Major health setback and meaning making

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

This is a difficult post to write. The severe pain, which started in the early Summer, turns out to have a severe underlying explanation. I have adjacent segment disease, where the vertebrae adjacent to a spinal fusion are degenerating. In my case, as I am fused from T12-L4, my L4-L5 vertebrae are doing things they shouldn’t be doing. In my case, L4 is sticking way the hell out (the medical term is anterolishesis) and in my MRIs it looks like I am about to topple over. The arthropothy and anterolisthesis in my L4-L5 has created severe stenosis, which is why I have been experiencing this pain. The neurosurgeon proposed (strongly suggested) a spinal fusion of L4 to my pelvis because if they just fused L4 and L5, the same thing would happen all over again with the next verterba down. The surgery was initially going to be ~4.5–5.5 hrs, but a CT scan revealed one of the screws in my existing hardware is loose (through no fault of the surgeon; it is just because L4 is failing), so they have to go in and replace all of the screws. This will make the surgery last more like six hours. In order to avoid all the scar tissue I have in my back, the neurosurgeon is going to first go in via the front. I don’t think I will feel good each time I have to look at that scar :( Then they have to flip me over and go in through the back to screw and replace screws. The recovery time is long: three months until you can return to any light clerical work (due to pain and fatigue) and around 8-12 months for full recovery.

When I first saw my MRI, even before I met with the neurosurgeon, I thought the situation was much less severe and that they would just need to do a laminectomy and L4-L5. Aren’t you so glad you are learning all this terminology? Even that made me cry initially. The neurosurgeon’s diagnosis hit me very hard. I cried and cried because I could recall the pain (spinal fusion is one of the most painful surgeries to recover from), being in the hospital with the thin sheet as a blanket in agony. But really, I cried because I felt like my world had grown smaller because of activities I will have to avoid. I only recently realized that there is a lot of medical trauma I have yet to process. For example, there is something about lying prone on my front and having sharp things, like needles and blades (acupuncture doesn’t count), against my low back. I recently had a caudal epidural steroid injection to try and help alleviate the pain, and I, spontaneously, started crying in the middle of the procedure. I explained to the doctors I was crying for emotional reasons, not because of pain.

But as I write this blog post, I am feeling calmer about things (I would not go so far as sanguine). This experience has made me think of meaning-making. In this context, it can be defined as the ability to find meaning in hardships and incorporate them into your life story. This aids resilience because it gives those hardships purpose. I am trying to think of how I am going to grow from this (enormous) life road bump, thrive even. I was able to do so after my big accident, but I am not sure I have the same fight in me at 42 years old as I did when I was 29. Maybe I should not view this surgery and its recovery as a battle. But even if I have accepted all this, how should I move through this experience? It is certainly not going to be with grace or extreme stoicism. I feel like all I can do is accept that this is going to be very very hard, but when times are particularly tough (i.e., painful), I can remind myself that this is not permanent and that the pain, feelings of helplessness, etc., will pass. All this has the potential to help me improve the traits of adaptability, hope, and self-esteem. Ideally, I will use a growth mindset to process these difficulties and trauma.

Northern Spain

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

I would never have had Northern Spain on my radar had I not competed in the IFSC World Sport Climbing Championships in 2014, which was held in Gijon. I really needed a break at the end of the summer and was deciding between the Azores and Northern Spain. In the end, I opted for the lazier option, as the Azores required planning around ferries between islands and that sort of thing. I had (and still am) been dealing with back and sacral pain and for a while, I was not sure if I could even go. As usual, I decided, fuck it, let’s do it.

We based ourselves in Oviedo in Asturias and San Sebastiàn/Donostia (in Basque). Oviedo is not a place on many tourist’s radars and Northern Spain is certainly different geographically, climate-wise, and culturally in some ways to the rest of Spain – I dig it. The weather was not very cooperative but we managed to achieve our aims of going to beaches and hiking while in Oviedo. Oviedo is a great base; not too far from beautiful beaches and decent hiking nearby. We wanted to go to Picos de Europa but it was a bit far and the hike we wanted to do would have been just a mud bath.

