lifeofpri # 13 - Pastéis in Portugal

I lived in Europe between 2014 and 2019. In the first half of my life there, I had no time or money, so I didn’t get to explore Europe much. In the second half, I had money, but no time. Again, I didn’t explore Europe as much as I would’ve liked.

But just before I moved back to India in 2019, I felt major FOMO. So, I decided to squeeze in a quick trip to Portugal, a country that I believe invented world travel.

When I lived in Barcelona, I shared a flat with two friends. One of them, Joao, is Portuguese and lives in Lisbon. I hadn’t seen him in a while. So, this was a good excuse to see him before I wouldn’t see him again for many many years.

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We flew from Heathrow to Lisbon. Our home in London was 100m from the nearest GWR station, which is 5 stops from Heathrow making flying out super peaceful. I feel like a smooth trip to the airport is usually half the journey won. In that sense, I hate taking a flight out of Bangalore.

The Lisbon airport, especially the departures area is a little bit like a bus stop. Actually, a lot of smaller European airports are small and unspectacular.

In Lisbon, we stayed in a cute airbnb in a super touristy neighbourhood called Alfama. Alfama, one of the oldest districts of Lisbon, is quite hilly with a meandering maze of narrow cobble stoned streets (a quintessential feature of European tourism), historical sites, artisan shops, quirky independent cafes and graffiti all the way from Rio Tejo to São Jorge Castle.

I remember soaking into the warm afternoon sun (a luxury when you’re travelling from London in March) streaming through the window of our well-lit apartment, and falling backwards onto the bed to relax. Unfortunately, I ended up twisting my neck so badly, that I could barely keep my head up straight for the next 24 hours.

We headed out for a walk that evening to explore our neighbourhood. Having lived in a city like Barcelona, which is super popular with tourists, I knew that our experience in Lisbon wasn’t akin to someone who lived there. Anyone who travels to Barcelona wants to go see the La Rambla, but if you lived there, you’ll avoid it unless you are merely passing through.

But when you’re in a city for just a few days, you can’t help but optimise for Patel shots, can you?

First order of business was to get my neck fixed. So, I walked into a massage spa I spotted on my walk. The massage was cheap, the masseuse was good, but it still didn’t help. Then, I got myself a really strong muscle relaxant at an apothecary, which worked like absolute magic. The gel is so amazing, I still have it at home.

There was some dinner with a few friends from my school, but given how our holiday had started, I decided to give it a pass. Instead, we were craving Indian food and hence had dinner at a Goan restaurant. Goan cuisine is quite popular in Lisbon, given that Portuguese had colonised Goa until the 20th century.

The first thing, Carol, Joao’s wife had asked me when she met me was if I liked Poori Bhaji. Apparently, her family really enjoys a good Indian breakfast on Sundays every now and then. The next thing she asked me was if I was into “iyengaring”. I had no idea what that was, but apparently Iyengar yoga is really hot in Lisbon.

When you read colonial history, you don’t really hear ordinary stories of people of two different races discovering each other, learning from each other. It wasn’t until I read Vasudhendra’s Tejo Tungabhadra earlier this year, that I started thinking about how the Indians and Portuguese (not kings) interacted with each other.

Could they live with each other as Joao and I did - like friends do? What did they learn from each other? Did they fight with each other about trivial things? Did they tease each other? What did they laugh about together?

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Next morning, we grabbed breakfast at one of the many quirky places and took an auto (yes, a rickshaw!) to the São Jorge Castle. Somehow I’d pegged rickshaws to be a developing world phenomenon (India, Thailand, Tanzania), so was quite surprised to see them in Lisbon, where they are black and white in colour.

The rickshaws in Lisbon come with seat belts though, which made the ride up the hill both safe and fun (also it helped that our auto driver was a hot Caucasian dude). The castle is a museum within a fort with royal complexes and other miscellaneous ruins.

Two things that made the castle super interesting: a panoramic view of Lisbon from the top which is a beautiful sight, and the place is filled with peacocks. This was the first time I was seeing peacocks up close, out in the open, free and roaming amongst visitors of the castle.

