With an arthritic right knee and a torn meniscus on the left, covered by a rather massive brace, I realize this will be a different trip than others. Eat, drink, museums, views, churches and cabs. Fortunately all of them are so cheap – a full meal in a good restaurant with wine is $25 and the Portuguese never tip more than 10 percent so I decide to honor that. I can limp, eat and take cabs up the hill where I am staying.

I finished my memoir from a now 40 year-old who worked in the Obama White House during afternoon siesta. She managed to write about his presidency in a way that was funny and charming and revealed Obama’s personality without giving too much away. Time to go explore.

After more than a decade of not traveling abroad except for a big European city tour the year both kids graduated, then 18 months of back and forth from Florida to DC, there’s a sense of freedom that comes with going to a European city with no purpose other than to run away from home.

Portuguese Vegan Food - Not so Yummy

Now I’m sitting in a vegan restaurant I stumbled in to when my knee started to throb. The floor is a sea of Moroccan tile in blue and white – a checked pattern I vaguely remember seeing from a stoned trip in college.

Not sure what I ordered but some sort of fake beef with vegetables. My table is reserved which says reserved has a Moorish pattern running through the center. The Portuguese do a lot of stressed out wood. Looks cool but also perhaps a bit unnecessary in a country where atmosphere abounds.

The service is relaxed, a pleasant change from at home where I often complain about being rushed. They don’t forget you but a woman alone is left to her own devices in a way I don’t mind.

I drink Madeira wine at lunch. The walls are a blend of stucco, wood and distressed cabinets. The pictures on the wall show clearly that the artist is just learning how to paint with watercolors.

The restaurant is filled with a British family and a large group of diverse women in their late teens or early twenties. The waiter is a gray and white haired version of what I now describe as the Portuguese male 5’9” who brings me a piping hot bowl of pea soup that is like murky glass on the surface with a dollop of fake cream in the middle. Best thing I ate. The fake meat which tastes pretty impossible is the consistency of Spam. I ask what it is made of and the waiter just shrugs.

Now I’m sitting in a vegan restaurant I stumbled in to when my knee started to throb. The floor is a sea of Moroccan tile in blue and white – a checked pattern I vaguely remember seeing from a stoned trip in college.

Not sure what I ordered but some sort of fake beef with vegetables. My table is reserved which says reserved has a Moorish pattern running through the center. The Portuguese do a lot of stressed out wood. Looks cool but also perhaps a bit unnecessary in a country where atmosphere abounds.

The service is relaxed, a pleasant change from at home where I often complain about being rushed. They don’t forget you but a woman alone is left to her own devices in a way I don’t mind.

Alfama Cellars

I walk into Alfama Cellars at about 5:00 PM, a tiny restaurant wedged between two other storefronts. My knees are in full mutiny and I must sit down to assuage them. The owner comes as I enter and is polite but firm, he is booked solid all evening. The room is empty. He says I have 45 minutes and I choose a table for two towards the back.

More distressed wood – this time its shelves and bottles of wine line them calling to me. The placemats and chairs are red, a welcomed contrast to the woodsy browns. The Portuguese are not rug people, most floors are bare save for a rag rug.

The olive oil even tastes rustic with a bit of earth in it The wine is good, rich and red, not quite the best I’ve ever had but up there. The first sip explodes jammy and happy in my mouth with such exuberance I know my tongue and teeth are turning red as I sip. The cheese is a menagerie of flavors and so creamy it literally melts in my mouth. I sit and I drink and I eat cheese and bread and heaven is on earth at that moment. The cheese is like sex when you are almost there and need just one more exquisite flavor.

The owner is a small rather rotund man who clearly is baffled by me alone in his place, but when I go back the next day and eat salt cod he is friendlier. Highly recommend this place.

Another day I decide to eat just Portuguese peasant food and enter into it with the gusto of a native. The fish was so fresh but the sides were not very interesting.

The View from the Church

In Graca near to where I am staying is a view to die for from Lisbon Cathedral. A café springs from it along a stone wall with a panoramic view of Lisbon. From above you miss the small details that make Lisbon so intriguing like the clothes lines that dot the streets as they wend their way down each endless hill. My favorite was the one with women’s underpants, cotton, white in a straight line.

The view is a mish mosh of stucco roofs like so many creatures stuck in time. The azure sky, sky, grey clouds hint of a storm. Missing the majesty of Paris or London, Lisbon is a city where normal people go. And many people were there in late October from all over the world.

I should have learned a few words of Portuguese before I came but then I start speaking Spanish to a cabdriver and realize that this is all I need to communicate. While up near my apartment I hear Portuguese constantly, when I get stuck I switch to Spanish and it works. But the truth is they would prefer that you speak their language.

I walk up and follow the overlook. A Portuguese man with a high pitched voice more than a little off-key sings Abba’s Dancing Queen and I have to turn away so he does not see me laughing.

This is Lisbon, cigarettes, frying fish, endless blue water.

Don’t Miss this Place

My last night I find Churrasco da Graca, a barbecue pace. Google which is working for now says it is a find, and it is. The place has its own ecosystem – working there Portuguese, Africans teasing each other. Since I cannot follow what they are saying in a blend of French, Spanish, Portuguese and yes an Italian word or tw