Somiedo
Playa Amio y Ballota (I think this one was Ballota)

Because both mountains and the ocean are important to me, having them both be proximate was wonderful. Really makes me think about moving there…not quite sure how though given my current work and school situation :-/

San Sebastiàn (Donostia in Basque) was very different. I loved how proud the Basque are of maintaining their culture. I mean, they are only one million people or so, yet they maintain their language and traditions. San Sebastiàn looked like an older, wealthy, but grungy city. I’m sure people love the narrow winding alleys filled with places to get pintxo. The place is, after all, the food capital of the world. That is not what draws me to the city. Really, it’s the beaches nearby.

Zurriola – a surfing beach on the edge of San Sebastiàn

I will admit, there was a sense of longing, sadness, and loss…that I would never be able to surf again. I am not 100% sure that is true. Guess I will not know until I try, but I’m not sure where.

The other main beaches in town are La Concha and Onderetta. The former is very long and seems to be the “town beach”, which is pretty ace. The latter seemed a bit lower-key. I really enjoyed morning swims at both. It’s a pretty great lifestyle; wake up, walk to the beach for a swim, get breakfast (that isn’t expensive), and then settle into the work day. Trying to figure out how I can make that happen but, again, the licensure requirements for becoming a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) make things very complicated.

Perhaps I am wrong, but whenever I am in Europe (especially Portugal, Spain, Italy) I sense that people’s attitudes towards disability are different to those of North America. I feel that I am less open about my accident and explaining my disabilities, 1. because of the language barrier, and 2. feeling like people just won’t understand. E.g., why I have to consistently miss dinner parties because I am dealing with my bowels. It also seems like people with disabilities are more “hidden”. Perhaps that is because accessibility is a real issue in these areas. Of course, the task of making old towns and cities more accessible is more challenging than young cities in America, where, for one, space is less of an issue. Other European countries seem to have fantastic infrastructure for people with disabilities, e.g., Norway? People’s attitudes towards disability are a significant factor in deciding where I want to eventually live.

Climbing is not a silver bullet

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

For the longest time, I relied on climbing for purpose and as a way to distract myself from my problems. The intense focus required was a respite from the lack of direction in other parts of my life. I wish I had had a healthier relationship with climbing and used it to enrich my life, rather than be my life. I think my interest in climbing has partly waned as a result of my newfound psychotherapy career path. I am also daunted by the huge amount of training I would need to put in to get myself into satisfactory climbing shape and I am currently debating whether that would be a good use of my time. That being said, I do miss many aspects of climbing, like being in excellent physical shape and that wonderful feeling of flow in my movements. It is also a great way to meet people and I have been pretty lonely lately.

One thing I have to be cautious about, if I am to start climbing again, is my relationship with food. Eating disorders pervade climbing, especially amongst female climbers. When I was competing, or even just climbing a ton, I was undereating to maintain competition weight. Because I don’t have full use of my left leg, I felt that my weight was critical because I had fewer body parts to bear it. While I loved the way my clothes fit, this way of eating and thinking wasn’t really sustainable. Climbers are starting to have conversations about eating disorders and climbing, but the recent resignations of International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC) Medical Commission officials due to inaction around eating disorders in climbing shows that we still have a very long way to go.

Wheelchair tennis

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I had been wanting to explore sports where I could compete at a high level again (my climbing glory days have passed). I thought that playing lots of tennis growing up and into my twenties would increase the likelihood of me enjoying wheelchair tennis. Like most things, I decided to just dive right in and start by attending a three-day, 18 hours, wheelchair tennis camp organized by the USTA. Almost all the other attendees were competitive/nationally ranked players, so I fitted right in.

I felt like I was doing a Rachel Dolezal by being ambulatory and in a wheelchair, but learned that a lot of players are mobile and can just get out of their chairs and walk.

Photo credit: USTA

Wheelchair tennis really is 90% wheelchair skills and 10% racquet skills. And my wheelchair skills were/are APPALLING. The thing I probably had the most difficulty with was holding the racquet in my hand at all times while pushing the wheelchair rims. Not surprisingly, the thing I was most adept at and picked up the quickest was serving while in a wheelchair.

