Lisbon ~ First Impressions

On my first afternoon in Lisbon, I was suffering (not surprisingly) from jetlag. Not having slept a wink on my journey from Washington-Dulles to Paris, and then Paris to Lisbon, naturally, I felt like falling asleep at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Faced with the need of stalling sleep for at least another four hours, I elected to go on a walk.

The people at Guest Services at the Corinthia Hotel Lisbon, where I was staying, were more than happy to help. On learning that I wanted to walk in a natural park-like area, the young woman recommended that i visit the Montsanto Park. To get to it, I had to exit the hotel to the left, and then take the first left and continue to the park.

Naturally, there were problems. For starters, there were no road signs. So that meant I had no idea which road I was on, because there were no street signs. Somehow, I managed to walk in the right direction and find the park!

But as I walked, it struck me how very odd the location of the Corinthia Hotel is. If you have the pleasure of visiting it, you will see that it is a luxury 5-star hotel, complete with four restaurants, a bar, various sitting areas, and a piano. 

So what is a Five-Star Hotel doing in a location that is bisected by not one, but two major highways and railroad tracks?

Of course such areas are inhabited by people who do not have much money. These areas also have dead zones, where nature has taken over neglected spaces. As I continued my walk under a massive highway, and past the dead zones on either side, I encountered huge apartment buildings filled with washing lines, and copious amounts of washing. 

I paused, taking it all in. 

If this were the United States, these areas would be positively dangerous, inhabited by gangs who engage in turf warfare, with regular shootouts. 

If I were in the UK, these buildings would be Brutalist drab, grey and forbidding, exhuding hopelessness, and blight. 

But in Portugal the government (or whoever owns these buildings), had at least bothered to give the exteriors a more pleasant aspect by painting them in shades of yellow, pink, and red. The paint jobs looked relatively recent, and the outsides of the buidlings, while not luxurous, at least conveyed a spirit of livability. Of  course these building had a view of the local railroad, whose train cars appeared with grinding regularity. Next to the train tracks was a major artery, with cars and truck whizzing their way in and out of Lisbon. Unlike the US, the communtiy had made the area as pedestrian friendly as possible. I counted at least three walkways that took you over the highway and train tracks, making it easy for the inhabitants of these enormous apartment blocks to take the dog for a walk in Montsanto Park, on the opposite side of the tracks and highway.

Nothing was luxurious about this area. And yet the inhabitants were afforded a means of walking to and from a local natural resource. This is something that countries such as the US ~ subservient to the needs of the car ~ need to think about. For the fact that you can take your dog for a walk to the local wilderness area means that those people (dog-walkers, runners and people like me who enjoy walking) will take advantage of those pedestrian bridges. And the fact that we citizens are claiming such unpromising spaces means that we keep the crime rate down by our very presence. 

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