Tuesday, 12 March 2002. 09.10 GMT
Location: Tourist office, Sintra
Weather: Sunshine? Hah! More rain.

I returned to the Pensão for a nap. All that walking is tiring! When I emerged, I planned to go out for a leisurely dinner before the concert. However, I was intercepted by the guest house keeper, Fernando. We conversed with some difficulty, having no common language, but I communicated that I was 32, from Canada, and travelling across Europe on my own for two months. I showed him one of the Toronto postcards I had brought, and at his request wrote my name and address on it and gave it to him. I guess I made a friend! He invited me to share his meal, which I was slightly embarrassed but pleased to do, a filling cod stew soaked up with bread, full of flavour.

After the meal, we had a very strange conversation, with even more misunderstandings. If I understood correctly, he was concerned for my sex life and wanted to assure me that it was ok to have a lady visitor in the guest house overnight. (He vigourously mimed this when I showed my confusion at this strange message.) Not feeling fully comfortable with this conversation (I wasn´t fully sure that he didn´t have other objectives) I took my leave to go to the concert.

As it turned out, this made me very early. I arrived just before 8, when I had been told the doors would open, but in fact we were not let into the hall until 8:30. The Coliseu is a large, round concert hall with a stage at one side, two levels of box seats, several rows of stands, and a large slightly tilted open central standing area covered in taped-down black cloth. The concert was not full, although people continued to arrive for the next hour. Weezer was schedule to start at 9pm, but the first signs of movement were their stage hands bringing out guitars to check at 10:15, and finally the show got started at 10:25.

It was pretty good, though the vocals were totally indistinct. (Very poor diction, and the mikes weren´t great.) As I only knew a couple of the songs this made things a bit frustrating. Still, the audience was into it, and sang along with some of their favorites. I ducked out early into their second set in order to get back to the Pensão by 11:30. (Guests aren´t given a front door key, so arriving back late means keeping one of the owners up.)

This morning dawned clear and sunny, at last! I headed out quickly and hopped on a commuter train to Sintra, about 40 minutes west of Lisbon. Sintra is a small medaeval town with several palaces and a ruined Moorish castle. Shortly after I arrived at the information centre it started pouring rain, so I decided to catch up on the diary while waiting for it to stop.

Which it seems to have done! Time to explore...
posted by Tom at 12:34 PM | link |