Lisbon: Donkey Boys, Robbery and the Hotel of Hard Beds

" I hope you have a better trip than I did" said the stout gray-haired lady I encountered in the computer room of the palace where we were staying. In the spring of 2004, John and I traveled to Lisbon, Portugal. We were armed with a Rick Steves guidebook, a money belt and 6 weeks of conversational Portuguese. Whenever we became unhappy with our hotel, we'd rush to the nearest internet café, log on to Tripadvisor.com and book a new hotel. We'd pack up our luggage and whisk off in a taxi to the newer and better accommodations.

Our latest hotel, though the beds were hard, was a palace. Yes, after one night in The Hard Bed Plaza Hotel, we arose early, fortified ourselves with several espressos and went straight to the nearest internet café where we booked several nights in this palace, which was usually expensive, but apparently heavily discounted in the off season. Here you could wander endlessly through the hallways or walk through carpeted rooms decorated with gilt-framed antique paintings, and see no other humans save an occasional person dusting the chandeliers. It was in the palace that I met the lady from Iowa who'd fallen out of a taxi. We were in the habit of keeping in touch with our kids (and John's work) through e-mail. This hotel's elegant leather bound in-room information book, besides featuring room-service menus in an elaborate curlicued script, claimed there was "internet" access on the third floor. You could only get to the third floor by wandering the many elegant hallways and with dumb luck sometimes finding the right elevator. No one was ever on the third floor, though there were rooms and rooms of paintings, except for the day I met the lady from Iowa. "Internet access" turned out to be one computer and on this particular day, the computer was occupied by a woman who began a rambling monologue. It seemed that hotel employees (or gremlins) had spent the night dragging furniture and moving it around right above her room. Also her slick, wrinkle-free Travelfree skirt had caused her to get stuck and she "fell out of a taxi" although she had not had a lot to drink.

During this time in Portugal we learned that all of the beds in the country seemed to be just like boards. When I arose from one of these beds, I felt that I had never slept at all. My soft but firm bed at home became a fantasy that I lingered on hopefully. The pillows were like tiny handkerchiefs made for dolls, but I could wad them up to simulate actual fluffy pillows. There were more handkerchief pillows in the closet, so we tried piling them up. When we complained at the front desk about the hard beds, the stern looking women there told us that hard beds were good for your back.

During our last day in Lisbon, we toured the Alfama, the medieval "old city." We wandered through the area's winding streets arguing about whether to take the old streetcar down the hill. We sat on a bench under giant trees facing a blue-tiled building where leathery old women were sitting leaning out of their windows looking exactly like one of the picture postcards I had just bought. We were enjoying this picturesque moment when suddenly I was hit by a heavy splat on my head. Pigeons! I had come thousands of miles to experience being hit by pigeon shit. But I was saved when John instantly whipped a water bottle out of his pack, dumped what seemed like the entire bottle on my head and started rubbing at my hair with a handkerchief. It was a warm day. He peered at my head and declared it clean. I was so grateful to have a husband who was not helpless. I had come thousands of miles to have my husband wash my hair using a water bottle and a handkerchief.

Later that day we had an unfortunate visit to the Santa Justa elevator, a sort of Eiffel tower imitation. After the exciting 5 euro elevator ride, I stopped at an intermediate lookout point because I didn't want to walk up the winding steps. While I stood leaning on the railing and observing a panoramic view of the city, my fellow tourists and my husband scurried up the winding stairs to a higher level. I was soon approached by a fellow who looked exactly like one of the boys who had been turned into donkeys in the story Pinocchio. He asked me if I was cold (in Portuguese) and said he could get me a jacket. I replied "Nao falo Portugues." I retreated to a corner. He obviously wanted me to remove my backpack type purse. John finally descended the winding stairway and we headed for Rossio Square to take the number 15 tram back to Belem where our hotel of hard beds was located. I am sure that the Pinocchio donkey boy whipped out his cell phone and called his friends in Rossio Square, telling them to watch out for the short, naïve American woman with the backpack purse.

Though most of the valuable items we carried-like our passports-were safely hidden in the money belt my husband wore, it was a fact that I still had a wallet in my backpack purse. Most items had been cleaned out of the wallet, but it still contained random objects like my Kaiser card and an expired International Reading Association membership card. Also in the wallet were 10 euros and a dollar fifty American money. Earlier in the trip, I'd discovered that bathroom attendants could demand money, and I'd insisted on having my own cash. We jumped onto the number 15 tram, not knowing if you pay up front or if a conductor collected the money. A crowd seemed to be following me and they were pushing and pulling. I realized I'd been pick pocketed. We jumped off of the trolley. Darn donkey boys. The Kaiser card. The dollar fifty. The 10 euros! In the side street we glimpsed sinister figures on their haunches gleefully examining an elegant looking black leather wallet. After recriminations (why hadn't John, who saved me from pigeon poop hair gel, saved me from pickpockets?) we jumped into a cab--cabbies frequently benefited from our misfortunes on this trip-- and returned to our hotel of hard beds. Later I tried to imagine where in Portugal my Kaiser card had ended up and whether anyone puzzled over the card and its information. Did anyone think it was worth using for anything? Is my card still in someone's room in Lisbon, or has it made its way from a trash can to a garbage dump? I am still wondering about this.