Lisbon: Land of Desserts, Street Drinking, and Many, Many Lesbians

After a few days in rainy Madrid, we were off to Lisbon, Portugal—or, as it is called in Spanish and Portuguese: Lisboa.

Our first day, we walked around Lisbon—not exaggerating—unaware of anything at all. A brief list of things we didn’t know until well into our trip includes:  where Lisbon is located on the Iberian peninsula, what Portuguese topography even looks like, how to say “Hello,” “thank you,” and/or anything else in Portuguese, the history of Portugal, what Portuguese food/drinks are like… The list is endless.

For this reason, the first night we walked around Lisbon in awe. The city is on a bunch of hills! There are cobblestones and tiles everywhere! Bafflingly, there is a giant, largely empty plaza right next to the sea in Lisbon! (The central “beachfront” property consists of some pillars a few meters into the water, that’s it. No beach, restaurants, nothing. The opposite of Barcelona coastline.) There is also a church that consists of raw arches with no roof! And a giant elevator tower! The main city is shockingly consistent in terms of tiles and architecture. One question arose: WHY?

It wasn’t until the next morning—researching a nearby neighborhood called Belem—that I came to understand so much of what I had encountered the night before.

One major, formative event had somehow eluded us: Lisbon experienced a major earthquake in 1755. The earthquake caused a tsunami, which in turn caused a week of uncontrollable fires. In the end, 85% of the city was destroyed. Enormous amounts of people died. The King went crazy, and made the royal family live in a tent city. 

Therefore: The empty plaza next to the ocean? The final remnants of the royal palace that was swept into the sea in the tsunami. The roofless church? The ruins of the major church of Lisbon, that was destroyed in the fires. The weirdly consistent sidewalk tiling and organization? The fact that a vast majority of Lisbon buildings  were constructed in the past 200-300 years, by the post-Crazy-King king, who mobilized a movement to keep people in Lisbon to reconstruct the city. (Also: Lisbon was the first city to build earthquake-proof buildings. They tested models via having soldiers march around the buildings over and over again, to see how much the shaking of the earth affected the stability of the building!) Crazy shit, yo.

Lisbon’s strange and extremely insane history was not the only surprise in store. Three thematic aspects of Lisbon amazed me: Desserts, Street Drinking, and, yes, LESBIANS.

To start, my estimate it that for every restaurant/store/other business in Lisbon, there are 2-3 pastry shops, the pasteleria. They heart pastries.

Easily their best product are the pasteis de nata—created by the nuns in Belem, it's a sort of egg cream tart thing. They are warm and sugary and creamy and delicious, mmmmm

Also: street drinking, totally a thing. In the Bairro Alto (= high neighborhood) any night from Wednesday-Sunday you will encounter a large mass of people drinking caprinhas, beers, mixed wines, etc in the street. Because of this, unless it is a samba or fado music venue, the bars are empty, and pretty much exist only for the purpose of providing toilets for females (dudes just pee in the street, A LOT) and to give people a venue in which to re-stock on drinks.

Cops stand around the Bairro Alto despite the fact they won’t fine you for street drinking. It took me a few instances of laughably and not-subtly smuggling my sangria past giant throngs of sober cops before I figured this out.

In truth, the Popo exist to subdue any drunk fights/fires/revolutions that might occur in the giant mass of street drinking youth. So, seriously: they really don’t care if you are holding an XXL capirinha. In fact, they’re probably happy you are contributing to the Portuguese economy, hollah back.

Finally, and most interestingly: the many many lesbians of Lisbon.

Joe and I are still unsure if there are actually a lot of lesbians in Lisboa/Lezboa or if we just happened upon all the lesbian hot spots, but, seriously: in our 3 days in Lisbon I saw more lesbian couples hanging out/holding hands/making out then I have seen in Barcelona, Chicago, and Detroit combined! Easily.

Of course, this is super-Catholic Portugal, so maybe all of these people were just really good, really butchin’ 100% platonic friends who just happen to have lesbian sex, or something, but seriously—so many, so very, very many.

An example: we spent a good 3-4 hours of our days in Lis/Lezboa in Brown’s Coffee Shop—this horrible, mediocre Starbucks ripoff that had very very comfy chairs that enabled public napping. This place was a true American export: overpriced mediocre coffee, good-looking but bad-tasting pastries, and, let me emphasize: it was called Brown’s Coffee Shop! It was themost corporate.

Yet the entire staff seemed to consist of lesbians and/or lezbros. All of the staff’s lesbian friends would hang out there, often participating in the special form of shameless Iberian-peninsula-style PDA at random intervals (one time this tourist-y girl walked into the café lost, befriended the staff after asking how to get back to her hotel, and literally an hour later was making out with a random Portuguese girl in the café). There were even throngs of German lesbian tourists who appeared there!!! And there I was, American tourist, eating a mediocre muffin and horrible coffee, observing these giant throngs of lesbians. WAT?

 (It would have been ridiculously tactless and also CREEPY to take pics of the many lesbians making out at this cafe, so you will all have to settle for the creeper pic I took of the German lesbians as they bought their overpriced-frappe-things)

Later, participating in street-drinking glory, we saw two aged lesbian couples walking by, only to notice that we were actually on a giant street of lesbians….???? This would have made sense if there were also a bunch of gay men around town, but there really weren’t. Like, there was one small intersection of street-drinking gay men outside the one gay bar, yet, streets filled with lesbians!! WHEN DOES THAT EVER HAPPEN!?!?!?!

So, in short: desserts, street drinking, lesbians in the same place?! Guess I gotta pick up some Portuguese, eh?