A Postcard

We were up early to catch the Metro.

15 minutes to the Oriente station,

arriving just in time to catch the high speed train to Faro.

Traveling along at 220 km / hr at peak speed, its reserved seats come with electric plug ins, Wi-Fi, and food service that actually satisfies.

Even window shades that go up and down with the push of a button. Every little kids delight.

But leaving Lisbon wasn’t easy. It’s a city worthy of a month, even a lifetime. It seems perfect. It’s scale. The boulevards, architecture, and culture. It’s food almost beyond description. In another lifetime I’d be a critic for the Correio da Manhã so I could visit every restaurant.

And the people. There’s little hurry with them. Isolated as it from the rest of Europe, Portugal seems to exist in another time when courtesy and manners were the norm, and the classics of literature, music, and art were esteemed.

Dip below the surface, however, and you find that life is more complex. Just like everywhere else. There are the young adrift and the elderly unseen. There’s even homelessness.

And there’s the dark side of dictatorship that imprisoned the country for nearly half of the last century.

Its trauma still resident in the cells of those who survived and their progeny.

But that’s a conversation for another time.

Nearing Faro, I prefer to close my eyes and imagine this postcard perfect country and its capital city, well worth visiting, more than once.