Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon was our last stop in Europe, before returning home to Singapore.

We were here for a week, but we were not here for fun. Deanna had to attend a business conference during the day, and I spent most of the day in my hotel room working remotely from my laptop.

I don't have any good pictures of the hotel room because it was too stylish to photograph.

Like a ninja. Our hotel room was completely black. So much black that there was no reflected light. So much black that even in the bright of day, with the blinds open and the room lights on, you couldn't see yourself well enough to shave in the bathroom mirror.

Not just the guest rooms, Deanna said the conference rooms were also all black.

See, this hotel was a self-described "style hotel." And to prove it, they made sure that their style superseded your function. They celebrated the geometric flat surface of the bathroom walls and doors by refusing to install hooks or towel racks. And to make sure you keep your towels to yourself, they made the doors go all the way to the ceiling so you couldn't even drape your towel over the door.

They suffered no power outlets or handles or knobs or any other clumsy devices that might interrupt the perfect flatness of the perfectly black walls.

Even our room number was banned from the door. You had to look along the floor to find your room. Walking to your room was a featureless corridor of black. Like a morgue. Or Princess Leia's prison cell on the Death Star.

Other useful things for which the stylish have no need: irons and ironing boards. I don't know about you, but when I travel for business, one of the first things I do when I arrive is unpack my business shirts and give them a quick touch up with the iron. Feel free to call the cleaning service.

One plus: they had good wireless internet access (extra charge), and I was able to work without too much trouble once I also discovered how to access the concealed power outlets.

It was a strange hotel, but it was was comfortable and it made a good jumping-off point to see Lisbon because it was just a short walk to the local metro station.

In addition to seeing Lisbon, I made one day trip out to Sintra, which was about an hour's train ride east.

I had never heard of Sintra before. But when we were back in Barcelona, the clerk at the hotel said that Sintra was the most beautiful place in Portugal, and we had to see it. So I did.

But mostly I went there to see the castles.

Everybody loves castles, don't they? Especially boys like me who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and medieval war games. But its not just us Ren-Faire geeks and gamer boys. You will find tourists of all persuasions out to see the castles.

Its not just the castle itself that draws you, but everything that a castle implies: swords and shields, knights in armor, moats and siege engines. Everything that castles were built to withstand, all of the manual and mechanical devices of medieval warfare that became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder.

For some reason, it seems more romantic, more honorable to fight wars with swords instead of guns. And castles represent this romantic ideal. As the great sage, Kool Moe Dee, teaches:

Guns, we don't like to use them
Unless, our enemies choose them
We prefer to fight you on like a man
And beat you down with our hands