in my GLASS
Leaving Port A
couple of things jump out at you when you first visit Portugal’s capital, Lisbon. The first thing that hit me was the city’s similarity to San Francisco. Lisbon has lots of hills and different ways to get to streets on them. San Francisco has its cable cars. Lisbon has several elevators and a tram and funicular network that gets people from one level of the city to another. The other grabber is that the city is comparatively young by European standards—but ancient when compared to San Francisco. There are one or two gothic buildings but everything else has a recent feel to
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it. That’s where the San Francisco similarity comes into play one more time. Each city was leveled by an earthquake and has recovered. Lisbon’s was much longer ago, in 1755. The combination of that earthquake, a tsunami and subsequent fires almost totally destroyed Lisbon. Thousands perished. One of the newbies that stood out, spectacularly, for us was the Discoveries Monument. It was built on the north bank of Lisbon’s Tagus River in 1960. It commemorates the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. The monument represents a three-sailed ship ready to depart—leaving port, Portugal’s
part in transforming a large world into the small one we have today. On the monument, led by the prince, is a horde of other people who were involved in Portugal’s dominance of the oceans. Vasco da Gama and Magellan, just to name a couple of the most well-known. It’s really kind of neat to spend some time there and dwell on how Portugal changed the world. Let’s get to dining. There are many places in Lisbon where you can treat yourself to superb food and wine. By far, our favorite is Faz Figura Restaurant. It’s off the beaten path, quite a distance from the city center. Far away from any touristy places. It’s in a hilly area in the narrow streets of
