Lisbon : Rua de Nostalgia

Lisbon is supposedly the least expensive European capital city. Would that be the most compelling reason to visit it? Not necessarily, discovers Deepika Belapurkar for there's so much to see and do that any number of days fall short

Sundown in Belém      All pics: Deepika Belapurkar

In a city where informality is the key to securing successful relationships, businessmen be aware that your overseas business partner might just nudge you for a game of golf before concluding that deal you've been fretting over.

Mix Of Tradition And Modernity

Lisbon has been resurrected a countless number of times. Despite wars, revolutions, fires and earthquakes, she has stoically weathered it all and brushed aside life's inconsistencies like a doughty dowager.

After many years of isolation as Portugal's traditional capital, Lisbon gained in political and economic stature on entering the European Union in 1986. She has not looked back since, inviting capital from foreign firms to invest in her major industries like shipbuilding, steel and light engineering.

With its multi-ethnic population of two million, the city strikes a fine balance between a traditional and modern outlook. A new avant-garde cultural centre opened in 1990; Centro Cultural de Belém holds exhibitions and houses reading rooms and a music auditorium. Despite the Vasco da Gama, which is a 17-kilometers bridge, the longest in Europe, the locals continue to favour Ponte 25 de Abril. It is Lisbon's 'Golden Gate' and at any hour its five lanes running on top of a train track are jammed with traffic. You'll need divine intervention if your car ever stalls.

But Lisbon, however absorbing it may be, is not considered the safest European city for a business traveller if public transport is his mode of travel during rush hours. It would be wise to hail a taxi albeit without an English-speaking driver at the wheel. And unless you are in a tearing hurry to reach somewhere, you might want to think twice about endangering your life with some of the riskiest driving seen in Europe.

The Palácio Nacional da Pena in Sintra	Popular fruit shop on Rua das Portas de Santo Antão
The Triumphal Arch seen from the Praca do Comercio	A baroque fountain at the Rossio

Laidback Lisbon

It's perfectly easy to get to central Lisbon and the downtown areas from the airport, which is 5.5 miles north of the city. There are bus services that charge anything between one and three euros for a 30-minute ride to central or downtown areas while taxis could take about 15 minutes and charge between seven and ten Euros. Mercifully, the easygoing Portuguese discourage early morning business meetings; therefore, there is enough time to get from the airport to your pension (hotel) to get refreshed first after your flight.

Twenty-first century Lisbon is enigmatic, spread-eagled across seven hills in a bay along River Tejo. With the exception of downtown Baixa, which is flat, the rest of Lisbon is a merry jumble of steep ascents and descents. The city's spiffy buses and antiquated funiculars and trams come to the rescue with ultra-efficient service. One can begin one's tour anywhere, at any praca, rua or avenue and feel Lisbon's resistance melting away.

The pastel complexion of Lisbon's red-tiled homes and the white and blue azulejo tiles strike you as Mediterranean. Relaxed in the daytime and luminous at sundown, Lisbon flaunts her colours and odours with an elegance few other cities can manage. The smell of cinnamon, cod, sardines, and vanilla will stay with you till the end. One gazes in amazement at wobbly yellow trams that emerge all of a sudden on narrow tracks.

With business hours behind you, it's time to don a tourist's garb. Between us, it would be unwise to ignore Lisbon's history encapsulated in its countless museums that are without exaggeration fascinating and easy to get to via public transport. Another interesting way is to walk along the Calcada Portuguesa Com Certeza pavement. Most definitely, a pavement that is unique to Portugal and her former colonies including India's Goa. Limestone and black basalt in white shapes or in geometrical or wavy patterns create outstanding patterns such as at the Praca dos Restauradores and the Rossio.

Eat And Make Merry

The Praca dos Restauradores is central to Lisbon and lined with café's and restaurants, shops and offices. It's connected to the Praca Marquês de Pombal by the Avenida da Libertade, a boulevard that has shades of Paris' Champs Elysees. Lisbon's pink-hued Ministry of Tourism building called Palácio Foz is located here. The neighbouring Rossio or the Praca Dom Pedro IV is a beehive in overdrive - the buzz from ambling tourists, voluble suit-clad businesspersons waiting to catch a bus, obdurate tradesmen, even chattering Africans.

Pastelaria Suica (the erstwhile royalty's soft spot) and the Nicola café (for the arty crowd) facing each other across this praca with their fancy facades are seldom without crowds spilling onto the promenade. In most eating places, damages with respect to al fresco dining are far higher. In fact, if one somehow manages to skirt its undesirable reputation of a former arena for gruesome bullfights and burning of heretics, the Rossio today personifies a tranquil place to clinch a business deal.

In the popular Praca da Figueira, behind the Rossio, we even had a dapper gent, though apparently with few bargaining skills, sidle near us with a flashy Rolex. The buying and selling that goes on here 24x7 is intense. The locals themselves, we could see, are inordinately fashion-conscious. However badly off a 'Lisboetas' might be, he or she would carefully save the last dollar for designer clothes. Perhaps the influence of so many cultures that amalgamated in Portugal between the 14th and 19th centuries have bestowed upon it an eye for detail.