Wheelchair fit is everything. I got to borrow the coach’s super fancy chair for the event. Photo credit: USTA

At the end of the camp, my assessment was: wheelchair tennis is not the sport for me. I didn’t like how the sport made my body feel. My body wasn’t tired in satisfying ways and I felt very confined and restricted (no doubt due to my shit wheelchair skills) and I didn’t like sitting in the chair for such long periods of time. Wheelchair tennis players have ginormous trapezoids, while I like having a neck. It was a disappointing outcome, which means I am still on the lookout for fun parasports, or sports where I can perform as well as an able-bodied person.

Oh, Canada!

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have spent the last few winters in Canmore, Alberta, a town in the Canadian Rockies. As Canadian winters are long, this adds up to quite a bit of time. My main motivation is to ski. I originally decided on Canmore because I knew from my visit in 2016 the area was beautiful, but also because I had such a difficult time finding affordable, long-term accommodation in U.S. ski towns. Remaining in the U.S. would have been much simpler logistically (e.g., medication prescriptions, cathing supplies, etc.) This part of the Rockies does not get the same puking amounts of snow as British Columbia, but the precipitation is fairly consistent and temperatures remain low so that the snow is light and dry and stays around. It really is not uncommon to experience temperatures -40 degC. Canadians really do know how to handle extreme cold.

Rawson Lake. So much amazing hiking near Canmore.
View from Grassi Lakes trail. The trailhead is literally 20 minutes away from the apartment I stay in.

Alberta is supposedly the Wild West of Canada but at least in the Bow Valley area (Canmore, Banff…) people seem pretty liberal and sensible. Or, at least not bat-shit crazy like so many people in this country. I really appreciate societies that view healthcare and education as universal human rights.

I also appreciate the fact that snow sports seem to be much more democratic in Canada because lift ticket prices, while not cheap, aren’t as prohibitive as U.S. resorts. It’s always an internal struggle between enjoying a sport so much but also being aware huge swaths of the population are excluded due to financial barriers.

That’s why I appreciate Rocky Mountain Adaptive so much, an organization that aims to lower barriers (physical, cognitive, financial, etc.) so that more people get to enjoy the outdoors. I’ll save that for another post.

I’m back.

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

It’s only been, oh, only five years since I have written anything. My absence can be attributed to health issues and their associated mental health effects. I have also travelled a lot since and it felt a bit overwhelming to try and document all these travels, as well as many major life events.

What really initiated my hermitude was my bowels deciding to stop working. This was likely due to the heavy course of antibiotics required to save my life during my very close call with sepsis in 2016. Managing my bowels became a nightmare and I retreated indoors and into myself to try and avoid embarrassing and humiliating accidents in public. The situation got to the point where I attempted suicide because I was just done dealing with all that shit, pun intended. My bowel situation has achieved a steady state, where I have adapted (or maybe the better term is conditioned) and am no longer feeling suicidal about it. It has been limiting though and there is a lot of sadness associated with some things I can’t do anymore, such as hopping on a sailboat and sailing around the world at a moment’s notice. There is a lot more planning involved (e.g., adjusting bowel schedules days ahead in anticipation of events), having the necessary supplies on hand (no travelling light anymore), and so on. Sometimes, I feel angry that I have to deal with all this and that it takes up so much mental energy and time. I actually haven’t even been camping, something I love, since my bowel situation worsened.

Another exciting medical event occurred when it turned out I had a raging bone infection (osteomyelitis) in my pelvis. Several symptoms presented themselves but I had no clue what the cause was. For example, I was eating about 4000-5000 calories a day and still staying under 100 pounds. I was also going hypoglycemic frequently, despite eating vast quantities of food. The hypoglycemia was bad in that it often hit me while I was skiing. I would lose my sense of balance and not even be able to make it down green or blue runs. Ski patrol was called out a few times to get me off the mountain. That was embarrassing. Initially, I thought it might be a thyroid issue but the results returned normal. It was only because I had decided to remove the steel rods in my pelvis because of some irritation I was experiencing that the surgeon discovered the osteomyelitis. A routine 30-minute procedure ended up taking several hours as he debrided the infected bone. If osteomyelitis progresses too far, amputation can sometimes be required, so it was fortunate they caught the infection when they did. My orthopaedic surgeon hypothesized that bacteria entered my body via the massive surgery to collect the pieces of my pelvis together (my climbing accident in 2010). Apparently, bacteria sitting on metal can lie dormant for a very long time before deciding to make their presence known. In my case, it was 8 years.

