A few days ago we were in Lisbon. It was the second time that we visited the city. Already two years ago in February we were in Portugal’s capital to catch Zoé’s new passport from the Hungarian embassy after she changed her name. At this time we spent one evening in the city. It was very empty and there was no real nightlife happening. Expect a few guys selling cocaine, weed and hash to tourist and a few lost souls more wandering between dead facades, fancy cars and closed boutiques. Still, somehow, we had the explainable drive to see the city again.
So a few days ago it finally happened. Before we drove to Lisbon we wanted to see the national park on the coast next to the city. Well, we did not really understand the idea of declaring this area as a national park. We saw nothing else than village after village up to the coast. After we checked a few beaches we decided to skip the plan of exploring the national park and drove to the camping in Lisbon.
If you follow us on our journey around the world you probably know, that we very rare stay in camping, but prefer to find our own spots in the wild. But we like to have an easy life and do not want to close out any options, so if you want to visit a big city with a camper and three dogs a camping is a very good and cheap solution.
Already on the first evening, before we even reached the camping, we saw some beautiful graffitis. This is one thing we love on cities: The street art!
The next day we went to the center. Unfortunately we took the wrong bus and ended up in an area where we never wanted to be. Still we discovered another amazing graffiti:
Two hours later than we planed we arrived in the center. Here Joshua found amazing new shoes. Look how proud he is:
What we liked were the plenty street artist around us.
We discovered that in Lisbon you can find not only a lot of graffiti but also a lot of stickers.
We also found a few beautiful balconies. We love to see balconies with plants and always dreamed of cities full of trees on the roofs and flowers in the windows.
Look at this amazing tree that we saw in the botanic garden of Lisbon and imagine that the whole city would be full of such giants.
What we really liked that a lot of houses were painted colourful.
Another cool thing on Lisbon is that they kept the old trams. They put another beautiful colours on the palette of Lisbon.
But otherwise the streets were again empty. We only saw tourist walking up and down in the city. We talked with a bartender. He told us, that Lisbon is actually dead. Ten years ago it was much better, but now people can not any more effort to live in the city. The landlords try to rent to tourist, who pays much higher prices. The people of Lisbon live outside of the city and only come here to work. And slowly the nice cafes, the life in the parks and everything that makes a city beautiful disappear. We saw the same thing happening in Budapest and Berlin and so many other metropolitan in the world. Everything is getting more and more expensive, there is no cool art project, no flea markets, local shops, but restaurants offering tourist menus and souvenir shops. Suddenly the whole city is only about money and not about providing possibilities to the people that live there.
In the evening we got hungry. We remembered a vegan restaurant that we saw two years ago, but did not try at this time. Now we correct this mistake. The name of the restaurant is “Jardim das Cerejas” (cherry garden) and it was mindblowing. For ten euro they offer an all you can eat vegan buffet. We tried everything and if we would have stayed another day we would have gone another time. But even the amazing food experience could not change the fact that we simply do not have a resonance with Lisbon. One day was again enough.
On the way back to the camping a part of our soul was still eating in the cherry garden. We talked a lot about new ideas for vegan recipes and imagine how beautiful our world could be, if we humanity would not eat meat and all the food would be like in the cherry garden: Without blood, without suffering, full of love, light and letting your soul dance with the universe.
Love and kisses,
Zoé and Joshua
One Response
Sehr schön ist es dort.Wo verbringt ihr den Winter?Wie geht es Euch sonst so
und was macht Hogo,ich glaube wir würden ihn nicht mehr erkennen.
Macht es gut und seid vorsichtig.Bis bald ihr drei,wir denken an Euch.