Brain Dead in Lisbon

 

Well, we arrived in Lisbon yesterday, safe and with—thankfully—no airline complications, other than a short delay in our flight from Montreal. Bryn, however, had a major personal complication. She left her phone in the bathroom inside Canadian customs in Montreal and absolutely no amount of explaining, pleading, arguing, reasoning or Find Your Phone treasure mapping could convince any Air Canada official or Montreal security personnel to retrieve it for her. All of you can imagine this constitutes a Big Problem. We spent a good part of our first morning in Lisbon at an Apple store considering buying a new phone and in the end she decided against it. So . . . We have conjured a plan to follow should we be separated along the pathways and I am now the sole photo documentarian—which will surely work in my favor (ha!)

We spent the afternoon walking a bit around our neighborhood. Our apartment is in an 18th century building in the middle of a large historic district, Baxia, in the south of Lisbon near the Tagus River. We were so brain dead by 3 pm, that we ate at a very marginally edible falafel stand on the sidewalk and stumbled back to our apartment. We were both sound asleep at 5 pm, but then—predictably—woke at 9 pm, starving and wide awake. Salami, a little cheese, a delicious peach, good conversation and our magic sleeping pills took care of that problem and we both slept like the dead all the way through.

Today, we have a walking tour and just general Lisbon wandering on the agenda. The adventure has begun!

A note on James from a book I am reading by my long former church pastor from Seattle (since we soon will begin walking what is also called The Way of St. James):

“The book of James has endured times when the church has avoided and ignored it,  probably due to James’s attack on the pride of power and wealth. James is part of the canon of the New Testament even though its themes sometimes oppose the practices of many churches and the beliefs and actions of the people who read it.”  A perfect thought pertaining to my doubt and cynicism.