Lisbon, Belém, Where Pastry is as Important as History

We left the city centre to see what we could see in Belém (by the sea).

The hotel receptionist sorted us out with directions for getting there. “Get a day-ticket on the bus for three euros” she said. The bus driver gave us short shrift with an unambiguous “No” to that request. “Why not?” I asked, “Because I don’t sell them” he responded. I took a single for one twenty and walked, cowed, to the back of the bus.

I sat beside a guitar carrying musician who had the tiniest ponytail it’s possible to force into an elastic band. He was studying the sheet music to a song entitled “John Lennon”. Just then Glen pertinently enquired how we would know when we had arrived. Having already dashed any possibility of friendship with the driver I resigned to ask our musician co-traveller. “I am going there” he seemed to say, in fast Portuguese, which may have been something entirely different. I willed myself to believe that my understanding of his pronouncement was correct.

As we neared the town of Belém we became aware that the entire population of Lisbon had converged on the place on this, the day of the Implantation of the Republic. The President’s official residence is in Belém along with several World Heritage Sites.

The Jerónimos Monastery is the main tourist draw with its ornately sculpted cathedral and recently refurbished cloisters. The corpse of Vasco de Gama of discovery of the way to India fame lies there alongside that of poet, Luís de Camões.

We strolled in the direction of the tram tracks towards the sea to the enormous sculpture commemorating the “discoveries” of foreign lands and shipping routes. On the way we took the underground walkway under the track and there was our man the short-pony-tailed musician playing, perhaps, “John Lennon”.

The sun was not as high as it had been and the day trippers were beginning to retire to the bakeries and coffee shops along the main street. One of these coffee shops, Pastéis de Belém, was the largest labyrinthine coffee house I have ever seen. The queue was out the door and growing. The infinity of tables inside was jammed with families eating pastries and drinking coffee. The queue for the toilet, both mens’ and womens’, was cordoned off down one wall, and growing.

We did a lap of this micro cosmos and walked back towards the modern Centro Cultural de Belém where lavish and ornate sculpture has bowed out to straight lines, contrasting stones and glass. The only sane answer, I believe, to the challenge faced.

With the sun turning golden in the evening we headed back under the tracks for the bus. And still our guitarist played on.

He was alone in a stone tunnel where sound reverberated and lent gravitas to every note. The last vestige of public animation, he collected little for his efforts at this late hour. He was by this time, playing for himself. A noble act indeed.