One great thing about the bone infection was the ability to eat vast quantities of food without putting on weight. This was part of my breakfast before skiing. I ate all that, had some very caloric snacks about 1.5 hours later, and still bonked.

I bounced back, as I tend to do, and have travelled to Portugal several times, Italy a few times, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, the French Alps, Myanmar, and Hong Kong since. Too many pictures to post here. I am heading to Northern Spain in a few weeks too.

The Slovenian cows are not amused. (WordPress’s failure to centre these captions is highly vexing).

I have also been spending winters in Canada for the last few years. Why am I going in the opposite direction to everyone else? Canadian border control wonder the same. Well, for one, it is nice to be among somewhat sensible people for a change. But mainly, it’s because I like to ski and have been skiing with an amazing organization called Rocky Mountain Adaptive (RMA). That will be another post on its own as there is much to say. I was a pretty good skier before I started skiing and volunteering with them, but my skiing technique and awareness have reached new heights since. I have been living in Canmore, Alberta, a town set in the beautiful Canadian Rockies, for close to 6 months of the year when I am in Canada. Again, I will post separately on my experiences travelling to/from and living there.

This is just along the boardwalk from where I live to downtown. It is crazy that all this is literally the view from town.
The iconic Three Sisters. This is the view from just outside the apartment I stay in.

Oh, I also got a Masters in Psychology and am more than halfway through getting my Masters in Social Work because I want to become a psychotherapist. I chose to become a licensed clinical social worker over a PsyD purely for economic reasons. The cost of higher education in the U.S. really is criminal. I have been doing this all while working so that is another reason for not writing. It really is silly to have three Masters, versus just getting a doctorate, but that’s just how my life unfolded.

I also have the best dog ever. And I say that completely objectively. I am sure he could have his own social media profile but I am too lazy. He is simultaneously super friendly and a bit timid. He contains multitudes :) He is of quite average intelligence but has the most wonderful personality.

Rudy likes to quietly sit and watch
Rudy has SIX beds
Rudy has very expressive ears

I suppose I have had lots of cool experiences in the last few years. It sounds ungrateful, but sometimes I am not impressed or really joyful because they aren’t adventures in the physical sense. I feel quite sedentary and middle-aged at times and wonder whether I have the same motivation and yearnings for such adventures. I feel the answer is Yes but I don’t really have anyone to do these with. I don’t know whether I want to devote so much time and energy to climbing as I have done in the past. Even after all these years, it has been difficult to find a substitute that fulfils me in the same way. I’ve started to stand-up paddle board surf, which is tricky with my weak leg, but it isn’t the same. That being said, my unusual career shift could be considered an adventure. I don’t know anyone else who was an engineer, now working in the sustainable investing space, turned therapist!

Anyway, I just wanted to say a very belated Hello and give you all a large virtual hug.

Feature in Base Camp Magazine

/ Wendy Ong / 4 Comments

I am always astonished by the people who happen to stumble across my blog. One such person was Cass Légér, the Editor of Base Camp Magazine. Taken by my life and stories, she reached out and asked if I could write an article about my accident and road to recovery and back to my life in the mountains. I am usually pretty prompt about attending to tasks and matters in my life but, for some reason, when it comes to writing about myself, I put things off till the very last minute. I know exactly why. So much has happened in my life; so much tragedy and joy, so many emotions and feelings experienced. The volume and enormity of these events and emotions are so overwhelming that the idea of attempting to convey even a sliver of it all is almost paralyzing (no awful pun intended).

I am really glad that Cass’s offer forced me to write this little piece. I do not think I find writing to be cathartic. But the process of writing always helps organize my thoughts and notice how I can go from being completely clinical about things to unexpected weeping. Writing for an audience who will quickly lose interest in a verbose, rambling article discussing every single detail forced me to prioritize and be selective about what I wrote about. I hope you enjoy reading the final article.

