More in Lisbon

In no particular order...

We saw this amazing former movie theater, the Eden Theatre, built in 1931.   Unfortunately, it no longer operates as a theatre, but is now a hotel.   But the facade is great...

The large square openings in front were apparently used for giant movie posters of some kind

What could this be?

It's the main train station...

The Church of San Roque, which shows that the Portuguese can do over-the-top decoration too.

The tile guy in the church was being very creative when he did these:

The Berardo Collection

We went to see the José Berardo Collection in Lisbon.   This is an astonishing collection of 20th century art, assembled by the eponymous Portuguese billionaire, and housed in a giant new cultural center in Belem.  Entry is free and without fuss (you simply walk in), and the museum is spacious and crowd-free.   It includes representative work from just about everybody in the post-1920 era, as well as interesting work from a lot of people I have never heard of.   If this museum was in New York, it would be a major attraction; if it was in Vancouver, it would be the star attraction of the city.   But, at the end of Europe, no one knows about it.   If the collection has a drawback, it is in the idea of representing every post WWI art movement.  Each movement gets a room; as you proceed you watch ideas ebb and flow, but you wonder about the works that might not fit into their assigned slot.   And by the end, when you get to rooms like the "traumatic realism" room, it is a bit too much.  But no complaints here; we stopped for lunch in the middle of our viewing at a nice outdoor cafe overlooking the river.


A great painting from Victor Brauner:

Joan Mitchell, my favorite abstract expressionist:

A James Turrell work, which I had all to myself for quite a while:

Eating in Andalusia

I could get very used to the tapas style of eating.  It's a pleasure to be able to try lots of different things in flexible size portions. The food was mostly excellent, though for a country which grows lots of veggies, they really don't like to eat them very much.     Eating and drinking in tapas joints, you can't help but noticing the decorations that refer to all those things which the area is known for:  bullfights and bulls, flamenco, Catholcism, ham, etc.    Not a good place for vegetarians, though.


Some pictures:

The End of Europe

No, this is not a think piece about the decline of the idea of "Europe", but rather about Lisbon, which is situated at the southwestern end of the European continent.   It seems to share the same relationship to Europe as Victoria does to the rest of Canada; at the end of the road, slightly eccentric and in its own world.   Lisbon feels like it is in some kind of time warp at times: stores that look the same as they might have fifty years ago, and there are the famous trams, with their wooden interiors, manufactured in the late thirties and forties.   And they are not just for show; they are a vital part of the city's transportation system.   And everything is a little bit run down and decaying; even in the center of the city, paint is peeling.  The sidewalks are all made with small cobblestones; here and there a few have come loose, but it doesn't seem to bother anyone. 

Yet Lisbon is also a cosmopolitan city.

And the hills!   Lisbon rivals San Francisco for its hilliness; they even have something called "street elevators" to help you get up the hills.  

One thing you also notice here is the extent to which they play up their history of bold navigators and the subsequent colonization.   With colonies and trading posts in Brazil, Angola, Goa, Macau and others they have quite a history of trade and exploitation.  The fascist dictator Salazar commemorated this history in this classic bit of Stalinist art by the river, built in the 1960's:

  

Some pictures from a day of walking around:

Tiles are big here:

This bit of Art Nouveau decoration is in fact a peep show:

Note the door numbers:

Decay in brown:

A pissoir!

Vera contemplates art..

The Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Lisbon

We visited the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Belem, just outside of Lisbon.  It was built in the early sixteenth century to commemorate the voyages of Vasco de Gama (and to spend some of the ensuing  profit).   The architecture is like nothing I have ever seen before; officially called the Manueline style, I would describe it as Art Nouveau Gothic.   It features the bones of Gothic style, but with elaborate and fanciful decorations that bring Art Nouveau to mind.   I'm not quite sure how all this elaborate style fit in with the notion of a monastery for monks, but I guess they didn't complain too much.

Pictures:

A ceiling:

The adjacent cathedral

Walking in Spain, Not In the Plain

We have been in Granada, Cordoba, and Seville, and have had a great time wandering around the narrow and varied streets of the older parts of these cities.   It is interesting to reflect on how different this is from most of North America, where we live in newer neighborhoods that are mostly defined by streets that follow a rectangular grid.  In the case of the older cities, you have street patterns than are seemingly determined by random human impulses, as opposed to the modern, rational thought of urban planners of the last few centuries.  Just what determined the particular shapes and directions of the narrow and constantly curving directions of the streets in these old Spanish towns?   I'm sure someone has done research.   But, as a walker, why do I love these irregular and confusing streets?
Even when I have no clue as to where I am going?
In Grenada, we stayed, on the edge of the old Moorish quarter, Albacin, a hilly neighborhood where many of the "streets" are not wide enough to accommodate cars.   The same held mostly true for Seville and Cordoba; mazes of narrow streets that defy logic, and yet are absolutely human.  Our hotel in Seville was on a street about 3 feet wide; hence all deliveries, etc.  could not be done by car or truck.   Very human, and very quiet without the sound of motorized vehicles.

Wandering through these cities there was always something to see.

Vera in the streets of Granada:

Granada by Night:

A nice place to sit?

And suddenly, a religious procession, with lots of incense;