and waited for the Beckster to fly in. Parts of Lisbon were very new and chic, ripe with boutiquey outlets and department stores while others, in neighboring areas, were incredibly old; rich with cobblestone streets, small houses and laundry strewn about on every available portion of every balcony we saw.



One of our favorite neighborhoods of the city was called Al Fama. Stretching down the steep slopes of the city, Al Fama is a gorgeous area full of picturesque labyrinthine streets, narrow staircases and small squares which were incredibly lively and vibrant with the people living in this community. You would turn a corner and find some secret bar or cafe tucked away into the side of a building, turn another corner to see some ornately designed fountain, or another corner to get a glimpse of the ocean between two buildings, just barely wide enough to catch a glimmer of the sun reflecting off the water. Al Fama was also famous for its Fado, a Portuguese style of music, being played.  Becky and I walked the area for hours, being totally mesmerized by its colors, sounds and people. Because of its small, compactness perched up on the hillside, it was one of the only neighborhoods of the city that was left more or less untouched in a massive earthquake in the 18th century. The area evoked beautiful images of the city's history and left us never wanting to leave.

The streets of Al Fama

Before heading up north, Becky and I took a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra. Sintra was a town 45 minutes outside of the city up in the mountains known for its beautiful architecture, palaces, gardens and Moorish castles. We spent the better part of an hour climbing this massive hill to reach the Moorish outpost, climbing higher and higher through beautifully turned foliage, old stone staircases and fortified walls and archways. Having finally arrived at the top of this enormous hill, we were asked to pay a ridiculous entry fee to walk the grounds of the castle. We did so, irritatedly, and then once inside, instantly regretted our decision. The Moorish castle, from the look of it, dated back to 2008. Although beautifully perched on top of this massive hilltop, the faux-castle left something to be desired. The best part about the castle was being able to eat the salami sandwiches that we brought for the walk up.


The highlight of Sintra though was the estate of Quinta da Regaleira. Quinta da Regaleira was this beautiful lush green estate with romantic style churches, chapels and a central palace. The expansive area also featured lakes, streams, grottoes, fountains and wells. Above ground, the huge area can be walked with interconnected pathways, zigzagging around the area. Below ground, the wells, grottoes and buildings are all connected by a myriad of tunnels, allowing you to get from one end to the other without ever going above ground. The place was as beautiful as it was enigmatic, with its gargoyle statues, spired-buildings and spiral designed staircases. It was a true pleasure to be able to see this architectural masterpiece.

Exploring the tunnels of Quinta da Regaleira

From there we rented the car and headed north up to Porto. Becky had gotten in contact with a friend of hers a few weeks earlier and he had told her that his mom lives in Portugal and urged us to give her a call and stop by for a visit. The area that she lived in was conveniently in the direction of Porto so we stopped in for the afternoon. We met Becky's friend Gill in the city center of a tiny mountain village and she then took us to her sister's home where she was staying. Gill and her husband were a British couple who had retired and moved to Portugal. They had bought a plot of land in the same village but were staying at a relative's house in the meantime. The house that they were staying at had been an old manor house that was restored. The house still retained its original foundation and on the tour, Becky and I were in awe at how amazing the place looked. Old wooden I-beams, brick walls, and stone archways had been incorporated into the house giving it a very interesting feel. Gill even showed us where the original chapel of the house had been and how it still contains pews and an altar.

Gill was incredibly hospitable, friendly, and side-stichingly funny. She lived there with her husband and uncle. Her uncle Reggie was a very old, frail man who spent his invalid days watching television, being fed, and complaining about aches and pains he thought he had. We didn't speak to him much but Gill spoke of him to us. He had always been an odd duck, complacent with not doing much with his life, shirking any sort of ambition in work, life or love.


"He never even had a shag," Gill said about him in a voice that told us she really didn't understand the guy.


Reggie had never been abroad besides the time he spent at his station in World War II. He seemed to have spent his entire life doing what he was currently doing, waiting around to die. As the night went on, Gill and her husband invited us to stay for an amazing roast dinner, and Becky was invited to drink copious amounts of wine. I, being the driver, stayed with juice. We finished our delicious dinner, thanked our generous hosts, and jumped in the car towards Porto. On the drive up, with Becky being less concerned with conversation and more concerned with drooling on herself in the passenger seat, I found myself thinking of Reggie.

Death will find us all in the end. Hopefully later rather than sooner but it's something that cannot be avoided. Reggie and many others like him are at a time in their lives when all they can do is reflect on the time they have spent walking this earth. The things and people they loved, lost, didn't love or the things that never found a way into their lives but they wish had. I do not know what the cards hold after we make the giant leap from this current precipice of life; I am of the opinion that when I die, I will think about my life in a similar capacity to how I thought about my life before I was born. So on one hand, there is not much to worry about. Whatever regrets one may or may not have will cease to exist as soon as you shut your eyes for a final time, making everything a moot point. But on the other hand, I can imagine nothing scarier, more pitiful, or more wretched than those last final minutes before shutting your eyes where one might reflect on a life unfulfilled to the best of one's abilities. If anything can help alleviate that fear, I want to do it. My own way of managing the shadows I create, I suppose.

Whatever our beliefs may be, we all contain an enormous capacity for happiness and unhappiness alike-- the type of happiness and unhappiness unaffected by the hazards of life and the perceived hindrances that stifle us. It’s about the way we regard ourselves in relation to the world we live in and the people we share our lives with. We are all destined for happiness, just so long as we provide ourselves with enough ambiguity for said happiness and understand that one day, it will all come to an end, never to appear again in the consciousness we currently possess.

