Ping is my first “rescue.” I committed to the adoption sight unseen and she traveled…
Lisboa 5: A Glance Back
The mark of successful travel—for me—is only superficially the reluctance to return home. In a more melancholic sense, it is the inventory of what I could have done, should have done, and plan to do should the opportunity every arise. Not that there weren’t pleasures...
Lisboa 4: Alfama’s Heights
A slow stroll across Praça do Comércio, a breath of damp air off the River Tagus, a coffee and a croissant were prelude to the ascent. I climbed first to the Romanesque gloom of Sé and its jewel-box neighbor, Santo António da Sé, then descended to the Museu do...
Lisboa 3: Sintra
My research on Sintra was inadequate. I knew the train ran from Rossio and that my navigante occasional card would zap me there. I would find a stellar collection of historic sites and walking trails to explore. Buses run from the center of Sintra to distant palaces....
Lisboa 2: The Beauty and the Shame
I left the Gulbenkian Foundation astonished, moved, and thoroughly ashamed of what my country has become politically, morally, and culturally. The art I saw returned me to the politics that I had hoped, to some degree, to ignore for a few days. When I was there,...