Iberian Spring: Day 2 Istanbul to Portugal

Soundtrack: “The Four Corners of the Earth”, Weddings Parties Anything

Slept pretty well in a very soft bed. Woke a few times, having no idea what the local time was, but eventually was too awake to go back to sleep bout 30 minutes before I’d set my alarm. I find it a little depressing when I wake and reach for my phone, only to have it cheerfully ask me if I want to turn off my upcoming alarm. The answer is almost always “No, I want to go back to sleep until it’s the time I’ve decided is early enough to get things done, even with allowing extra time so I can move slowly for a while. But as you can’t manage that, little electronic device with illusions of grandeur, I guess the best option is to make sure you don’t start making any noise in a little while when I’m already seizing the day.” Sadly samsung don’t provide that option in their phones, so instead i’m forced to meekly submit with a yes or similar.

The hotel did a pretty solid breakfast: a wonderful crusty bread that I think I saw them getting delivered this morning; a decent platter of 4 types of cheese, including the amazing stringy stuff, some goat cheese, little mozzarella-type balls, and a solid pressed cheese; slices of mystery meat; olives; tomato (though why for a platter for two they sliced it into thirds is anyone’s guess; a plain omelette each; and various condiments like honey and jam. Add a solid cup of Turkish coffee (solid enough to stand my spoon up in the grounds) and it was a breakfast of champions.

Today’s driver was a little slower, which was good given some mist and drizzle had come in overnight, making the Black Sea rather grey; and kinder on his shock absorbers. We’d left plenty of time to get to the airport, even with the multiple security checks (at IST you do a security scan and x-ray before you check in, and then again after immigration/customs). The customs queue was quite long and slow moving, as less than half the booths were staffed. We guessed that with so many more flights and passengers now re-routing through this airport, thanks to the previously mentioned war that is or isn’t over in the Middle East, it’s under some extra pressure to cope. We got through with just enough time to do a little checking out of shops (chocolates for the next flight’s air crew, and some cookie dough M&Ms for me as I’m not sure I’ve encountered these before) before hitting the Star Alliance lounge to make the most of L’s gold status.

In the lounge today were also the Turkish Shooting Team. One of the members looked a little like the relaxed shooter who launched a thousand memes, but with his hair neater and no glasses I couldn’t be sure. L (possibly rightly) wouldn’t let me go and bug them for a selfie, so I’ll probably never know for sure. I definitely recommend the food choices in the lounge there, an amazing selection of olives, cheeses, as well as freshly made pide and local yogurt drinks.

It was one of those flights where they load everyone onto buses and drive out to some random plane in the middle of nowhere to board. Even though Istanbul was quite chilly, the bus and the plane were stuffy and a little too warm for my liking. Fun fact: aircraft airconditioning systems rely on the engines to do their best work, so if the plane is sitting with no engines on things are going to get stuffy in there. We were a full flight and delayed about 30 minutes, so I was sweaty and uncomfortable until we took off. As flights go, it wasn’t the best, the cabin just felt a little warm the whole way and my seat was a bit firm. The meal was a chicken and rice dish, and while not entirely cursed it was certainly dry. The pasta choice looked a bit better. I watched two and a half asian movies: Yadang: the Snitch, a Korean police movie full of corruption and underworld intrigue, though strangely had a below-average amount of martial arts for that genre; Vital Signs, which I thought would be a Hong Kong drama around paramedics but turned out to be a heavy-going story about loss and family, worthwhile but not what I was hoping for; the third turned out even more bleak, The Accidental Getaway Driver, a Vietnamese movie about three criminals who escape prison and then kidnap an old driver, and the movie then devolves into a lot of dark conversations and drama, which was a bit more than I wanted. Looks to be a very good movie, just not really for the end of a 5 or so hour flight.

Lisbon has one of the greenest and most manicured airports I think I’ve ever seen, it looks like a golf course. I’d read a lot of reports that Lisbon and other airports were experiencing exceptionally large arrivals queues due to the EU implementing some new checks and rules, and I certainly experienced this last year at CDG, but today we breezed through the electronic passport gates (though there were a lot of people in the non-electronic passport queues. My luggage took quite a while to appear, but it did and it wasn’t the last item so that’s something.

Bolt is the rideshare app of choice for Portugal, so we got one from the airport (though he werdly changed the pickup location from the standard rideshare rank to next to the regular taxis, so we had to take a bit of a wander to get there. It was an interesting drive down narrow streets paved with stones, walls lined with street art, and seeing some of the tour vehicle choices (vintage cars and tuk tuks).

The old touristy part of lisbon is full of narrow streets and steep inclines, it raises sharply from the bay so there’s maybe 50 metres of relatively flat and then start climbing. It’s full of old buildings (well kind of old, the city was basically levelled by an earthquake in 1755 so not as old as they might otherwise have been). It was also a sunny Saturday, so the streets were full of tourists turning their white skins pink.

Dinner was in three parts: the first was a random restaurant that seemed to offer cocktails and some okay local inspired food, though obviously one fo r the tourists. I tried some codfisk cakes and beef croquettes, which were okay but these ones didn’t blow me away, while L had an octopus salad that was a fairly generous serve and quite tasty. I also had a capirinha to make sure i didn’t get scurvy. From here we wandered to an outlet of Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau, a chain of places that do nothing (well almost nothing) except codfish cakes, and gluten free ones at that. We went for the full experience, which is a double cheese codfish cake and glass of port, served in a neat little carry tray. Yup, i can’t remember anywhere else I’ve ever been served a takeaway snack and generous glass of port as a takeaway meal. Lisbon seems quite relaxed where street drinking is concerned: when we stopped in for some water and groceries there were others buying wine, and the checkout staff were helpfully removing the corks for them. So while we likely could have just wandered the streets drinking port from a glass (you get to keep the glass) we opted for sitting at some nearby tables and imbibing there. These codfish cakes were definitely better, though oh so much cheese. A decent pink port too.

The final stop was for dessert, a patisserie that also did gluten free, though with a possibility of cross contamination, so not okay for the most gluten sensitive but at least separate enough for L to brave it. I went for the egg custard tart and a pastry roll that looked like a jam-filled sausage roll. The tart was decent, almost as good as some of those I had in Macau last year, though not fresh from the oven like some. The pastry was good, not as flaky as some, but overall it was good. I was too full to have the roll, so that’ll be a snack for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’ll see what’s open around town, it being easter sunday. a bit more wandering, maybe some historical stuff, and hopefully a quest to find a decent francesinha.