I’ve been wanting to check out the bike tracks in Monsanto for a while, and with my lady away partying at Super Bock Super Rock for the weekend I thought it would be a good opportunity to give it a go finally. So I made a sandwich, fixed up the bike ready to go, stuck a bottle of water in my bag and set out!

Getting to Belem was made a hell of a lot easier thanks to the brand spanking new bike paths they have installed from Cais do Sodré to Tour de Belém. If you’d never done the journey in the past you might grumble a bit about how they have been implemented, but I have to say they are an absolutely huge improvement over the old journey. When I was living in Cais do Sodré I cycled a couple of times to Belém and it mainly involved going along the Av. da Brasilia, and then around Belém it was a bit tricky navigating what with all the tourists and car parks. Now its fairly smooth sailing, admittedly theres the odd Spanish tourist that seems to think the large bicycle painted on the bike path is an invitation to saunter along it with child in hand, and there is the odd section that is not very well signposted, but its still brilliant that you can pretty much cycle all the way there without needing to cycle along a road.

Arriving to Cais do Sodré is also pretty painless these days, I cycled along Rua do Jardim do Tobaco, but then had to cut back to the main road because the road is closed. I wouldn’t recommend cycling on the main road though, but you can cycle pretty well alongside the pavement next to the river. And thanks to the works on the new park just after praça do comércio, you can cycle along a car-free part of the road all the way until Cais do Sodré.

Arriving at the Torre de Belém I take a well earned break and checked out the view. Then since it was such a breeze getting there I decided to intrepidly head up to Monsanto. Problem is however much I’d scoured the internet the night before, there is very little information about bike paths on the internet (or at least i havent found any). There are a few sites with trails on them, but there wasn’t anything official i could find with a decent map telling you a good place to get started. So I just used my GPS on my phone and headed up Avenue da Torre de Belém into Restelo. Restelo is where the rich and embassies reside, absolutely stunning place, if you have millions of euros to throw about would definitely be a nice place to have a pad. I hung a left at some point and tried to enter the green bit my GPS was showing me, thinking perhaps I could access the park, but ended up in a closed road that was military access only, there is some kind of fort there. Not wanting to be shot down or deported for being a naughty Englishman I decided not to cycle through the fort, but hit the main road and then made my way to Avenue dos Bombeiros. Here I hit the goldpot with a proper map and everything welcoming you to the park, yay!

After cycling up the road a bit I saw a decidedly pathy looking thing and jumped onto it, and then I got stuck into some proper off-road cycling action, which was very cool! Not a person in sight even, hard to believe you are in the middle of Lisbon practically! With my GPS, a bit of guess work and my reasonably decent sense of direction I managed to wiggle through mostly on paths all the way to what seems the highest point of the park, with a forest of radio transmitters. One crappy thing about the park is that the paths are signposted very minimalistically , you get the odd stump of wood on the floor with a picture of a bike on and if you are lucky the name of the path, but nothing else. No signs with directions or length of path or nicely colour coded stumps with number of km on, its all a bit confusing. The good thing about this though is that it seems relatively unused, I passed literally two groups of two cyclist the couple of hours I was there, there was absolutely no one there.

On the map I had come across when I first entered the park there was all kinds of picnic spots shown, but I only seemed to pass one which was infested with a huge group of peasants that seemed to live there, so I decided to skip past that one. At 1:30 I gave up trying to find the perfect spot and ate my sandwich in a little grassy spot with a bit of shade that I found next to the path i was riding on.

Anyhow I should probably cut this short now, as I hate huge blathery blog posts (by other people of coures). I opted more for the bigger roads ( which are still very quiet in the park) on my way back, and managed to reach Restelo pretty easily. I passed this strange ghost restaurant at the end of Estrada do Outeiro ( a nice closed road just for bikes etc ) which might be a nice place to stop for lunch in future, great views of the city if you go through the garden at the back and head to the miradouro. Going back from Belém was a bit of a struggle with the full heat of the day at 14:00, and my tired legs, there was no way I was gonna make the last hill up to my flat in Graça so after cycling up the first half i slung my bike on my shoulder and staggered up the steps there. Of course a local woman had to comment that her son or something cycles up this hill every week Well she was just being friendly, and after letting her go on up ahead of me i finally limped back home.

