Tonight was my first ever trip up to the top of the Space Needle at night... Pretty nifty if you ask me.

It is January and you may or may have not noticed that I have not posted any ski related posts yet. The reason for that is that the skiing, so far, quite honestly... sucks.

Two weekends I didn't "ski" so much as "skated." Seriously, I had never experienced such horrible conditions.. not even on "Iceface" in New York. You know it is bad when you smack the skiing surface with your pole and you nearly hit yourself in the eye as the pole bounces back up.

Last weekend there was snow, but you sure couldn't see it. I think this must be how skiers ascend into heaven:

Last night I saw Jesus Christ Superstar for the first time on stage. Come to think of it, I've never seen the movie in its entirety either. I tried watching it, but they lost me when the Roman guards were dressed like Lord Dark Helmet's guards from Spaceballs.

Having said that, seeing this musical on stage has been on my list since college. As with most musicals I love, I know all the music by heart. I was really looking forward to putting a "visual" with the "audio."

Despite the fact that I have this rock opera memorized, I never realized that the "narrator" of the story is Judas. Pretty brilliant angle on the whole thing, in my opinion.

The main selling point in the advertising for this production was that Ted Neely, the guy who played Jesus in the movie (in 1973) was resurrecting (no pun intended) his role. If you do the math, that means that last night, Jesus was 67. I didn't think that would bother me so much until I saw a 20 something Mary Magdalene fawning all over him. To be honest, that was pretty creepy. No disrespect to Ted, but at times he looked kinda like a homeless guy. And then I started worrying that he might break a hip while being tossed around by the guards.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the audience who had these thoughts. Ted brought the house down every time he came out on stage. I got the distinct impression that he has a bit of a cult following. I mean...he's 67...playing a man half his age. Your fans must really love you to forgive that age difference.

This is my last "Portuguese" post. In closing, I'm putting up the rest of my favorite photos from the trip. Hope you enjoy.

It is not possible to go hungry in Portugal. Not only is the food extremely delish (they cook almost everything in some kind of bacon fat) but the portions are generous.. and sometimes, downright frightening.

Here is a photo of a dinner I ordered. On the menu, it was called, "Pork, Portuguese Style." Single serving. To give you an even better sense of scale, the tomato slices on this dish are from normal sized tomatoes.. not "plum" tomatoes.



Consider the photo above the "before" picture.

Now for the "after" picture.



I swear that I worked on that pile of pork for at least 20 minutes. Here is the "doggie bag" that I got to take home and obviously didn't even come close to finishing the next night either:

Portuguese guidebooks warn tourists that the Portuguese drivers are a little crazy. Actually, they are a lot FAST. I really wanted to get a video of this, but I was never quite fast enough. What I do have a picture of is a classic example of what is considered to be an acceptable parking spot to the Portuguese.



I have so many issues with this I don't know where to start. But at the very least, if you are going to go to the trouble of parking on the sidewalk, make it a sizable one...

Almost from day one of my trip, I was fascinated by Portugal's pastries. Not that I've never had European pastries before.. far from it... I've just never experienced YELLOW food quite like this before. Many pastries were covered in something that was extremely bright yellow... and it wasn't icing. By the end of my stay, I had figured out that it was egg custard... which had been my first guess.. but what threw me off was sometimes this stuff looked like shredded fake American cheddar cheese, which definitely gave me pause..

When you walk around the food markets in Portugal, you kinda get the sense that they prefer buying food they can look in the eye: