If we thought finding our way in Seville with a car was insanity, that’s just because we hadn’t attempted to drive in Lisbon yet. One way streets, tiny street signs, very very very narrow hilly roads that are anything but straight, Lisbon has it all. Luckily, we didn’t encounter any trolleys on our drive. In some hilly parts of Lisbon, trolleys have to wait their turn, because they share the track with oncoming trolleys. They also share the roads with pedestrians and cars. On one of our trolley trips, a car had to drive in reverse up an entire hill to allow two trolleys to continue on their path.
We chose our hotel for three reasons: it was cheap, we thought it might be easier to park the car there, and we didn’t want to waste precious time in the Algarve endlessly searching for a hotel. We wanted to book lodging in advance because we knew from our experience in Seville that driving around aimlessly wasn’t going to yield good results and just make us hopelessly lost. We found a guesthouse on Trip Advisor that sounded promising. It was close to the old town and trendy Barrio Alto areas, but far enough outside them that it seemed we might be able to park our car. Some of the reviewers mentioned that they parked on the street or in the garage that the owner of the guesthouse had. Those are the reviews that I remembered, not the ones mentioning that the area surrounding the guesthouse was “a little dodgy,” possibly “requiring a taxi at night.” I guess we chalked those reviews up to overly cautious people, but perhaps we should have paid more attention because we accidentally booked a place to stay in the ghetto.
Okay, maybe the guesthouse was not technically in the ghetto, but Sean’s google searches after our first foray into the area confirmed that the guesthouse’s neighborhood indeed bordered a bona fide ghetto. During our first walk to the quaint old town area, we just noticed everything looking a little tattered. But everything in Lisbon looks a little tattered, so we weren’t sure. On our return walk from the old town, we noticed a lot of people loitering with nothing to do, which is never a good sign. Perhaps it is just the non-touristy section, we said. Everything looks a little sketchy when it is unfamiliar. Yes, that’s probably it. No less than a minute after we uttered those words, we passed a woman smoking crack in a doorway, in broad daylight, on a busy public street. Save for watching the crackhouse across the street from my friend Nicole, Kara and Sarah’s house get raided in college, I really had no experience with crack. Now there was a woman – if you could call her that because of the state she was in – smoking a crack pipe right in front of me. The image of the woman stayed in my head long afterwards. She was gaunt and agitated, and had huge sores covered her face. I don’t know what was more disturbing – that a human being could allow themselves to deteriorate to that condition, or that it was happening right in broad daylight in our temporary new neighborhood.
Save for the rowdy drunk homeless people that set up camp in the park across the street from our guesthouse, the streets surrounding the guesthouse seemed to be okay. After the first night, we took a taxi or trolley back to the guesthouse. If we walked, it was during the day, and we stayed across the street from the crackheads. (The next day, they multiplied, but still were smoking crack).
Further complicating matters was that the place where we were staying was kinda strange. Much of the lodging in Europe is run by private individuals or families, even if they resemble hotels more than bed and breakfasts. Lodging goes by many names – hostal, hostel, hotel, pension, B&B, guesthouse – and sometimes the names are not accurate descriptions. We’ve stayed at guesthouses before that seemed just like a hotel, but this place was truly a guesthouse. Many of the other places we looked at were booked because it was the weekend, and all we could find were places with shared bathrooms. Even though I am not a fan of sharing a bathroom with strangers, I decided to suck it up for a few days in the name of saving money. But even the places with shared bathrooms seemed to be expensive, so when we found this place with free parking for 44 euros, we booked it.
You literally felt like we were a guest in someone’s old musty house. There was no sign on the front, just the family’s name. We had a room with antique furniture. The room was fine and the bathroom was clean, but it was not my favorite place we’ve stayed. We were given a handful of old fashioned keys for the various doors. There wasn’t a front desk, and the owner’s assistants couldn’t always be found. When our camera bag was stolen, the old fashioned keys were in it. For a second, we thought we’d be locked out forever with no way to contact anyone – we barely knew the name of the place and didn’t know the phone number. Luckily, we were able to get the attention of one of the assistants and got new keys.
As a side note, ironically, our camera was stolen on the touristy trolley, not in our ghetto neighborhood we were so creeped out by.
Lesson learned: do more research on the neighborhood when you book in advance, even if it means losing some beach time!
Can you move on to some safe places sometime soon? Bull fights, stabbings, thievery, crackheads, homeless drunks ~ I’ll feel better when you’re happily eating pastries in Eastern Europe or enjoying the pubs of Ireland!
Your writing is excellent in this…love the crackhead verbiage: “She was gaunt, agitated…” Glad you made it out safe!
Oh my goodness — the crackhouse in college! You know, I never told my parents about that house getting busted right next to us until after we graduated. I didn’t want to worry them. . . . .