So if you are needing some proper punishment I would recommend this, but maybe in future just either Stª Apolónia – Belém or a trip around Monsanto would be sufficient!

The cereal is sweetened with honey just enough to mean you don’t need to add anything to it, just to the right level so it’s not too sweet. It has raisins which I don’t normally like in cereal, but they put just the right amount so they fit perfectly. All the grains and cereals it contains are toasted, including toasted hazelnuts which are very tasty. The pack costs 4.50€ for 500 grams, which makes it only slightly cheaper than gold, but I’m hooked. You can grab it from one of the middle stalls at the biomarket, and probably oher places too…

So why are they so slow? Well they are quite zippy on the right stretches, like in front of cais de sodre going to santos, but most of the twisty turny little roads aren’t really great places to go at high speeds unless you want to derail the train and squish the passengers. That they even manage to go round these corners is what makes these trams so perfect for Lisbon, because most modern trams just wouldne manage it. But because the roads these trams potter down are so teeny they invariably get stuck behind variously badly parked/temporarily station vehicles. Pretty much every ride on the 28 will involve getting stuck behind someone for a few minutes. Sometimes this is just out of necessity: shops need to get deliveries and workmen need to pick up and drop off tools and materials. But half the time some wanker has just parked his car so badly that he is sticking a few cm into the tram lane, meaning everyone has to wait until the guy finally arrives and moves off. Sometimes it’s quite amazing how people manage to park their cars so badly when you would think they should be pretty aware of these little things on rails that you see around the place. Its not like it’s hard to remember, the tracks on the floor are a pretty good giveaway.

So unless you’re out to see the sites leave the trams to the tourists and the pensioners and grab the metro or a bus, both of which do a much better job of getting you places in a reasonable amount of time. Unless you are a true Lisboner and get a perverse thrill about moaning about the inevitable delays encountered on your journey..

The reality of the parking bums endeavours is rather different however. Often they are so doped up that they try waiving you into parking spots where even a Smart would have a tight squeeze. Your might fit your car there, if you sawed it in half. Regularly they invite you to park in obviously illegal spots. But the biggest problem with these bums is that they are almost entirely unnecessary: nearly 100% of the time they simply stand next to a spot which you would have seen anyway, whilst driving by. They then normally give their drugged/drunken attempt to wave you in which is more distracting than useful. So in actual fact their business model is quite simple: begging in free car spaces.

I’ve never known anyone who has actually given money to these guys (and it does seem to be a strictly y-chromosome affair, I suppose female bums have more lucrative possibilities on street corners), but I suppose someone does or they wouldn’t be doing it. Apparently some people give them money because they are afraid of the consequences if they don’t, although it seems to me most of them are so out of it on heroin that they wouldn’t be able to cause any significant damage to anything, apart from themselves that is.

So there you have the Portuguese parking bum, a distant relative of the squeegee bum, but even more lazy.

The side neighbours aren’t too bad, pretty basic Portuguese folk. This means they are pretty loud of course, communicating in barks and shouts for the most part, me and P are like inhabitants of a monastery in comparison, but I guess we did live in Finland for a good few years. The Father breaks out in Fado once in a while which is fairly endearing, though perhaps not the sort of thing you would record and upload to YouTube. They also have a bird they keep on a ledge outside the window next to our balcony and the Father loves to come and talk to it: “menina! Menina!”. Pretty fucking hilarious if you ask me that a grown man talks to his bird each day! Then the son jacks up his stereo to the max once a day to blast out some super cheesy dance hits, though luckily the onslaught only lasts a song or two, his Mtv-generation attention span petering out after 10 minutes or so. Right now they are away on summer holiday which is brilliant, a month of peace on our balcony, free from bird talking, bad dance music and peasant arguments.

