Chicken Bras

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It seems that mayoral elections will be held throughout Portugal on Sunday, and unlike back home, they seem to take this very seriously here. When we got back to the apartment last night we struggled to open the door for all the propaganda that had been stuffed under it. This morning we can only get out of the square near the apartment along one very narrow alley. One of the only other two is blocked with placard carrying marchers, and the other by a loud brass band. We wonder if brass bands would ever take off as part of electioneering back home. I'm somehow struggling to picture Malcolm Turnbull strutting his stuff on a soapbox in front of a bunch of trombones....

Today we decide to head for the seaside town of Cascais, which is about a half hour train ride west of Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus River. We struggle to find our local Metro station, and as was the case yesterday, then find that we need to stand in a long queue to buy our tickets. It seems that the reloadable travel cards we bought yesterday are only valid for yesterday, so we now need to buy two more. We have the option of loading them up for specific destinations, or just with money. We decide to go with the money so that we don't need to keep queuing, but then straight away discover that these cards also expire at the end of the day, and any unused money is then lost. We're going to have to do a lot of travelling today if we want to avoid losing. I think that the Metro authority should use some of the massive profit that they must make from unsuspecting tourists loading up cards with more money than they can ever use, to buy some more ticket machines. I think that this should be the major election issue. I wonder where we can go to vote.

Issy settles in on a sun lounge on one of the beaches while I go exploring. I head up along the promenade at the top of the cliffs on the Atlantic Ocean side of the town to the Boca do Inferno, which is Portuguese for Hell's Mouth. The waves make deafening noises as they come pounding in to its large chasm. It's relatively calm today, but I suspect this might get quite spectacular in rougher weather. The views from here along the rocky cliffs are excellent.

There's a spooky looking band of cloud offshore just above the horizon that looks like a thick fog about to roll in. We could also see this from the top of the mountains at Sintra yesterday, and it doesn't seem to have moved since. I wonder if this is a regular feature of life here. I've heard about the movie "The Fog" where a mysterious mist rolls into a fishing village and everyone starts dying. If this is going to happen here I hope it at least holds off until after we've left.

I stroll back towards town past the very attractive Casa de Santa Maria and Museu Condes de Castro Guimaraes. I've read that there's an ancient citadel here surrounded by a fort which was built way back in 1594. I wander in through a gate in the wall in the eager expectation of finding cute old buildings in a maze of narrow alleyways. But it seems I'm to be disappointed. The local mayor apparently decided at some stage that it would be a good idea to bulldoze all the ancient structures and replace them with a fancy hotel and boutique shops. I hope that that particular mayor isn't about to be re-elected this weekend.

I join Issy on the beach and decide to head in for a dip. There are lots of people on the sand but almost none in the water, and I soon find out why. It's freezing; it's "take your breath away" freezing, even more so than it was in Albufeira. I've never been silly enough to go swimming in Tasmania in the depths of winter but that couldn't possibly be any colder than this. Even the seagulls get out of the way when they see a wave coming towards them. I struggle back up to the sand and manage to catch my breath, and then spend a long time on a sun lounge trying to thaw out.

We head back towards Lisbon at peak hour. It's chaotic. It's standing room only, and everyone on the station platforms appears to think that they have a right to get on our train, even if this means squeezing the breath out of those of us who are already there. We reach our station; we don't know where to go so we follow the crowd. It seems that the crowd is boarding a ferry to the far flung suburbs on the other side of the river. Hmmmm. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea......

We eat at a Fado restaurant in a small square right next to the apartment; we can hear its live music from our terrace. The main offering is Portuguese tapas, which is a new one on us. We suspected that the Portuguese maybe didn't do tapas because they wanted to stay well clear of anything with Spanish associations - bullfighting where the bull gets killed in the ring, saying "gracias", etc. These delicious tapas are very different from their Spanish cousins (oops, I think I've just insulted Portugal yet again....). The pick of the bunch is "chicken bras", which the waiter explains has nothing to do with ladies' undergarments; it's shredded chicken, mixed with egg and potato. Very tasty.

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Photos

Yachts sailing off Cascais
Note the spooky low band of cloud in the background