Lisbon After the Symposium

The day after the Symposium, I slept as late as I could. At some point I realized that I’d, uh, miscalculated some logistics, and hadn’t booked enough nights at the hostel. Luckily, Paul Wang had booked a room with an extra bed, and graciously allowed me to invade. Thanks, Paul, you’re a lifesaver! (Or at least a Jason-sleeping-on-a-parkbench-saver). I later left Paul a sketch/thank-you note, and he was good enough to paste it into his sketchbook. You can see it here (it’s the sideways one).

After sorting out rooming arrangements, I stumbled out towards Adamastor to sketch the statue to fill in a blank spot that dared to invade one of my sketchbook pages. On the way I picked up a nutritious lunch of a peach and bag of Ruffles. Then I found this lovely corner and sketched it:

As the afternoon wore on into evening, I wandered the western border or Bairro Alto and eventually made it to Principe Real. I had the bizarre notion to try journaling (as so many sketchers I admire do) and managed the following page, which itemizes the art supplies I’d lost on the trip thus far, the aformentioned lunch, and some buildings viewable from the square:

(It turns out I hadn’t really lost the Gelly Roll. I thought I brought two with me on the trip, but discovered when I got home that I’d only left with one.)

As I’m sitting there sketching, who should wander up but Isabel Fiadeiro! So nice to see her. After Isabel wandered off again, I bumped into Gérard Michel with several family members. A rotating cast of them allowed me to tag along for beer in the park (where I made the portrait of Gérard in my last post) and dinner. So lovely!

Gérard’s nephew, Fabien Denoël, mentioned something about meeting up with Eduardo Bajzek the next morning to go sketching. I invited myself along, and spent a most wonderful day traipsing up to the castle and Alfama with the two of them and Gérard’s daughter, Marie Michel. The big sketch below I did up in the castle district. (The two smaller ones were from subsequent days–a finial in Sintra, and a view of the castle from Campo dos Mártires da Pátria.)

I made a bunch of postcards when we stopped (for beer? coffee? both?) at Largo das Portas do Sol. Something nice for the folks back home. (I ended up doing 4 or 5 more later, which I don’t have photos of.)

We later camped out in Alfama to do some sketching. While everyone else did the classic winding streets, I somehow found a gigantic flat parking lot and sketched from there. We met an extremely friendly orange cat. And eventually ended up at Miradouro da Graça at sunset:

The next day, after another late start, I finally made it to Bake the Difference, Lisbon’s vegan bakery (which also has a pretty extensive savory lunch menu). The people there were charming and the food was excellent, especially the strawberry cheese muffin!

I had intended to check out the Feira da Ladra (“Thieves’ Market”), but went up the wrong hill and discovered José Tomás de Sousa Martins instead. He was a 19th century doctor who helped the poor. He was poisoned to death by a jealous rival and is now a sort of secular saint. People light candles and leave flowers and marble tablets at the base of his statue to thank him for answering their prayers and ensuring the recovery of loved ones. Nearby, some exotic ducks live in a little castle:

Then I went to Sintra for a couple of days, but that’s a seperate post.

Finally, here’s a very quick sketch out of the airport bus window as we pulled away from the station:

This post is my final overwhelming dump of Lisbon sketches. There are those couple of pages from Sintra which I’ll share soon.