The Rainy Season

It continues mild in Lisbon, but the rains have come. Until today, Thursday, when we’ve been stuck inside all day, it strangely hasn’t hampered us much. 

Rainy views from our apartment

On Tuesday, it teemed most of the morning, with successive thunder storms sweeping down the river from the ocean. It hailed, gentle readers. It hailed! Little chunks of ice collected between the panes of our badly designed and installed sliding windows. I’m pretty sure it had hailed in the night as well. I could hear it pounding against the windows during one of my nocturnal pee runs. Then in the late morning, it cleared and was beautiful until about 15 minutes after we came in from our afternoon jaunt to Belem. Then it teemed again and, just for good measure, hailed.

Tuesday is cleaning day here, so we planned a full afternoon in Belem, mainly to see the Berardo modern and contemporary art collection. We just prayed we wouldn’t get too wet doing it. When we left the apartment, it could still have gone either way. But the rain, except for a few spits, held off. We caught the No. 15 tram as before at Placa da Figueira, and rode it the 25 minutes or so out to the Jeronimo Monastery. By the time we got there, it was gloriously sunny and mild. Strange climate.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos

We walked through the park first to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, a fabulous monument to the 15th and 16th century Portuguese explorers. It’s right on the bank of the Tagus estuary, from where most of their voyages began. Erected in 1960, it reflects the romanticized, heroicized – if that’s a word – and brutalistic aesthetic of the Salazar regime. (Quick history lesson: António de Oliveira Salazar was the Franco-like dictator who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Portugal only emerged from authoritarian rule with the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, a military coup that installed – surprise! – a left-wing democratic regime.)

Karen braves the waves

I like the monument a lot despite its political background – as I do, I confess, some of the more egregious and brutalistic Mussolini-era architecture in Italy. It’s fun and overblown, and a great photo op too. It did take us awhile to figure out how you get over the railway tracks that run between the park and the river bank where the monument is. We finally found a not-very-well-signposted underpass.

Rotunda of Padrão dos Descobrimentos, San Jeronimo monastery in the background

That way lies America

We chose not to go into the monument and ride the elevator to the top. I have some lingering regrets about this, as it looked like great views were to be had. After we’d had our fill of walking around and photographing the monument, we went back into the town part of Belem and found a great little Thai restaurant for lunch. It was our first non-local cuisine in a restaurant since arriving in Europe. It was pretty good too, with generous portions: 10.50€ each for starter, main and dessert. Maybe not the highest quality meat, but everything well prepared and beautifully presented.

After lunch, we headed to the Berardo Collection Museum, housed in the Cultural Centre of Belém, a modernist complex with theatres and gallery space. The Centre opened in 1992. The original collection was amassed by José (Joe) Manuel Rodrigues Berardo, a Portuguese business tycoon and philanthropist. You can find out more than you will probably ever want to know about the man on this fawning page at the museum’s website. When we came out an hour and a half later, we both said we were disappointed. In retrospect, though, it was fine, just not what I expected, or hoped.

Alexander McCall mobile in stairwell at Berardo Collection Museum

The museum is set up in rigid chronological order, with art grouped by “school” and “movement,” starting with cubism in the early 20th century, and running through a whole bunch – most I’d never heard of – before moving into post-1960 “contemporary” art on another floor. It’s a bit like reading an undergraduate art history survey of modern and contemporary art. Except the illustrations are not the acknowledged masterpieces of the particular school or movement but, with too few exceptions, mediocre examples by unheard-of exponents.

An early Karel Appel - I hated his 1960s more pop art incarnation but this I liked

An untitled 1934 piece by Otto Freundlich (new to me), the first thing I saw I actually liked

There were some exceptions, though – good pieces by artists I know and like: Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, an Andy Warhol of Judy Garland that could almost change my mind about him, and some I quite liked by the never-heard-of-‘ems. But the information we had about the Berardo suggested there was at least one Mark Rothko, a particular favourite of mine, and a collection of stuff by Paula Rego, the contemporary Portuguese figurative artist we discovered in Cascais last week. None was on display. Nada. The collection is huge and stuff rotates continually apparently. Our bad luck.

Andy Warhol, Judy Garland

Arshile Gorky, Study for Bull in the Sun, c1942

Joan Mitchell (no relation to Joni that I know of), Lucky Seven, 1962

Lee Krasner, Visitation, 1958/1973

The less said about the post-1960 stuff the better. I get irate when I think about the art-school mafia that has dictated tastes in art – or tried to – since 1960, ramming conceptual art and all its bastard children down our throats. Don’t tell me about the critical theory supporting the idiotic, ugly stuff that too often passes for art in this period, I just get irritated. 