To the left of Nicola café looms the neoclassical façade of The Teatro Nacional de Dona Maria II built in 1840 on the site of the former inquisition palace. A stroll to its left conveys one into the Largo Sao Domingos area where stands the namesake church deeply scalded in the 1959 fire which is again a searing recollection of the inquisition days. This square wouldn't be complete without its band of busy shoeshine boys and a Ginginha, a liquor shop, piling tourists with its exquisite cherry brandy.

The Forgotten Pracas and Ruas

What emerged from Lisbon's reconstruction after 1755 was the perfectly planned downtown Baixa area, a spin-off of Marquês de Pombal's genius. There are specialist shops on Rua da Conceic; having splurged on sparkling silver behind the Victorian facades of pretty bric-a-brac shops and partaken of irresistible vanilla-flavored cakes in homely pastelarias, one succumbs to a joyride in the plush cabin of the neo-gothic Elevador de Santa Justa. Enjoy wide-angled views of the surrounds from the rooftop and sip on expensive coffee if you must.

The Rua Augusta in the Baixa area culminates at the great Triumphal Arch leading to the Praca de Comércio. This huge waterfront square is enclosed on its three sides by an elegant group of yellow buildings - headquarters of the ministries. One can catch tram # 28 from here for a sightseeing tour or else walk towards the left and discover the picturesque and quaint Alfama, where long ago the Mozarabs and the Muslims cohabited with the Christians and the Jews. If you opt to turn right, the Alcântara and further Belém (famed for its custard pasteries) open up an altogether monumental vista with its famed custard pastries.

From the Comércio past the gothic Town Hall and other architectural masterpieces, we walked into the Mercado de Ribeira market place in time for lunch. It's also a coffee place for early dawn revelers from Alcântara. Portugal is a persuasive wine country. From Porto to Vinho Verde, Lisbon has all kinds to match one's taste and cuisine preference. Not surprisingly, there is no Lisboan restaurant or wine that's not good enough to try out at least once, for each has its own raison d'être. It's not entirely shocking to see laidback office-goers lingering over lunch and choosing its ingredients with practiced flair.

Vasco da Gama's Belém is exciting and an epic quarter. His (among others') discoveries reaped a golden period that outlasted the 16th century invoking the envy of other wannabe conquerors. The splendor of Belém's grand old monuments, having escaped the wrath of the quake, can only elicit awe in the eye of the beholder.

The Portuguese kings never wasted time in building pretentious palaces and churches, one among them being the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos monastery. King Manuel I was the man of the hour who introduced a completely new style of architecture - Manueline. Sea travel being what it was then, importance was attached to its symbolic representation therefore the depiction of anchors, shells and twisted ropes in this style.

Navigators in those times had immense support and in their admiration, Manuel built the crenellated 16th century crenellated Torre de Belém, which is a lighthouse, a control tower, a kind of harbor watchdog, all rolled into one. Grand structures such as this one and the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (the Monument of Discoveries) nearby in the shape of a caravel about to weigh anchor depict Portuguese marine history concisely. But apart from all this, Belém also offers recreation within its museums, parks, coffee bars, discs, and restaurants.

Arranging your lunch and dinner appointments in the different quarters of Lisbon would be an excellent idea, to acquaint with famously fabulous delicacies in charming locales. If a plate of classic arroz de marisco, seafood with rice, and a glass of ambient vinho tinto will stir your imagination, get fast to Alfama, a sensually stunning treat. And just past sundown you may also hear the first melancholic strains of a fadista (fado singer). Though this Moorish quarter has seen better days, today its crumbling homes are Lisbon's poorest. Having escaped the quake's fury, Alfama retains its original appearance.

Picture this: shoulder-to-shoulder houses with wrought iron balconies and drowsy cats framed against ground floor windows at eye level, fluttering laundry and conversationalists busy on the floor above passing gossip and yummy stuff out through the window. In the street, the smell of grilled sardinhas (sardines) is frightfully close, as fresh fish is sold cheap by the varinhas. Ah! the fish that makes the real Portuguese cuisine so humble. And, of course, tram #28 that trundles along like a huge wobbly toy pram that's been keyed up a tad too enthusiastically.

Many 16th century homes, beautiful churches and cathedrals and a renaissance style fountain later, emerges the Castelo de Sao Jorge to offer exhilarating views, to reward my struggle up this hill. Resembling Alfama in parts is the Moorish quarter called Mouraria, decadent, scary and once upon a time home to Maria Severa, one of Lisbon's greatest interpreters of fado. Her words: "Those who leave, take with them nostalgia. Those who remain feel nostalgia for those who have left." Oh, yes! Nostalgia is precisely what one takes away from Lisbon.

The historical Nicola cafe is an artist's haunt	Bird's eye view of the Rossio from atop the Elevador de Santa Justa
Lisbon's 19th century Estacao de Rosio or the railroad station near the Rossio	Shoeshine boys at work in the Largo São Domingoes

The Padrão dos Descobrimientos in Belém	Over the counter seafood & meat snacks	Elevador de Gloria on way to Miradouro de São Pedro
The equestrian statue of Jose I at the Praca do Comércio	Church of Santa Engracia in Gráca	From the Restauradores to Bairro Alto