Belem and Cascais

Way back in March (so long ago, somehow), I stayed in the Belem neighborhood when I first visited Lisbon.  I took another trip back there to see if I still loved the area and Portugal?  You are two for two!

Belem is just as lovely as I remember.  I didn’t do much more than walk around on a sunny autumn day, but it was enough. My only real mission was to find the restaurant where I had one of the best meals of my entire journey.  I found the place, had the same meal (with the same lackluster service), and it was still delicious.  Grilled bream (dourada grelhada), potatoes (batatas), vegetables (legumes), bread (pao) and cured cheese (queijo curado), with a caipirinha.  Still a winner.

Back in the middle of Lisbon, I also found this great restaurant near the dump called Manifest Lisboa.  The place had a laid-back atmosphere and played R&B music from the 70’s.  Went there for breakfast twice with great results. A Turkish style charcuterie board the first time and caramel pancakes for the next time.

I also took a trip by train from the Cais Do Sobre Metro station to the city of Cascais at the end of the line.  It’s still amazing to me that a short 45-minute train ride can take you from the heart of the city to gorgeous beaches.  One of the benefits of being in a small coastal country.

Hating that tiny room as much as I did, I gave myself an early Christmas present by ditching it a day early.  The host of my next AirBNB was very accommodating. She allowed me to check in at 11:30 instead of waiting around until 3.  Works for me. This place is closer to the airport than the Bela Vista place and is not far (about 2 miles) from the Oriente Metro station I’d visited days before. 

If the last dump made Bela Vista look like a palace, this place is a nice 2-bedroom split level (like my house in Woodstock).  In reality, it is a studio with a galley kitchen and a decent sized bathroom (with a tub – a rarity in Europe).  The bed is … a sofa.  Not even a pull-out.  Just a sofa.

And there’s no A/C or Wi-FI.  In this day and age?  Wow.  I was so busy checking that the place was a decent size with a washer that it didn’t even occur to me to check for Wi-Fi – I just figured it was a given.  Guess not.

This journey is teaching me much more than I ever imagined it would.  I learned that you can use your phone as a hotspot.  I picked this up from some random guy on a train in Ireland.  His phone didn’t have a connection to the internet, so he asked to use the one on my phone.  I didn’t even know that was a thing.  Those steps that he showed me came in handy in this strange Wi-Fi-less apartment.  Of course, I ended up burning through way too much data on my eSim in the course of a single day, so I had to find an alternative to feed my internet addiction.   I broke down and purchased a portable hotspot from the mall and I was soon back up and running.

The first Monday in the new apartment, I received my NIF number from Accessoria Migratoria.  Holy crap, this is really happening.  I then got a link to the official government site where I’d have to log my taxes.  Having no idea what was required of me, I emailed the office with a big huh?  They basically told me to keep my panties on and wait for further instructions.  Okay.

My big girl panties firmly in place, I set to the arduous task of looking for a job and … yeah.  I know why I put it off for so long.  What with checking YouTube for resume writing tips and the state of the job market, trying to optimize my LinkedIn profile (I really know nothing of social media), finding out just how many jobs I’m not qualified to do and … sigh.  At least I established a new routine for my days.  Job search in the morning, a couple hours for lunch and exercise, then a few hours in the evening on Coursera.  My skills are very rusty, so I’m trying to shore them up with a couple of computer programming classes.  With the first week being free and then a $44 monthly fee afterward, I figure it’s worth it to make myself more marketable.

The walking section of my day was the most pleasant.  Like with most of Lisbon, there are wide sidewalks and walking trails crisscrossing all over this area.  The grocery store, along with a few restaurants and shops, is a short distance away, while venturing further gets you to the trails by the water.  Plenty of sunshine and fresh air to be enjoyed in the many sitting areas.  There’s a line of restaurants by the water and an always-crowded food court in the mall. 

Then there’s this area which I adore.  It’s near a school campus, just before you reach the mall, and it is a whole other kind of gorgeous.  There are three of these cone-shaped fountains with this curtain of trees around the whole area.  A nice place to sit and chill.