Quick Chile trip recap

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

Outrigger power

As usual, there has been considerable delay in my brief write-up of my brief trip to Chile in early August. It took a full 24 hours of travel each way, from Boston to Las Trancas. South America is big! I think people outside of South America don’t realize how large even countries like Peru and Bolivia are.

The group accommodation was simple and very pleasant. It seems like there are a ton of accommodation options in this town.

Unfortunately, the weather gods were not on our side. It was raining half the time, and when it was snowing decently, the resort would stop running their lifts due to high winds. Certainly a bit of a bummer.

Not what you want to see during ski season

But I did get a day or two of decent skiing in. I also met another three-tracker in the group. It has never happened where I meet (1) someone who skis on one leg and ski, (2) Rips, too, (3) Skis on the same leg as I do. Holy shit, the trinity is complete!

I think we have a good shot at qualifying for the US National Synchronized Outrigger team. (Photo: Maria Peters)

We just look fuckin’ weird here (Photo: Maria Peters)

It is pretty cool to ski in August! And it was nice to visit Chile again; it has been a very long time since I was last in South America. As I am currently teaching myself Portuguese, my Spanish is totally mangled, and I spoke some kind of Portuguese/Spanish hybrid when I was in Las Trancas. I was able to get away with this because the area gets a lot of Brazilian skiers/tourists, so most folks there can speak some basic Portuguese.

An unfortunate health problem cropped up for me on this trip  and it made me wonder about what kind of medical care could I get in Chile, let alone a place like Las Trancas. Access to excellent health care and specialists is a huge factor in deciding where I will live, and that elicits a lot of negative feelings and emotions in me. I hate feeling and being limited in my choices.

I was pretty wrecked after so much travel, and connections in confusing airports (i.e. Santiago). It’s not that fun lugging around a huge ski bag twice my size around airports. I am very mobile given my disability. However, I was thinking the whole time about the difficulties someone less mobile than me would have in the same situation, and what assistance they would receive.

If you are making a connection in Santiago, the process and airport are very confusing. You might be approached by guides or people with official airport badges offering to help you.  They aren’t doing it to be nice; they expect a sizable tip.

I will be off to Portugal again soon. It is kind of cool to go from the Andes to sunny Portugal. I love contrast.

(Almost) Chile-bound – a hedge pays off

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like it when:

  • You cancel plans (say, climbing or skiing ones) because of forecasted weather but the weather ends up being favourable
  • Finding out the item/service/commodity you just bought went on sale shortly after your purchase
  • Make the decision to change airline travel plans e.g. because with imperfect information you are quite sure you will miss your connecting flight; don’t get on your original flight; and later find out you could have made your connecting flight, which would have saved you a great deal of trouble.

Fortunately, #3 did not happen today.

This round of travel involves many steps, all tightly interwoven and dependent on each other. Like blocks in an igloo. Or like this engineering marvel: a ring created out of Pringle chips. If you remove one chip, the entire structure collapses.

Getting to my final destination of Nevados de Chillán required:

  1. Flying from Boston to Miami
  2. Catching the connecting flight from Miami to Santiago, Chile
  3. Flying from Santiago (SCL) to Concepción (CCP), Chile
  4. Ground transport from Concepción to Las Trancas

Many steps: BOS to MIA to SCL to CCP to Nevados Chillán.

It was only when I was looking at why the travel time from Miami to Santiago was so much longer than I expected (~9 hours) that I learned just how large Colombia (440,800 sq. miles), Peru (496,200 sq. miles), and Bolivia (424,200 sq. miles) are in size! Texas (268,597 sq. miles) is super dinky in comparison.

Closer up of Chile stops/destination in relation to each other. Note the scale at the very bottom of the image.