Porto at night

A few hours later, the GPS in the car told us that we had reached our destination so we parked, checked into our hotel and spent the night walking around Porto. Becky and I were both just getting over a cold so we didn't spend too much time walking around and turned in early.

The next day we spent walking around the very hilly yet beautiful Porto, sampling Port wine at every chance, and we even had time to take a boat cruise and see the city from the river that serves as an artery through the city. We ate steaks topped with runny eggs (that seems to be a thing in Portugal - whatever the food may be, put an egg on it!), sipped wine overlooking the river and viewed the gorgeous churches and old buildings of the city.

From Porto, we drove north in search of a town called Braga. For whatever reason, the GPS wasn't able to find Braga so I had Becky use my tablet. The GPS on my tablet worked fine so I showed Becky where we were, where we were headed and had her guide me to Braga through the streets of northern Portugal. I was hesitant to task Becky with this orienteering endeavor because she usually can be quite directionally ("I thought north was up!") challenged but she seemed to be quite capable at the task at hand. Whenever I asked her where to go, she gave me a perfect answer and she said we were right on target. She kept telling me what to do, I kept listening to which she would keep saying, "We are on target."

Wondering what she meant by that and under the impression that we should have been in Braga long ago, I pulled over to the side of the road, took the tablet and realized that we had been going in the complete wrong direction from the moment she started opening her mouth and telling me which way to go.

"Becky, we are nowhere near Braga, what are you doing? Why weren't you guiding me?" I asked, annoyed.

"What do you mean? The blue dot was flashing so I followed the blue dot!" Becky shrugged back, inferring that there must be some other reason for our erroneous navigation.

"The blue dot, Becky? And did you notice that whenever we turned, the blue dot turned with us?" I said, no longer annoyed just dumbfounded.

"Yeah, we were on target."

"No, Becky. We were not on target and we were not following the blue dot. We ARE the blue dot."

I watched as this wave of new information washed over her. She acted as if she was forming words with her mouth, thought better of it, then slumped in her seat and fiddled with her hands.

"Maps confuse me," she said, quite unnecessarily.

So we righted the ship, back-tracked our steps, and finally made it to Braga and to what we came to see. The Bom Jesus do Monte. High atop the mountains on the outskirts of Braga is the enormous and beautiful Portuguese sanctuary. An old pilgrimage site with an elaborately decorated staircase mounted with statues of saints and arch bishops that zigzags its way up the hill for nearly 500 feet. On different levels of the zigzagged staircases are different fountains to symbolize different senses of the human body and virtues of the human spirit. The baroque-style churches reached high into the air and allows for beautiful views of the surrounding area down below.

Me at the base of Bom Jesus do Monte

With bad weather closing in on us and our time in Portugal coming to an end, we jumped back onto the highway and made our way back down to Lisbon to catch our flight. The economic situation in Portugal was quite dire we found out. We had inquired to someone along the way as to why we were pretty much all alone on the highways we were driving on.  We were told that it was a simple answer: no one could afford to use them.

Portuguese drivers preferred to take side roads and old highways to avoid tolls that we only realized at that moment we were incurring. Another observation we made went hand in hand with this one: very few people were fiddling with smart phones. People watched where they were walking on the street, talked to each other in restaurants, and took zero selfies. Most people simply couldn't afford it.

We stopped over in Obidas right as the torrential rain set in. We had lunch, waited for it to subside, then wandered the old city walls and watched the remaining drizzle cascading off the coned roofs. The rivers of water also sprayed over the sides of the stone ramparts and fortified towers of the old city. Heightened by the rain, Obidas was a beautiful little village with the rolling green hills of central Portgual in the backdrop.

We jumped back on the road and headed for Lisbon. Hours later, we waited with bated breath to see Lisbon city limit signs. I was very careful not to alter my acceleration too much, opted to coast down declines, and clinch my teeth during inclines. For some reason our bullshit budget rental car's policy is to charge you for the tank of gas when you pick it up but then tell you to just bring it back empty. Indignant, annoyed, and determined to not be ripped off, Becky and I made hasty calculations at the gas station in Obidas to ascertain the minimum amount we could fill up with and still make it to Lisbon. Our petrol was depleting fast and we were on a barren highway in the middle of a rainstorm but our calculations came through in the end. Becky may not know her ass end from a compass heading but she did get us to the airport with a few fumes to spare.

The streets of Obidas

And as our fantastic trip to Portugal came to a close, so commenced the most hellish and enraging airplane travel experience we have ever encountered together. What was meant to be a 6 hour travel day ended up being a very irritating, sleepless, and deliriously long, 28 hour travel experience which I promise is not worth writing about.

Something that is worth mentioning though is Reggie. A few days later, Becky saw a post on Facebook from our host Gill saying that Reggie had in fact just died days after we met him. The news was shocking and sad, but not unexpected given his age, health, and frailty when we last saw him. I can only hope that I am lucky enough to slip away one day, reflecting on my life, the choices I made, the people I knew and the things I have done with a big smile on my face.

When I first started this blog, I looked around for guidance and inspiration and I found myself on a friend's blog reading past stories and looking at pictures, entertained by what he had to say. His blog is called MookFish and the main quote at the top of his blog reads:

"Most of us go to our graves with the music still inside of us."

This beautiful quote encapsulates Reggie's tragedy better than I possibly could so I will leave you with that and that alone.  


Books Read:

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

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