Santa Finally Brought my Luggage!!


I'm now in Coimbra, Portugal, where it's kinda rainy and everything's shut down for Xmas ... well, ALMOST everything. Fortunately this one restaurant was open for lunch and Hedy and I had the best cod ever.

It was simply done...a huge honkin' piece of fish, battered and then surrounded by a light broth, with boiled potatoes all around it. It tastes better than it sounds. Lots.

In Lisbon we went to a little restaurant called Fidalgo in Bairro Alto. I had a dish called Black Pork and Hedy had Rabbit in Red Wine. And some really good fries. Earlier that day we'd gone to a little restaurant in Alfama where no one spoke English, so we basically pointed at drawings on the menu. Hedy went to the kitchen with the owner and she came back saying "I ordered Octopus and some fish. I don't know what fish it was but it had two eyes and a tail and it looked fine to me." (Rough translation from Cantonese. My Cantonese has been steadily regressing since I left New York.)

Tasted fine too. Octopus with boiled potatoes and cabbage; fried fish with fries and salad. And little old ladies at the next table wondering where these two Chinese girls came from.

Went to Xmas mass this morning. In Portuguese. Then walked around this old university town. It's now 8pm - hardly anything's open still, I swear. There's a Spanish girl surfing the web next to me and an Aussie kid just asked for paper at the reception. It's for his art homework.

And Santa had a special delivery. After four days in Portugal, my luggage finally arrived. In the meantime, THANK GOODNESS for Zara and H&M.