The upstairs neighbours are more hardcore adversaries. They are actually really sweet and kind dealing with us, but this doesn’t stop them from being an insane family. First off there are the pets, they have them all: a dog, a cat and a bunch of birds. The dog on a bad day will bark for hours on end: those of you who have heard the apple iPhone bark ringtone can recreate the effect in your own home if you like. The cat is pretty quiet, although he seems to spray the balcony every so often, leaving that unmistakable eau de gato lingering in the air. The birds I have no problems with, they just go tweet-tweet, which is sorta what birds do.

On top of the crazy animals comes the crazy people. Inside their flat, which is the same size as ours, is a mother, father, child, grandmother and possible one retarded relative( I think we invented her in a rationalisation to try and make sense of the insanity). The grandmother is pretty insane she’s always screaming shit, often ending with MERDA! The mother is also screaming at her mother, the child (Claudia, we know her name just from hearing it) and occasionally the father. The father hardly says a word, but he is normally out drinking anyhow, just slinking home for dinner with a drunken smile in his face. Half the time there are truly insane screams emanating from upstairs as if from a mental institute, this is either their idea of fun games with the child, or it could be the retarded daughter, if she exists. They seem to be at least half the time a strange game they play with the child, screaming as loud as they can like mad people in order to provoke a chuckle from the child. Usually the child ends up crying, suprise suprise.

But all in all I guess we could do a lot worse… They don’t make a peep after 10 pm which is heaven compared to our last place above Lounge bar. Of course you get woken up on the weekends with the insane dog barking, but I suppose you can’t have it all (until we poison the dog).

First thing to watch out for is the taxi voucher scam on the way from the airport. In this scam they tell you that it’s a flat 20 euros from the airport wherever you go. My Dad got screwed by this one. The ironic thing is that taxi vouchers do exist, and I guess the idea of them is that you pay a flat rate so even if you go far you don’t get screwed. Of course normally in Lisbon unless you are going to bloody Cascais the fare wont be anywhere near 20 euros, so the taxi voucher is basically a state authorised tourist scam. Anyhow when you are in a taxi, refuse to pay anything that isn’t on the meter. And if he complains tell him you will phone the police, because Portuguese are very good at feigning indignity.

The second scam I have come across is the addition scam. Here, when you come to a stop they will not finalise the meter, and may even turn it off. If you can see the meter and additions, add them up and refuse to pay more than that. If they turn it off, you should probably just threaten the police since clearly they are fucking with you.

Anyhow, just remember to be vigilent, after all they earn probably earn less than a crack whore and get buggered by all kinds of taxes, so it’s not much of a surprise that they try and squeeze a few euros out of you.

Of course by the time I was there my recently gobbled ibupofene was doing it’s magic so I was back to 37.4, which isn’t really fever. Anyhow they seemed to believe my story and I managed to get a Yellow armband which is the second level of urgency so that’s cool as you don’t need to wait long (of course it also means you are more likely to have something really wrong with you so it’s not the kind of thing you fantasize about…). OK I only probably got the yellow armband because of another symptom, which I, ahem, will leave to your eager imaginations. If you go there and get the green or worse blue I think then you would have had a 4 hour wait ahead of you, which would be fairly tiresome.

Anyhow I was feeling pretty terrible at this point, having had fever and headaches for 5 days, and hardly having eaten anything. On top of that I was in a Public health insurance limbo, still waiting on the decision on my EHIC, so this trip was gonna cost me the regular 10 € everyone pays plus 145 € because I was a sucker without any health card plus any other costs for any tests etc they would do, so that was a bit of extra pain. All in all I felt very un-at-home, like I was in a Mexican hospital or something, not helped by the rather unfriendly way all public hospital staff round the world treat you before you reach a doctor (“you’re not dieing so fuck of home and stop wasting our time!”). Also my hypochondriac side started to worry that this was clearly a symptom of some serious life threatening condition.

