I like eating meals off pieces of art. This is why I buy ceramics when we visit other countries — every plate is a portal back to the shop, the village, the conversation in halting Portuguese. I feel so strongly about this that I keep a Goodwill backup supply for the interim when something accidentally breaks and is past kintsugi-ing.
So I went back to Lisbon, alone, to stock up.
It was winter, so I planned for rain. To save space for ceramics, I didn't pack my proper wellie boots (I own two pairs!) or even a raincoat. My solution was smarter: a tent-poncho contraption from Amazon that came with rubber shoe coverings and — critically — vacuum-sealed in a Ziploc. Pack flat. Carry ceramics home.
The rain solution worked, technically. It kept me dry. It also made me look, as I would only later discover, exactly like the Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2.
I didn't know this for six hours. The shopkeepers I bought ceramics from didn't bat an eye. The waiter at lunch didn't blink when I peeled off the rubber shoe coverings at the table. None of the locals gave me a second look. It was only when I caught my reflection in the apartment mirror, dripping, that I understood how relentlessly polite Lisboetas had been all afternoon.
The one bad thing about traveling alone is that there's no one to tell you how absurd you look before you leave the house.
The photograph is a reenactment. I called my husband when I got home — I was laughing too hard to type — and put the whole getup back on for him in our kitchen.
Most of the ceramics I carried home as Pigeon Lady have since broken. The Goodwill backups are doing their job. But the one piece left from that trip is the small bowl in the photo, and every time I use it I think about how kind Portugal was to a soaking wet American in a rain tent.
Time to plan another trip.