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Lisbon 15 September 2001.<
After sailing to Porto, the beautiful Portugese city where we stay a few days, makes cycling trips to town and where Ton takes the train back to Vlissingen (photo), after having joined us for many pleasant miles,we sail to Figuera de Foz (where we make an excursion to Coimbra), Peniche and Cascais before coming to Lisbon.
In Lisbon we find a small sympathic harbour of the Aporvela, where there are only a few small Portugese sailing boats moored and where we can stay cheaply. This place is near the old quarter of Alfama and the Apolonia train station. Perfect location. Olaf and Ruwald from the Ayesha (Hoorn) told us about this place. The only disadvantage (we think), is the swell, we are tossed around and pulling our moring lines all the time, even after making all kind of adjustments with suspenders etc. However on the 11th of September we park our bikes against the office of Aporvela to have dinner on board (60m away from the bikes) and I tell Mira about the astonishing news that Louis from the Archimedes just told me: the WTC in New York has just been completely destroyed by a terrorist attack. We listen to the radio (BBC) and find it hard to believe what has happened. After an hour, I remember to that the bikes are still parked and that we should take them on board. We walk over but they are gone. Someone just stole our little folding bicycles. What a shame!
We have a suspicion that our new ‘neighbour’ on the mole, an extremely rusty Russian trawler which has just moored since this afternoon may know more about the disappearance of the bikes. Since the bikes could not be seen from the road but were close to the ship and as they were locked together and heavy, they cannot go very far… After some initial hesitation, we climb the rusty ladder and ask for the captain who is asleep. We ask in our best french, english, italian, spanish, german and dutch and finally russian (not good, I am afraid) whether they have seen the bikes disappear, since they are so close, but the unshaven man who suddenly claims to be the captain (speaks very little english, ‘this much’ and holds up his little finger…) persists that no one has seen anything, even without consulting the other crewmembers. Realizing that this is wasted time we leave before the rundown trawler sinks under our feet. Of course we cannot know for sure who took the bikes, but our suspicion remains.
Now that we have kind of pointed our finger on the crew of the trawler (without any hard evidence, lets face it), and the fact that the smelly crew of the ship hangs around on the mole day and night, overlooking the harbour with our little boat, we don’t feel very secure any more and decide to leave to another harbour where some yacht are moored on a free (!) pontoon. The place is certainly quieter (no swell) and we spend the rest of the day pushing the maritime police for a declaration for our travel insurance. The problem is that they need our statement in Portugese and since we cannot write one, a certified translator has to do it and they refer us to the embassy. We manage to get an official looking statement from the harbour office in Portugese. Following that, the police even request us to go to the embassy to get a tolk to the police station so they can interview us! Amazing, as they speak reasonable English but the procedures are to be followed. We manage to convince them that we just need their stamps on the statement so we can go to our insurance. It takes another 2 days but Mira manages to convince them…
To forget the bicycle trouble we eat out in a wonderful little restaurant where the hostess happens to have her 41th birthday. The whole place is packed with family and regulars and we join a big table, join the happy birthday singing etc. Three elderly men are finishing off a bottle of whiskey and talk more and more to us. We are having fun. The food is good (fish: Dourada) and we are offered birthday cake for desert.
In the mean time it is my ‘verrassingsdag’ (surprise day, we take turns at organising a day full of unexpected activities for each other) and after breakfast in bed I am taken to the old wooden frigate in the harbour (dd 1843). It has been restored as a museum and is certainly worth a visit. After lunch in a park we go to the Fado museum and the house of the Portugese guitar and then to the LIDL (one of our favourite excursions here, so cheap and such good food!) and we buy tons of wonderful delicacies.
Mira cooks tuna steaks and stuffed pepers as a starter.
One other night in Lisbon we have Louis and Joke from the Archimedes from Amsterdam for dinner. We cook mozzarella with tomato and basil for a starter, Paella with salad and fruit salad with hand whipped cream while we drink good Portugese wine. Life sucks indeed, but not all the time… L&J tell us about their 5 year around world trip (10m steel Wibo 990) some 10 years ago. About the panama channel, the tropical storm they survived, how to catch tuna (we will certainly try), and we discuss our plans for the trip, politics and the sites in Lisbon.
We will now sail South to the Algarve, Gibraltar, perhaps Morocco and to the Balearics. We don’t know yet where we will spend the winter but we will see. We may also take some time for a Spanish language course.