Erik's Banner
Lisbon is a very pleasant town. Built on several hills it has a long history. Not many really old buildings are still standing though as a massive earthquake destroyed Lisbon in 1755 and firmly ended the Portuguese golden ages. When Portugal joined the European Union in 1986 it was the poorest country in Western Europe. Now it is a example of the benefits of European integration. With European Union money Portugal has developed into a modern country. All over the country there are brand new highways and Lisbon has an excellent public transport system. Luckily not everything has been replaced and there are still a couple of lines on which old tramcarriages clamor up and down the hills of Lisbon through narrow streets of old neighborhoods.
The old neighborhood of Alfama
View over Lisbon
On the way to Lisbon you could clearly see the results of the massive forest fires this summer. Whole areas were burnt out for miles and miles. By now it was October and already small new green leaves where growing on the burned trunks.
Torre de Belém
Tram in Alfama

Next stop was Tavira in the Algarve. A little old town on the coast which now gets invaded by tourists every summer. Tavira is slightly out of the way of the mainstream and therefore is still a pleasant town. It has an old fortress, a few good restaurants and a couple of decent bars. After dinner in a really nice restaurant we walked around an decided to have a drink in Arco bar. We met a couple of nice people, had a few more drinks and by the time the bar was ready to close for some kind of reason a couple of lesbian women thought it was a good moment to start stripping. Pretty soon the five or six people left in the bar joined in and the bartender locked the doors and started giving everybody shots. This was enough encouragement for one of the girls do get up on the bar and give a little show. In
The bartender in Arco bar after hours
the meantime I learned that lesbians are not nearly as safe as you think. The only two guys left were the bartender and me, and obviously the bartender was safe behind the bar. The next day Chisako asked me why some people like to take their clothes off in public. My guess is that a silly amount of drinks in a comfortable atmosphere makes people do silly things. But next time when I am in Portugal I will definitely visit Tavira and say hello to the bartender in Arco bar.