Several days worth of blogging due to lack of internet connection

Shopping in Lisbon
Never look at wallets for more than 5 minutes when being sold by a grumpy, old Portuguese lady on the street. You may have your hands slapped and may be yelled at in a language you do not understand. Very strange sales tactics indeed!

Small town Lisbon (2M)
While attending a Fado club we ran into our waiter from a fish restaurant we dined at the previous 2 nights. He joined us at our table and we found out that he was a retired ‘Fadisto’. After a couple performances by some other Fadistos, our waiter-friend did a 3 song set of Fado songs. He was very good! I really like Fado. If you are not familiar with it, imagine it as singers with operatic strength (but not the floweriness of opera) accompanied by a couple acoustic guitars.

Onto Lagos
On the train I was ‘invited’ to stay at an accommodation upstairs from a family in Lagos. I was a little suspicious of the guy marketing his ‘villa’ until I saw at the train station he had sent his wife and 2 kids to pick me up. Apparently he spends the day hanging out the bus station and riding the train to find travellers to fill his rooms in several different buildings around the city. Where I am staying is upstairs from his family. I am sharing a kitchen and bathroom with a rasta-French Canadian who is making my Lisbon experience interesting to say the least. He is pretty intense, so I was happy that my host picked up a Japanese and Swiss tourist to stay upstairs from us Sunday night. At one point the Swiss guy made the comment “how often do you see a guy from Quebec talking to a guy from Japan … in Spanish … in Portugal”. It was a pretty funny observation. On Sunday, my rasta-friend showed me around town. We went fishing by the port (you could see the fish in the water) then went to the beach and found some secret coves, caves and beaches. It was pretty amazing – Pictures to come! While exploring the town on bikes, I was amused to see the local’s reactions to my rasta friend biking around with his hands in the air singing lines of Bob Marley songs or whatever else is going through his head. He is some kind of a poet living off the $750 his brother gives him as a peace payment for not claiming his inheritance (or something to that effect).

Now it is time for work
Yesterday I typed up and revised a lab course outline and got a good start on a paper. Internet connections have been a problem, so I am happy to have now found a little café with free wireless. We’ll see if they kick me out before the batteries on the computer run out. Today it is raining. Actually, it is pouring … a good work day to say the least. Tomorrow it is back to Lisbon!