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:

One thing I really wanted to do while in Portugal was to do some port tasting. Unfortunately, I was neither in the right place in the country nor at the right time of year to do that.... easily. I had a vision in my head of walking into either a bar or an official tasting room and having a go at this "national" beverage. After several days of wandering around the countryside aimlessly hoping to stumble across such an establishment, I finally decided it was best to take matters into my own hands rather than continue to depend on chance.

I went to the hotel's front desk and asked the following question:

"Where can I go to try some different types of port?"

To which the very eager young man working the desk replied with an, "Ah!" and pulled out a map. This appeared promising already and I started to get excited.

With his pen, he circled a town that I was planning on visiting already that day. "EXCELLENT!" I cried. And before I had a chance to ask him to elaborate on this information so that I might get a more specific location, he circled another town... and then another.... at which point I realized with disappointed amusement that he had misunderstood my question. I tried to clarify my request:

"Yeah.. uhmmm.. When I said "port," I meant the drink... not where there are lots of boats and fish."

He apologetically explained that there is no such thing in the off season. I, still not deterred, discovered another way to skin this cat. It is called a liquor store. And "souvenir sized" port samples. (think mini bar). With these, the glamorous "PortLine" was created.



Honestly, I was very impressed with this solution. I was pretty fired up about drinking down the line... I had even written a score card ceremoniously into the "Notes" Section in the back of my Lonely Planet. And then came time to crack open the first mini bottle and the top just wouldn't come off, resulting in a new use for the corkscrew:



You are probably wondering how port is served in this situation. I like to think that when using this method, there is no need to wait for the port to breathe before sipping it. It has gotten plenty of air time.

The last time I went to mainland Europe, I was just barely above drinking age, so I may have just not been paying that close attention... but it did come as a bit of a surprise to me on this trip that every cafe also served booze. And a lot of it. All kept thinking was.. how much more popularity could Starbucks handle if it started adding booze to their already very addicting drug...

In case you were wondering which American sports team rules supreme in Portugal, here is your answer.

Portugal is a pretty narrow country. Driving to Spain was entirely too tempting. What was disappointing was there wasn't a checkpoint at the boarder to get a passport stamp. But the bridge was pretty though.

Sagres is the most Western tip of Portugal... it is a town that likes to think it is the "tip" of Europe. Where explorers like Henry the Navigator took off from. The cliffs, lighthouse and fort off this "Continent Corner" are really spectacular.









As you can see, the cliffs are quite tall and sheer. So they obviously make a very desirable fishing spot.



This daredevil was not the only one fishing off the cliffs. I asked the guy running the ticket booth for the fort how many fishermen are lost each year to the cliffs. "Not many," came the response.

No trip to a coastal region would be complete without a boat trip. This boat trip was pretty cold, but the photos were worth it. And yes, those are flamingos.

One of my first stops was to Sintra, a dramatic town just outside Lisbon. This town is NOT in the Algarve, but it was too pretty to pass up despite being pretty jetlagged. This town has a palace and a castle built into a hillside. If you ever have a chance to go there, do.

Portugal's Southern Coast is called, "The Algarve" and it is an exceptionally popular summer vacation spot. Obviously, I didn't go there in the summer. So I did expect there to be fewer people there than at the height of their tourist season. What I didn't expect was for the place to be more or less empty. The town where I stayed was a virtual ghost town. The hotel's beach and pool area were totally deserted.





Most of the shops, restaurants and bars were closed. Period. And the ones that WERE open.. well... let's just say, getting good service was never an issue.



Video does an even better job of illustrating this... here is the only bar/nightclub that was open on the main drag. At about 8pm on a Wednesday night. And I realize that most bars are not exactly heaving with people on a Wednesday night at 8pm, but this is impressive:




Now, I was staying in a hotel where I know there were other people staying. I saw several in passing in the elevators. I confirmed with the hotel that they did indeed have other guests. About mid-vacation, I figured out just where everybody was. At the hotel's nightly Bingo game. No joke. Saw the most people (whether they were locals or tourists) in one place during my entire stay in Portugal at a Bingo bar:

Nativity scenes are also extremely popular. They are literally EVERYWHERE. I'm not even remotely exaggerating here. Sure, every town had its own "big" one... but every shop, hotel, church, etc had at least one as well.

This one was a "live" one... I realize it is empty at the moment, but the animals were on a "break."



This one is a "mini" nativity that has a bit of a "diarama" quality:



Here, despite nativities being 3D by nature, this one tried really hard not to be:



This store clearly thinks that the kings and shepards who visited the baby Jesus were very tall fashionable Portugese women.



This one was in a firehouse. It took a whole fire engine parking space.