Lisbon, Saturday

Belém. We took the tram — a modern one, not a wooden clickety-clack one — west for half an hour. Stood under overcast skies for an hour waiting to climb the tower, then stoped for a cappuccino and walked back toward the center of town. Had a simple lunch of chicken empadas and quiche, then wandered through the Maritime Museum, full of old maps and dozens of model ships and a not insignificant amount of exhibition copy that suggested sadness about Portugal’s colonial age —not that it had happened, but that it had ended. The last room was a hangar-like space filled with a couple dozen royal barges, mostly wood and painted in bright colors with small covered vestibules for the passengers. A high school band was warming up for a performance in the space. Heavy rain pounded on the aluminum roof. We got a drink in the cafe and Anna made silly faces, then we walked down the street to the monastery.

What a monastery! Blond limestone and intricate arches, and a soaring church that houses the tomb of Vasco da Gama. Before heading home we went to Pasteis de Belem, the inventors of pasteis de nata, and stood in an alley eating the little pastries with powdered sugar on top.

Dinner at Prado, a restaurant as much of Brooklyn as of Lisbon. They greeted us at the door in English without hesitation. I didn’t want to like the place by my god was the food good: Sourdough with pork fat; beef and pickled horseradish tartlets; celeriac with wood ear mushrooms and roasted barley; caramelized onion rice with roasted eel and crispy chicken skin; gently warmed squid with paper thin medallions of potato; and best of all a slab of rare pork over turnip greens. All of it flawless.