Luckily the wait wasn’t long before my name was read out and I went to see Senhor doctor. He was very professional and after a quick chat started checking out what could be causing the fever. Pretty quickly he found that the lymph nodes on my neck were swollen, and on inspecting my mouth turned out I had two little aliens growing in my throat: tonsillitis. Really weird that I had no sore throat as these little guys were all pussy and everything, not nice. Anyhow he ordered me a shot of Penicillin in my arse with a touch of sadist psychology “that’s gonna hurt a lot!” (was pretty minor in actual fact) and after checking I hadn’t died from a strange reaction to the shot I was sent packing.

So all in all, make sure you have your EHIC and then no worries really: the hospitals aren’t that different to those in UK ( just more people speaking Portuguese). Still waiting on the bill,
with a bit of luck it will get lost in the labyrinthine beuracracy somewhere.

Head into pretty much any café or restaurant and you’ll usually be well attended to. If you don’t want bread or nibbles make sure you tell the waiter straight away though because otherwise they’ll often try and charge you them, even if you didn’t touch them. But the waiters typically have an excellent memory (probably aided by you sticking out like a sore thumb due to your crap Portuguese) so next time you drop in they won’t bring you the bread, and will probably know what you want to drink ( unless you have some kind of stochastic decision making process). After a few visits and you won’t even need to order food, because they have already learnt your favourites, so ordering will simply consist in a few nods and yeses and a thank you. Then you can pat yourself on the back as a seasoned regular, and build up to cracking jokes with said waiter ( usually it’s easier with your crap Portuguese just to laugh at their jokes, even though you don’t quite know what was funny).

Waiters here really do seem to be skilled professionals: in UK and most of northern Europe the person serving you is probably some kind of student apart from in the most fancy-arse establishments. But here you get the feeling that these are career waiters: these guys (and they are 99% guys) take waiting seriously! They take part in the waiting olympics and everything!

So even if your bottom is being penetrated with shards of glass by dodgy landlords and shady property owners, at least you will always be well attended to next time you want to grab a bite to eat.

But sun over here I think is gonna be quite a similar experience: at the moment every time the sun is shining (which is pretty much every day) Im thinking “oh god oh god must go out and take advantage of that sun, mustn’t mustn’t let it go to waste!” and feeling terribly guilty about sitting in front of my widescreen monitor emailing or coding or something. But the Portuguese on the other hand, clearly seasoned sun folk, seem to spend most of the time running away from the sun. You find yourself on the sunny side of the street sweating your balls off and suddenly realise all the Portuguese are wise enough to be on the shady side, but inside you are still thinking ‘sun, gotta get that, sun, just a bit more…’ even though your pants are getting attached to your thighs and your shoes are on fire. But I’m sure given time my brain will start to realize that the whole sun thing is pretty much a permanent part of the scenery here, so no need to go running after it all the time. At the moment though im still in my skincancerdreamingsundesperatenortherneuropean mode of being, and enjoying it!

Now I’m no electrician, but apparently this is really the way it’s meant to work here, this is not dodgy wiring, rats in your walls or something, this is simply a case of ‘thats way to much power guvnor, shut it dahn!’. I’ve spent some time living in UK and Finland and as far as I can remember you don’t need to specify the amount of volt-amperes or any crap like that when you sign up for an electricity contact… there might be some basic monthly fees but on top of that you just pay for all the juice you use in KWh. If you want you can stick every appliance on in your home and given your circuits can take it there shouldn’t be a problem.

But here you have to choose the ‘potency’ of your contract in kVA, and of course everyone tries to get away with the cheapest one possible which is 3.5 kVA. This is the one that our rental flat came with and is so sucky that just having the dishwasher and a hairdryer on at the same time kills the power. Shit, I didn’t even know what a volt-ampere (VA) was before this, its amazing how they can make the service so complicated! So basically you have to try and work out how much power you are going to draw, and choose your ‘potency’ accordingly, its sort of like a bloody phone contract or something. Problem is if you choose too low a potency your electricity will be going off every other day, and too high and just the monthly fee alone will be like 30 euros (that’s before they even add the charge for the electricity you use). Pretty damn sucky I must say, maybe there is some good reason for this, but don’t have a fucking clue what this could be….

The EDP slogan is ‘Feel our Energy’. Yeh right, feel my balls more like.