A line of Tuktuk drivers waiting to give you a ride.

By Shari Benyousky
Guest Columnist

It’s no secret that I’m a Hoosier Hobo who will wander just about anywhere to find food, friends and experiences. Come wander with me for a few days while I swap cornfields for cobblestones with the first stop in Lisbon, Portugal.

Getting There

The flight to Lisbon from Chicago wasn’t simple, but flights these days rarely are. Our first Lufthansa flight from O’Hare was delayed twice, once for a storm sweeping from the north and then for a sick passenger who was eventually taken off the tarmac in a fire truck with flashing lights. Many of our fellow passengers missed their connecting flights in Munich, Germany, but we had planned for a six-hour layover and celebrated that it would be less.

Shari and Tony ride Yellow Tram 28 up the hills.

It wasn’t.

The second TAP Fly Portugal flight experienced multiple delays as well, and I contacted our Airbnb host twice to delay his walk to meet us. Finally, after 27 hours of traveling, we arrived in Lisbon with drooping eyelids. We found the metro connection from the airport and transferred from the red line to the green line easily enough. The Metro lines are well-marked and easy to follow.

TIP — If you’re a public transportation newbie like many Hoosiers, transportation lines everywhere have two directions which are named after their endpoints. If you get on the Red Line, for example, you need to know if you’re heading towards Aeroporto or Sao Sebastiao. You must know this to choose the correct way to hop on. After that, it’s just finding your stop from the map inside the car and getting off. If you’re worried about the direction, pull up Google Maps on your phone and follow your progress in real-time. If you go the wrong way, get off at the next stop, find the way to get to the other direction side, and go the other way. It happens.

The Metro was easy, but the real problem began after we climbed up from the metro with our backpacks and inadvertently exited onto a different road than our host recommended. That wouldn’t have been horrible either except that we found that neither of our phones had yet acquired Internet (thanks Verizon) and without service, we couldn’t call or text either.

TIP — Keep screenshots of host instructions and maps as you leave and arrive from locations just in case.

TIP — Neither rolling luggage nor high heels are great in Europe because European roads are often cobblestones dating back to the Roman era. Packing light in a carry-on backpack and one additional personal item works like a charm. You can even wear two backpacks — one in from and the other in the back and easily squeeze through narrow plane aisles without having to worry about your luggage heading to Brazil while you’re heading to Sicily.

I digress.

The Airbnb

The exterior of the Airbnb.

Once we finally spotted the brass number 23 over the doorway and settled the luggage down inside, all troubles evaporated. We had made it successfully to Lisbon!

There are many theories for how best to travel abroad. My style involves finding out what it’s really like to live in the place I’m visiting. I like to find lodging in real neighborhoods with real people. I like sarcastic graffiti, the sounds of cutlery on plates at dinnertime, children holding hands on the way to school, and menus in foreign languages that I might have to figure out with Google Translate.

This Airbnb was in just one of those neighborhoods. The charming Airbnb boasted two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, Wi-Fi, and a washer (European dryers are usually the line off the balcony and yes, you can see your neighbor’s underwear). This one also contained original Portuguese china and paintings on the walls, a fridge full of local beer and wine, a bowl of ripe fruit, and our host, a kindly old Portuguese man who spoke more English than I spoke Portuguese.

Carlos leaned out the second-floor window and buzzed us up before assuring us that he had left us two decanters — one of local port and the other of the local Ginjinha (or Ginja) which infuses sour cherries in alcohol, sugar, cloves and cinnamon. He was very proud of this and bowed as he left. “It is your place now,” he smiled. “Please enjoy.”

Do I Need To Speak The Language?

There’s a reason a huge number of Americans have chosen to retire in Portugal. Lots of Portuguese people speak English. Most signs are a mix of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French and English. Portuguese people seem to switch between them all with ease. I accidentally asked “when” a tiny original painting of a ship cost (quando) at the flea market instead of “How much” it cost (quanto). The owner switched to English immediately and even managed to keep his chuckling internal. He suggested 10E. I countered with 7E, and we settled on 8E. Yes, we used our fingers, and yes it worked.

The Food

In Lisbon, when you pull up a chair at a local neighborhood table, the waiter will bring you dishes of appetizers. You can wave them off or receive them and pay. You’ll commonly find bread and fresh black and green olives (with seeds), a kind of salt cod fritter called pastels de bacalhau made with cod, mashed potato, eggs and parsley, then dipped in batter and fried, many cheeses sometimes over squares of thick quince jam sometimes called Romeo and Juliet, and fried sardines.

Appetizers and dry white wine for lunch on the street.

As in all European countries, wine is plentiful and house wine can be quite inexpensive, especially if you share. You’ll find red and white (dry), and a variety of young, fruity-tasting green wine called vinho verde. It’s slightly sweet, so it’s best served with salty olives on a hot afternoon while you people-watch at a rooftop bar like Zambeze near the Castelo de S. Jorge —a hilltop Moorish castle and palace ruins overlooking all of Lisbon. A glass is copo, a half bottle is 375 milliliter or demi, and a full bottle is 750 ml or garrafa.

TIP – To say thank you, you say obrigado if you’re male or obrigada if you’re female.

Have I talked you into thinking about traveling yet? If not, stay tuned for the next article from Lisbon including more on where to get the most delectable pasteis de nata, street art, the earthquake and tsunami that almost destroyed Lisbon, antiques, the 1974 Revolution, a tragically cursed church, the best tour guide in Lisbon, the church without a roof and more.

But right now, I’ve got to run; it’s time for me to go on a walking tour and I need to find my Euros.

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