I find myself in Praça do Comércio in Lisbon for a free outdoor concert by the Orquestra Gulbenkian at 11pm (way past my bedtime in any time zone, but Lisbon has this effect on me). They played an Arturo Márquez composition that was so beautiful the crowd was shushing passersby. It’s the beginning of Festas de Lisboa, lucky me, to be in a country where they spend enough money on art to throw a dozen free concerts to mark the beginning of summer vacation and sardine season. We explored the Time Out market for dinner and ate a pig favored by god and drank some Kopke tawny port. My favorite art gallery: Vihls’ Under Dogs is missing from there. But Add Fuel has some new tiles! He does some of the best street art updates of azulejos going in Lisbon. Go Diogo Go!

We went by the pink street of night clubs are and found the Pensão Amor, loaded with sexy murals and decor to make a girl feel fabulous. Here’s a painting of a seaman with his thoughts:

Thanks to Claudia Figueiredo and Luís Graça for taking care of us in Lisbon.

The Maritime Museum offered this map gem: a 1502 account of the Arabian Sea, or all that was known to Portuguese explorers that year. The Red Sea is, um, red, the Persian Gulf is blue, and Longitude has not been discovered yet, only Latitude. I think this must have been like going to Mars for Afonso de Albuquerque. Aden and Calicut are among the huge coastal  cities.

On to São Luis today.