Walking down the hill was easier, and it helped that we didn’t have a destination to get to. We explored all the narrow winding alleys and stairs in the middle of nowhere. We also found lots of cats all over the place (like in Turkey). We ended up grabbing lunch at a random touristy restaurant down the hill.

Later that evening, we headed out for dinner. There was a restaurant with a live fado (a genre of Portuguese music) performance, but it felt too touristy for us to bother. Instead, we went to Viva Roda, a Mozambican restaurant for dinner. Mozambique was a Portuguese colony since the early 16th century after Vasco da Gama’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in the late 15th century.

In 1975, Mozambique gained independence, but soon descended into a civil war, which is when Mozambicans migrated to Lisbon. Although, interestingly, more recently, Mozambique has seen more reverse migration with unemployed Portuguese youth moving there.

Imagine unemployed Brits moving to India for work - that will be the day!

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Next morning, we had breakfast at Quase Cafe, a quirky restaurant in Alfama. We then headed to Belém, to see the Jerónimos Monastery. The monastery was built by King I. Manuel and donated to monks who could pray for the well being of the king and sea farers who set out to explore new worlds, in general.

There was a very long queue to enter the monastery, and so we didn’t bother going in. It wasn’t surprising considering that Portugal is among the more religious countries in Europe. Southern and Eastern Europe, is relatively more religious, in general.

I remember once being in the south of Spain during Easter (semana santa), and there were religious processions every single day, all over the place. Being in Seville felt nothing like the way its romanticised in movies. Nevertheless, the processions made for a very different and interesting experience.

While in Portugal, you cannot miss pastéis de nata - a custard tart, that was created by monks of the Jeronimos monastery to supplement their revenues in the 19th century. Belém, where this was “invented” has one of the best pastéis de nata shops called Pasteis de Belém. They are super popular, and you have a long queue to buy from the store, but I promise, it’s worth it. I am not a big dessert person, but it was delicious.

We took a bus from Belem to Praça do Comércio. Something about exploring cities in a bus - the view from a height while sitting cozily in the warmth of the afternoon sun is unbeatable.

At the square, we found a food hall with a very large variety of food, but we had decision fatigue so didn’t end up eating anything there. But we did go back another day, and enjoyed a good lunch. I love food markets - hawker centres in Malaysia/ Singapore, street markets (Borough market, Leather lane, etc.) in London or La Bouqueria in Barcelona.

Later that evening, we went to visit Joao in Principe Real, a really cool neighbourhood with a good mix of great homes, apartments and commercial establishments. It was very similar to Eixample, where we lived in Barcelona. I wouldn’t be too surprised if some parts of old Bangalore, evolve into these types of neighbourhoods given how commercial they are becoming of late.

When we got to his place, he’d just gotten back from work but had quickly managed to prepare a lovely 3-4 course meal for us. It was mostly store bought pre-made food, but you just wouldn’t be able to tell if you didn’t know. I was amazed at how it’s so easy to whip up something so fancy with store bought stuff in Europe, unlike in India.

Joao is a great cook. I have a very fond food memory with Joao. He was once throwing a party for some friends in our flat. He’d locked himself up in the kitchen and spent an entire evening cooking a traditional Portuguese meal with Bacalhau for the party. My other flatmate, Max, and I loved it. It was absolutely delicious.

The next day, there were some leftovers from the party, and we happily helped ourselves to a second serving. On the third day, when Joao offered us a third serving from the leftovers, we’d had enough. Clearly all of that passion couldn’t contain the quantity, and we trolled him for making so much food that lasted us nearly a week.

Anyway, it was really lovely seeing him and spending the evening drinking wine from his family’s vineyards, Terras de Portugal. Till date, the best port wine I’ve had is the one Joao had once brought from one of his trips back home.

We spent our last day in Lisbon just walking along Rio Tejo, which has a very long coastline/ bank where people hang out all the time. The view of the Tejo was spectacular, but to think that Vasco da Gama set off from the mouth of this very river to explore rest of the world felt surreal. It left me wondering what if I were standing exactly where I was, just 600 years ago.