Lisbon Walkabout

Saturday, March 5, 2011

I skipped lunch today in order to get a bit more than an hour to look around Lisbon.  I’ve been involved in meetings since arrival and haven’t really had a chance to see anything of this city.  I suppose if I hadn’t gone to Porto in January, I would be more impressed with Lisbon.  The city has lots to recommend, beautiful old buildings, some lovely walking areas along the River Tejo, old trams and funiculars that go right up the very steep streets that connect the old city to the Barrio Alta, but the city has some very major downsides as well.  Here are some pictures if you’re interested.

Lisbon has not been well maintained.  Part of it has to do with the lousy state of the economy and most here know they are going to end up like Greece and Ireland, deeply in debt and having to suffer huge cutbacks in benefits and services.  There are many buildings in the downtown core, as well as the tourist areas, that have just been abandoned.  There are gypsy women, always with children, begging next to every ATM machine.  There are a lot of homeless filling parks, in doorways of fancy buildings, some right in front of our hotel.  Lisbon seems to be home for thousands of Africans from former Portuguese colonies like Angola, Mozambique, and Equatorial Guinea.  Today I saw several hundred filling one of the downtown squares, some just talking others selling stuff and some of them annoying tourist with their begging.  There were about five people, all homeless by the looks of them, going up and down the outdoor restaurant area asking customers for food.  It was all very sad.

My trip just got a bit shorter since I’m not going to be going to Germany from here.  The people we were scheduled to meet with have been called away to other meetings in other parts of Europe so we’ll reschedule that part of the trip.  This allows me to get home on Tuesday so Cindy and I can celebrate Mardi Gras.  I have no idea what we’ll do, but we’ll at least be together three days earlier than expected.

Ok, time to get back to work.  Enjoy the weekend.  Cindy told me it snowed again!  Wm