Walking in the Rain

November 24 in Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

One thing that I am glad to have learned after so many Caminos is that it’s up to me to decide whether rain is going to ruin my day of walking. Walking in the rain in the city is a bit different, and in some ways, less fun, than walking in the rain out on the camino, but the truth remains that it is only water and it is only going to get you wet.

One of the areas of Lisbon that I had not yet been back to was Campo de Ourique, one of my favorite residential areas, and Estrella, which is on the way back down the hill to the Baixa. I’m getting pretty good at hitting my 10 mile/16 km goal. Today Wikiloc clocked me at 16.38 km!

The rain was not constant, but it kept on starting and stopping, for the entire four hours I was out walking around. Since Lisbon sidewalks are mostly made of slippery little square tiles, my walking pace was slow, and when the rain got really heavy, I was frequently tempted to duck inside a store or sit down in a café for a hot drink.

The neighborhood of Campo Ourique was built on a grid in the late 1800s- early 1900s. It consists of what planners in the United States would call today the “missing middle” housing. Mostly multifamily, but low density (3-5 stories), lots of parks, small stores and cafes lining the streets, lots of trees. It is just lovely.

Estrella, an older neighborhood on the way back to the historic center, has one of Lisbon’s biggest parks, and it streets are narrow and its buildings are old. The parliament building jumps out at you when you get down the hill and then back up you go to the Santa Catarina neighborhood with its own Miradouro.

I have read that the horrific accident on the Lisbon street car showed that the cables were not up to standards.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20pg8pzp2no.amp

As a result, the city has shut all of them down and is doing a revision and replacement. It’s so unfortunate that it took a tragedy to trigger this.

As it got dark, more and more of the Christmas lights were turned on, and in spite of the rain, it was pretty festive.Read more