Correction: he wasn't just coming to Portugal; he was coming to a convention center that happened to be 1 mile away from our school at the foot of the Sintra hills. What?! Crazy good fortune, to be sure.
Lisbon Expedition Phase 1: Find Good Drink I took the visit as opportunity to get out into Lisbon, which as of yet we'd only explored in a brief sleep-deprived stroll the morning we arrived from the States. First destination: to find one of the creature comforts I have missed much more than I could have imagined: quality craft beer. Based on research from a fellow connoisseur halfway around the world (thanks Joe), Anders and I decided to head to an alleged brewpub known as "Republica de Cerveja" in a far flung and modern area of Lisbon called the Oriente (it was developed for a relatively recent world expo, so it has the eerily pleasant feel of a manufactured landscape... clean, precise, and with a decidedly forced character). We pieced together a train and metro route that would get us there, and headed on our way. The Lisbon metro was fantastic: fast, clean, and efficient, and we were only propositioned with drugs once.* We rode 3 trains from Cascais to the Oriente and had to wait a total of 3 minutes inbetween them, and it popped us out short walk from our destination, on a promenade next to the Tagus River. Favorite part of the Lisbon metro: signs that seemed to warn against getting crotched by the doors.
*The drug propositioning was a strange juxtaposition... while I have felt much safer in Cascais and Lisbon than I often felt in my dear old Oakland (and even San Francisco) there are undoubtedly rough edges that you brush up against. Four times during our trip in four very different parts of the city someone walked up to us and began listing a full menu of illicit drugs that they had for sale, in nearly the exact order each time. Before leaving for Portugal I had read that many of these substances had been decriminalized by the state, but hadn't heard, smelled, or seen any evidence that this had any effect on the culture until this trip.
Although our train navigation was a definitive success, Republica de Cerveja was a flop. First of all, of the 6 varieties on the menu, they only actually had 2. Second, the beer was remarkably similar to the rest of the mass-produced Portuguese barley drinks: thin, tinny, and without much of a flavor profile to speak of. The search continues. The finally dagger for any repeated journeys to this Republica was the food. When we ordered the hamburgesa, we were expecting something more in line with what we would experience at a pub back home, i.e. a beef patty with sauce, fixings, and bun. As you can see, that was not the way of it... all we could do was laugh when they delivered beef patties swimming in the bowls of watery sauce. Admittedly, they were much better than first expected, and we devoured every bite before moving out to the next phase of our journey. Lisbon Expedition Phase 2: Find Anders' Old Pad
This wasn't Anders' first rodeo in Lisbon... as a strapping young lad he had spent a month here with his family as they did language training in preparation for a move to Mozambique (one of several countries colonized by the Portuguese not so long ago). As such, we wanted to track down the place where he had lived to see if the owners were still running things. We headed down to the center of things, wandering purposefully from the tree-lined "Avenida de Liberdad" up up up into the beatnik "Barrio Alto" district where he had once resided. We were warned that although this area is one of the hippest and most exciting areas to eat and frolic, we should also be careful about being there after dark. We made our way through beautiful narrow old streets, took in a picturesque vista, and did managed to find the place he had lived (but no luck on talking to the old owners... it seemed to now be some sort of hostel).
Lisbon Expedition Phase 3: See some other beautiful stuff.
We figured we had made a good enough go of it, and so we could walk back to the Cais do Sodre train station with heads held high, declaring the day of exploration as a big old victory. We rolled down out of the heights and unwittingly came to one of the main drags, known as the "Baixa" district. We strolled through a hotbed of activity where street performers played beautiful Portuguese melodies, shops sold everything from the elegant to the gaudy, and families walked hand-in-hand people watching and enjoying each others company. We came to a street where Lisbon's iconic old streetcars rolled past us, narrowly missing an exceptionally long line of people that seemed to be eagerly awaiting their turn to go into a sewer. I learned later that this was one of the few or only times each year that they opened up tours into the ancient Roman underbelly of the city (As these things often work in places with a long history of development, new structures are often built right on top of the old... modern Lisbon is built on foundations that go back thousands of years, as are many areas of Europe).
All told, it was a fantastic way to spend a day with a good friend. We were so lucky to have him visit, and look forward to many future visits for those that want to see this beautiful and interesting part of the world (or those that have business trips that just happen to take them to our doorstep)
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