Reflecting on my travels through Portugal

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I took the week and went to Portugal. One of the most frequent questions I get is, “Why there?”

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I usually say something like “Well, I’ve always been curious about Lisbon … blah, blah, blah.” That’s true, but it would take too long to explain the real answer because the real question for me is “what’s the value of travel?”

I wish there was a different word for it, because there are two very different types of travelers. One type hops in the car or jumps on a plane and goes to visit someone or somewhere. The other type gets energized by experiencing something radically different from their day-to-day life. I’m in the latter camp.

So it doesn’t really matter much to me where I go, as long as it’s going to be completely different from here. I want things to be a challenge. Even though I hate it at the time, I want to fly for 13 hours in an uncomfortable airplane seat. I want all of the signs to be in a foreign language. I want my cell phone to not work. That’s the point.

I have a habit of writing down my first impressions of a new place the evening I arrive. Inevitably, most of the impressions are not quite accurate, but I like to do it anyway. It helps me remember those first few hours when I’m worried I’ll get lost or that I’m in more danger than I realize.

Here’s what I wrote on my first night in Portugal:

Lisbon is loud. The voices are loud, the dog’s bark is loud. Sound bounces off every hard surface. Music and laughter and argument. Not quite Spanish and not quite French, I keep waiting for it to resolve like a minor chord into one or the other.

There are no trees, only stone and tile. Blue tile, mosaic tile, painted tile everywhere. It is beautiful and delicate and hard. In replace of trees, there are pastry shops and handmade gelato shops where the trees once were.

And hills. Either climbing or descending at every narrow turn on 500-year-old cobblestones.

Lisbon smells of the sea.

For me, travel reminds me that the world is bigger than my own. That there are other ideas out there that might be better and more interesting than my ideas. And that the vast majority of people are kind and will help you when you are lost.

One of the highlights of my trip was sharing a few bottles of wine with a poet in his 80s. His name is Fernando. Between fried sardines and red wine he told me what it was like to be drafted into the army of a fascist dictator; what it was like to walk the streets in fear; and why he writes lyrics for Portugal’s national music called Fado. I didn’t get all the answers, but I did laugh and eat and I was thankful that he invited me into his world.

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