The Berardo does have examples of some interesting contemporary photographers, including Canada’s own Jeff Wall (possibly the least interesting Jeff Wall I’ve ever seen, however), as well as Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman. Not my taste in photographic art, but at least they pay attention to craft.

Fernanda Fragateiro, Caixa, 2006

The garden out back (front?) was a nice bonus, with its intriguing sculpture by a contemporary Portuguese woman (also never heard of by me), and a great bit of wall art visible in an adjoining parking lot.

Do they even have raccoons in Portugal?

At that point, we thought of walking down and looking at the outside of the Torre de Belém, an early-16th century defensive tower. It was originally built out in the river, but after the earthquake of 1755, which leveled much of Lisbon, the river changed course, and it’s now on the bank. It’s an emblematic site in Lisbon, and one that people seem to enjoy, judging by TripAdvisor (4.5 stars). But it didn’t turn our cranks, so we took a pass. We could see it in the distance, that was enough.

We trammed home, and walked up the hill to our apartment, just before the heavens opened again.

Clouds over the castle (from our apartment window)

Wednesday was the one good day this week, almost from beginning to end. There was some rain in the morning, but the rest of it was fine, if windy. We didn’t get away from the apartment until quite late, after three. 

Clouds over the castle, take two (note construction site in bottom right - they worked right through the deluge today)

We walked over into Chiado, ostensibly to see the Miradouro de Santa Catarina. It looks out over the river, just above the Cais do Sodre rail station. It didn’t seem like much when we got there. It’s not anywhere near as high as some of the city's other miradouros, including the two here in Graca. But the getting there, through streets we hadn't seen before – or at least not while on foot, only tram – was interesting.

Spotted on the way down the hill in Graca - an empty shell of a building with tile walls they're apparently hoping to preserve

View of April 25 bridge from Miradouro de Santa Catarina

The neighbourhood looks nice, with lots of posh shops and impressive squares. It’s not quite as hilly as our end of town. We stopped to look at two churches quite close to each other, just east of Largo de Camões: the Basílica dos Mártires (Basilica of the Martyrs) and the Igreja Da Nossa Senhora Da Encarnação ( Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation).

Basilica of the Martyrs, nave ceiling

Basilica of the Martyrs, nave, facing rear

They were built or rebuilt about the same time, in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake, which destroyed predecessor churches, and in similar style. Both are remarkable for the light flooding into them (they face north rather than the usual east – but time of day also had something to do with it), and for the beautiful fresco paintings, mainly on the ceilings.

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, nave ceiling

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, ceiling fresco over altar

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, nave, facing the altar

The ceiling frescoes in the naves of both churches, and over the altar in Our Lady of the Incarnation, date from the 18th century. But Our Lady also has some fabulous modern frescoes illustrating bible stories. 

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, sacristy wall (note 18th century azulejo wainscotting below modern fresco)

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, sacristy ceiling

They decorate walls and ceilings in the sacristy, and in a small chapel near the front of the church. I can find nothing about them on the Internet. Karen and I were both struck by them. We wouldn’t have even seen them except Karen got bored waiting for me to photograph the ceiling in the nave and went exploring. Some of them remind me of William Blake. We think we remember seeing them dated to around 1971, but that’s all I have right now.

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, chapel wall and ceiling

Sacristy wall

Sacristy wall

It’s difficult to understand how art as accomplished and distinctive could go completely unnoticed by the world wide internet. But there you go. It pays to stick your head in old churches; you never know what unheralded wonders you’ll find.

Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation, relief sculpture on walls of grotto chapel

And that was pretty much our day. We did carry on to the miradouro, but were unimpressed. We walked home via the Santander bank machine in the Rossio train station to grab some cash to fund our last week and a bit here. It did not rain shortly after we got home, which was a welcome change.

Sway-bellied street near Miradouro de Santa Catarina: stairs at both ends!

Today is a whole other story. We’ve been in all day. The cloud cover hasn’t lifted, and it’s been raining most of the day, often heavily. Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones, who came to Lisbon to recuperate from an illness (but didn’t and is buried here), called Lisbon “the nastiest city in the world.” We begin to see why.

The only bright note: a grand slam play in Scrabble: 'obviates,' using a blank for the 's,' on a triple-word tile. Ninety points! I won. Poor Karen can't buy any Scrabble luck this year.