I was in the crosswalk at about 11:40 Monday morning. The green signal told me I could cross. Then the light went out, it didn’t turn red, it went out. Immediately a car pulled in front of me. He lost his red light, and while he didn’t have a green light, I guess he felt it was ok. Fortunately the car behind the guy who cut me off stopped to let me finish crossing. Welcome to the Iberian power outage — Welcome to Lisbon!
We were scheduled to dock at 11 AM but got in an hour early, just after Zuiderdam arrived. Suzi and I decided to keep with our schedule and not leave the ship until a little after 11. Our plan was to head to the rail station and take the train to Belem. It’s a good thing we waited, or we would have been stuck on a dead train for who knows how long.
We continued walking toward the train station figuring it might be a neighborhood outage. Just before the main square a tuk tuk driver approached us and asked if we wanted a tour. We said we were going to take the train to Belem. He filled us in on the extent of the power outage. Just then my cell phone got a ping from BBC “Breaking News, Power out across Iberian Peninsula” confirming what Maurice, the tuk tuk driver had told me.
We decided to take his tuk tuk to Belem and wherever else Maurice wanted to take us. Tuk tuk is a term for motorcycle rickshaws whose little engines go tuk tuk. They were common in Egypt outside Cairo. Tuk tuk is a misnomer here. They are either souped up electric golf carts or electric Utility Task Vehicles (UTV). They don’t go tuk tuk, they hardly make any sound.
While many of our cruise mates were stuck on trains, trams, or in traffic on big buses (some for up to three hours) our little tuk tuk wove in and out of traffic. The Zuiderdam’s leaving was delayed by three hours as they rounded up their cruisers scattered around the city. Suzi and I had good luck. We saw much, but not all, of what we wanted, and we saw a lot of things that we didn’t know we wanted. In other words we loved it.
We didn’t see the inside of the Sao Jerónimos Monastery, an example of Manueline architecture. (See separate post.) The inside was closed, no power. We also didn’t get to taste the regional pastry, Pasteis de Belem. (Elsewhere in Portugal it’s called Pasteis de Nata, but the ones from this bakery are, according to everyone we spoke with, special.) It’s a flaky crusted tart, made in a bakery across the street from the monastery. They had a limited supply because the power was out, and the line was more than a block long. In an emergency the rest of the world stocks up on toilet paper. In Portugal – custard tarts.
Click here for the post on Manueline Architecture.
We did get to another monetary with beautiful tile work, featured in another post,
and to the old Roman Amphitheater that was discovered when someone was excavating land for a parking garage. Maurice told us that the discovery of the amphitheater led to a renewed interest in restoring old buildings rather than digging foundations for new, taller ones. Land with archeological treasures is condemned, and purchased by the government for, as he put it, pennies. Maruice, originally from Cabo Verde, is a great storyteller.
He also loves other storytellers, especially street artists.
This one makes street art from junk.
Maurice’s 15 year old daughter kept calling him, distraught. What would she do when her phone ran out of juice? His wife called from the hospital where she works. She was being sent home because the computers were shut off. The hospital was conserving its generator power because it only had 7 hours of fuel to run everything. Maurice was glad his wife would be home to handle the no cell phone trauma and not him.
Other students seemed to have a better attitude. We met a group of college students who were released from class and were happily headed for the beach, of course on foot or in tuk tuks. The streets were cluttered with abandoned trams.
By the time it came to pay Maurice, cell service had deteriorated as the cell towers’ battery backup began to run down. We were not able to pay with a credit card. Suzi and I do not carry much cash but we were able to piece together enough euros and dollars to pay and tip him. I didn’t have to resort to left over Cape Verde Escudos. Maurice threatened that if we could not pay him he would have to come to Alaska to collect. I gave him my card and told him I would be happy to give him a tour.
That evening Holland America let us know that they were canceling all tours in Lisbon for the next day. Good thing we hadn’t planned any. That night, at sunset, I took pictures of a town with no lights. But at about 10:45, a little over 11 hours after the outage, Lisbon lit up. The dome of the Pantheon glowed. The electrical workers were the local heroes.
The next day things were not quite back to normal. The Fado Museum, with its interactive computer exhibits had not been able to reboot and was closed. And in some cities, like our next stop, Porto, it took a while to unsnarl the metro. After being turned away from the Fado Museum we walked to the main square, enjoyed a coffee and watched as Lisbon’s trams clattered by.