As I write this, I should be in Miami by now with plenty of time to spare for my connecting flight to Santiago. But I’m not because I made the decision at the check-in counter to change my flight to be a full 24 hours later (same time tomorrow) based on estimates from non-airline (in this case, I am flying American Airlines) websites (e.g. Google which is based on FlightAware); forecasted weather for the next few hours and tomorrow; and predicting how a ton of flights were going to be backed up. The original departure time was supposed to be 1645 hr. This was pushed to 1730 hr this morning, which still gave me enough time to make the connection. We continued to check flight status right before leaving the apartment, and during the drive to the airport. AA continued to stand by this 1730 hr departure, despite predictions from FlightAware of a delay of over an hour. As of right now, this is the status of that flight:

Original departure time was 4.45p then 5.30pm. The plane still hasn’t taken off.

Of course, so that airlines can minimize the official delay time, the flight has been pushed off from the gate for a long time now, and just sitting on the runway waiting for takeoff, with passengers wanting to gouge their eyes out, I’m sure.

So yes, I can now feel vindicated about my decision, but it really was not clear at the time. Firstly, my SCL to CCP domestic flight was on  a separate ticket with a partner airline that would have been the same airline I would have flown had I kept that leg as an AA reservation. Nevertheless, AA could not make changes here. I did this to save a couple hundred dollars. Maybe the moral of this is to try and have all legs of a journey on one airline.

Before I made the decision to shift my departure to be 24 hours later, I needed to see if I could change my internal Chile flight and what this would cost. Comically, when I called LATAM customer service and tried to do this, the agent told me their system was down for maintenance. WTF. Who schedules maintenance on a fuckin’ weekday afternoon. So I didn’t know what was going to happen there. But I was also sure I was going to miss the connection in Miami so I’d just have to sort that out later.

The next complicating factor was travel insurance would likely not cover the additional and non-trivial expense of having to get a separate private shuttle from CCP to Las Trancas due to my late arrival, if my original flight actually had taken off in time to make my connection.

I might be wrong, but it seems like the pain and inconvenience of travel is rarely conveyed. On the whole, it is a relatively small price to pay for the reward of the destination and experience, but it is still very much a necessary evil to me. The neuropathy in my left leg from the Spinal Cord Injury, inability to sleep at all on planes (sleep is a big issue for me in every day life too), and the back pain from all the hardware holding me together makes me loathe/dread flying or any other kind of transportation that involves sitting for long periods of time.

I’m not thrilled that my layover in SCL is now 7+ hours instead of the original 4 hours as they did not have seats on the same flight the next day (I was told by the organizer that the whole process of disembarking, collecting bags, rechecking bags, and getting onto the domestic flight took them ~3 hours yesterday). But I would have been a lot more unhappy if I was stuck in Miami overnight or Santiago for who knows how long. I was lucky that Scott was there to drive me to the airport, wait with me to see how things transpired, and drive us back; and be able to sleep in my own bed tonight. As Tim (the organizer) said, you’re the best person in the whole group for this to have happened to. Yay, I’ll take one for the team.

In any case, I’ll be going back to Chile for very different reasons and under very different circumstances from 8 years ago when I was in Santiago. It will be an experience, that is for sure.

 

Portuguese food

/ Wendy Ong / Leave a comment

Despite being a foodie, I almost never blog about food. And I almost never take pictures of food.  But it would be remiss of me not to at least mention some aspects of the food we had in Portugal. Food is, of course, regional and our culinary experience was based on spending time in Lisbon, the Algarve, and Setúbal peninsula. I am looking forward to trying different foods in other parts of the country on our next trip.

As someone raised in Hong Kong who thinks Cantonese cuisine is one of the pinnacles of gastronomy, I really love and appreciate the emphasis on freshness, especially with respect to the seafood (which I also love and is my primary source of protein). That, and my fondness for soft, doughy, pillowy, eggy baked good means that Portuguese cuisine is a big win for me (unlike, say, Kazakh cuisine). Incidentally, the origins of all these eggy sweets comes from the convents and monasteries. The nuns/monks used the egg whites to starch clothing and the remaining egg yolks were utilized in baked goods.

