Braga

Well, it's official: I love Portugal. If I don't come back, don't worry: I haven't been abducted, I just decided to stay. (I feel like that joke was in poor taste, but oh well.) Today, I took the bus out of town and walked up the Escaderia de Bom Jesus (I believe that means the staircase of the good Jesus), and old pilgrimage site. I read that pilgrims walk up the stairs on their knees, but I went the traditional way. There were little chapels at each turn in the staircase with scenes from the Passion, and there were candles lit at each of them. I stopped halfway up (there are a lot of stairs!) to buy a bottle of water and some postcards, and I looked at some of the little trinkets the woman had for sale. Some glass bracelets with saints all around them caught my eye, and I looked at one, but it had a picture of the Pope. I asked the woman in very bad Portuguese if there were any without the Pope, as I am not Roman Catholic, and there was no one around, so she took out her backstock and we looked through all of them. The only ones that didn't have the Pope on them were wooden, and I really liked the glass ones better, so I ended up buying it anyway, but the woman and I had a good laugh over it and I have learned two more Portuguese phrases:«This one has the Pope,» and «This one doesn't have the Pope.» I've been trying all day to find some way to use those in context, but have not yet been successful.

The view from the top of the staircase was absolutely beautiful: it's at the top of a hill outside of town, and you can see the whole town of Braga with its orange roofs surrounded by rolling green hills. I went into the church which was smaller than it looked from the outside. It was dark and heavily decorated, but not as gaudy as Spanish churches - maybe there wasn't as much gold. They had a recording (I assume it was a recording; I didn't see anybody) of a men's choir singing, and it was very atmospheric. After I sat in the church for a little while, I kept walking up the hill behind the church through a park with a lake in some woods. Just when I had gotten far enough that I had no idea where I was and would have to retrace my steps (don't worry, Mom, I didn't go that far), it started to rain - I mean a downpour. On the other side of a clearing, I saw a street, and I ran into the nearest restaurant. It had a mahogany bar and really luxurious couches, and pictures of jazz legends on the walls (in fact, the first thing I saw when I wiped the water from my eyes was a picture of Duke Ellington), so I ordered a cafe com leite and sat down and read my book until the sun came back out. Instead of walking all the way back down, (I am extremely proud of this next part) I got directions from the waitress in Portuguese, found the city bus on a street with no visible bus stop, flagged it down, and told the driver where I wanted to go.

I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, and I want to say something quick about the food here. Both today for lunch and last night for dinner I had heaping plates of delicious, healthy food, with lots of vegetables, and a pot of tea, for less thn 6 euros. Another reason I love Portugal. I have also noticed that they are really good about conserving electricity here: I had to turn on the computer in the Internet Cafe before using it, and almost all of the public bathrooms I've been in have motion sensor lights. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

So, the rest of my day: I sat in the square and had a glass of port, and wandered around some more. Tomorrow morning I'm going to try to get an early start and get down to Porto, where I will spend the rest of my visit. Boa noite!