Off to Lisbon

The family recently traveled to Lisbon. When we crossed the border from Spain, I was surprised that there was nothing except a small sign. It is more prominent to cross state lines in the US, where at least you usually have a welcome center. When I asked a Portuguese tourist guide if there was nothing at the border because relations with Spain were so good, he looked pained to tell that the Spanish weren't always the best neighbors. Apparently Spain's been putting up dams to keep water from getting into Portugal and sending their fishing boats into Portuguese areas. But he also said that, being part of the EU family, neighbors could work things out in a welcoming way without fancy borders. When I told him that there was a border checkpoint when I went from Spain into France, he said, “You know, the French, they're French.”

Before heading to Lisbon, we had been staying in an inn in Madrid. From the inn we searched the Internet for places that we could stay in Portugal that would accept dogs. After spending about 20 minutes without having any luck, we decided to just drive out and find a hotel once we got there. As my wife said, who could turn us away once they see how cute our puppy is. Nothing against our dog (which really is very cute), but I had my doubts. When we arrived, I headed for the city center and, too my surprise, Le Meridien let us right in. Le Meridien is located across the street from the park Edward VII, not that far from the Gulbenkian Museum, and by going to the Praca Marques de Pombal you can walk down the Avenida da Liberdade all the way into the center of town (OK, I admit it, the last sentence was partially plagiarized from the hotel's website). Our dog especially enjoyed the park, but her favorite activity was strutting through the fancy lobby to get to the elevators.

Lisbon is a great city and, like in most European cities, you would hear people say things like, “This is a new church, it was only built two hundred and twenty years ago.” We went to an especially nice cathedral about half and hour outside of town that was built to honor a general for fighting off the Spanish. (He's the one on top of the horse). I was told that it took over 200 years to build. You enter by walking over the graves of two of the head architects on the project. This made me wonder how you get to be chosen as an architect. How much experience can anyone have with making buildings that take 200 years to complete? If you are the architect, are you tempted to take shortcuts that look good now, but will cause problems in 40-50 years? I guess if you do, you don't get the honor of having American kids see if they can hop all the way across your grave, without landing on you. (Not that my well behaved children would ever participate in such disrespectful behavior.)