It seems like the only pastry tourists know about is pastéis de nata (literally, cream pastry), which is unfortunate since there are so many other tasty Portuguese pastries (more on that later). Macau’s proximity to Hong Kong meant that I had been exposed to and ate Portuguese egg tarts quite a lot. But now I got to try it in the motherland! Had we not rented a car and if Belém was not somewhat on the way out of town to the Algarve, I would not have endured the 40 minutes each way on public transportation for these things. But events aligned and I wanted to see if all the hype about the egg tarts from Pastéis de Belém was warranted.

The birthplace of pastéis de nata was Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. This picture offers a better perspective of the monastery’s size.

Where it all began: Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a stone throw’s away from Pastéis de Belem

Arriving first thing on Saturday morning meant we did not have to deal with lines.

The famous Pastéis de Belem.

Upon entry, I noticed locals having their bica and pastry standing up at the counter. I like that this place in every tourist guidebook also caters to locals as well. Pastéis de Belem makes many other baked goods besides their famous pastéis de nata. The staff cranking these babies out work behind a large glass screen, which allows visitors to see them in action. Hopefully the glass screen does not make them feel like zoo animals.

Cranking pastéis de nata all day

The pastéis de nata looked good, but not extraordinary. That is, until we bit into them. The pastry was layered and flaky, and the custard warm and of perfect consistency. I would say, when warm, these egg tarts were the best I had on this trip. If they are cold, there are a lot of other places that produce just as good pastéis de nata.

Humble looking pastéis de nata bely their deliciousness

The space is huge. Clearly Pastéis de Belém caters to big tour groups

As I said earlier, I hope visitors to Portugal try more than just pastéis de nata, as there are many other delicious pastries. Sintra has their delicious queijada de Sintra. Another one is pastéis de feijão (bean pastry). Pastel de feijão usually comes in the form of a round tart with a marzipan-like filling (I know, kind of like queijadas). Fábrica Pastel de Feijão in Alfama has a different take on these.

Outdoor seating

Scott and Eric stumbled across this place totally by chance. When Scott waxed lyric about this place, I was, as usual, slightly skeptical. The pastel de feijão was outstanding. At €2.50 each, they are not cheap by Portuguese standards. It is a good way to prevent me buying them by the half/one dozen.

A totally different take on Pastel de Feijão. I like how the cardboard holder is optimized to transport the pastry and eat from one end.

Empires were built by the bean

Okay, enough of doces (sweets). The savory foods were what really got me loving Portuguese food. We had so many good experiences in many restaurants that I can’t list all of them. I think Portuguese food is quite simple in its preparation, but I enjoyed almost all the fish and shellfish (especially cuttlefish and octopus (polvo)) dishes I had. Arroz de polvo was our revelation of the trip. We had no idea about the dish before we arrived in Lisbon, and got to have it in octopus central (Santa Luzia and Tavira in the Algarve). It has also been cool to practice speaking Portuguese at the Portuguese fishmongers here (they are Portuguese American and speak perfectly fluent English; they are just humouring me most likely).

Scott’s friend, Erich, kindly booked us a table at the Michelin starred restaurant, Loco. We had the 18 course (they call them “moments” – yes, a bit gimmicky) menu, which is a record for me. There were a few standout dishes. I am not keen on land meat (okay, okay, a pig on an aircraft carrier doesn’t count) but still tried all the meat dishes. I admit, I had to pass almost all of the beef tongue to Scott and Erich.

This is actually choco (cuttlefish) with vegetarian “caviar”

One of the standouts for me: red fruit (including tomato) with red pepper sorbet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incidentally, we had really excellent Indian food in Lisbon. There is no shortage of Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese restaurants. I did find it a bit strange to see quite a few of these restaurants serving Italian food as well e.g. Indian Italian, Nepalese Italian. Is this a think in Portugal?

It seems like vegetables don’t play a starring role. I find this odd given what wonderful produce Portugal has. Even the vegetables as sides to the protein were kinda lame. The only vegetable dish/side I remember (because the rest were so insipid) is cenouras à Algarve (delicious). I will trying to seek out Portuguese vegetarian options next time round.

To me, Portuguese food is simple in its preparation. But that does not mean it is not super delicious. I think the simplicity of preparation techniques allows ingredients to shine. I am looking forward to eating new foods and old favourites on our next trip to Portugal.