A Quiet Moment in Rainy Lisbon

As much as trips are made up of visits to Notre Dame or the Pyramids or the Great Wall or Petra, in the end I think they are defined by smaller, quieter moments.  I suspect this is probably true because they are the personal moments, not the collective moments of standing in front of the Taj Mahal.  There are so many moments, more than I deserve, to share here: waiting out a monsoon rain with my great friend Raj in a little Persian restaurant in Mumbai; grabbing a beer with my friend Cyndi in the Cave Bar (an actual cave) outside the entrance to Petra in Jordan; watching Troll Hunter with Laura at the Abu Dhabi film festival; ruminating on life with Kimberly while overdosing on sangria and olives in Barcelona; lunch with John at his desk in Mumbai; seeing the look on Jen's face when she saw St. Stephen's cathedral for the first time as we rode the escalator up out of the Vienna metro; talking to Taylor about God in the King Abdullah Mosque in Amman; sitting at the rooftop restaurant with Steve and Kombo in Petra - it goes on and on.  This last trip featured several wonderful moments, but the one that jumps to mind.  It was Thursday, our first day in Lisbon, and we had run the students all over hell and back.  We started the day with breakfast at the WLFT Hostel, and then walked them up to the top of the hill to spend several hours at the St. George Castle, which included shopping and lunch.  After that it was back to the hostel to get ready for dinner, which gave me the opportunity to go track down the other local train station and get tickets.  Then we walked the students, briskly, to the train station (more on all of this later) to catch our train to Cascais for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and then back to the hostel.  By then it was getting late and the students were exhausted, so they either went to sleep or played cards or watched Netflix (there are far worse things than travelling with Champlain students, they are dependably and delightfully nerdy).  However, Mike and I felt that we owed it to Lisbon to have a nightcap, so we left the students in the capable hands of Kelly and ventured out into a pouring rain (it was Lisbon after all). We walked a couple minutes around the corner and found the one place still, grudgingly, open.  Mike and I sat under the awning which mostly kept us dry and had a drink - I'll have to ask Mike the name again - it was sort of a mojito gone crazy with limes.  We talked about teaching and philosophy and literature and music and life, and it was a wonderful stolen moment with a close friend.  Eventually they herded us out, after first passively-aggressively removing the space heater - and when they found out that we were made of sterner stuff they just asked us to leave.  It may have been my favorite moment of an extraordinary trip.

Looking out into the cold rain.  If you walked across the square and took a right you'd hit our hostel in about three minutes.

As the excellent Mike might opine, shit just got real.