portugal was really fun.
last wednesday we flew out of orlando at 2pm, to miami and then across the atlantic to madrid, spain, on an iberia flight. the flight was nice because we were surprisingly upgraded from coach to business class–a fantastic difference in service and comfort. going against the spin of the earth, we arrived in madrid thursday morning, only to smoosh ourselves on a crowded 1-hour commuter flight to lisbon.
thursday and friday i spent at our hotel, the carlton palace, which was originally a noble family’s residence and recently renovated as a hotel. it was rated 5-star, but i would certainly class it as better quality and service per dollar than any other 5-star hotel you could find. my hours were divided between reading, sleeping by the pool, working out, and eating. and eat we did…for the portuguese, dinner is an event which requires at least two hours to finish, and one which doesn’t generally start until after 9pm. thus, dinner was, most days, the last thing i did before sleeping. a bit of a change from school culture, where i would generally only go to bed after second dinner.
i won’t bother telling about the restaurants we visited for dinner over the seven days, because they defy description. let it suffice to say that not one was disappointing, and the food and wine at each were so exquisite as to make me smile and sigh happily just at the bare thought of remembrance. one particular meal, fresh-caught stone bass cooked with bananas, has entrenched itself as my favorite gastronomic experience of all time. perhaps not as interesting was the fact that i served as our group’s interpreter at a number of meals, because out of the 30 of us, i was the only one that had learned any portuguese at all prior to the trip. i will say that i fared reasonably well, despite the occasional surprise when the dishes came out.
apart from dinners, i only went into town three times (our hotel was very much on the outskirts, so to get to downtown one had to take a taxi, but they were very cheap): once on a tour bus that took our group on a 4-hour tour of the city and some of the most salient monuments, once to visit a castela do sao jorge (the castle of st. jorge) and the shopping district, and once to a roadside market sort of deal. so, all told, i didn’t get around too much….however, i think i did soak in quite a bit of the city’s atmosphere the times i did go out, and it was nice to just stay at the hotel and relax, like a legitimate vacation.
some other highlights of the trip:
- spending a few hours with my parents learning about port wine and some of its finer points from a vendor in the hotel
- sleeping for 6 hours in the sun by the pool one day
- late night cigars and port with some of the men in the group, discussing non-profit business tactics, banking strategies, philosophy, and ancient greek
- taking a risk at the hotel lounge and ordering an unknown cocktail, and receiving a pepto-bismol-pink beverage with a little umbrella on the top
- dressing up every day
- becoming a minor connoisseur of white wine
- talking with cab drivers in portuguese
- talking with laura, the only other sub-40-yr-old on the trip, who goes to cal poly
- watching terminator 2 in portuguese
- not checking e-mail and not having a phone
- flying home on september 11th, with all the flights less than half full, and reflecting on the meaning of that
hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of what things were like. on the whole i am very refreshed and relaxed, and looking forward to my last week at home before i go back to stanford!
disc on spin: a rush of blood to the head | coldplay
