So, it may have escaped my previous blog posts, but Jess and I aren't actually here in Europe for an international joy ride. I mentioned very briefly in my first post that Jess was given a research grant by our University to study in Portugal. Specifically, she's researching Elizabeth Stetson. Elizabeth was the third husband on John B. Stetson, the man who invented the hat of the same name and the man for whom our university is named. The school was started by Henry Deland, for whom our town is named, but John B. Stetson was a friend and when the school had money troubles he paid the way so Deland named the school after him. That's a little background you didn't need, but the person Jess is studying is specifically Elizabeth. Elizabeth was Stetson's third wife, but the one who outlived him. Originally a poor country girl, she was spotted by Stetson during a performance at church where he fell in love with her. He died while she was still quite young, which wasn't shocking as he was 30 years older than her, so she eventually remarried a Portuguese count, Alexio, the Count of Santa Eulalia. With the second marriage she had Stetson's fortune and Alexio's title, so she was living it up! Alexio died before Elizabeth as well, which upset her quite a bit, so she moved to California to live with her son George Stetson until she too died.
That looks like a lot of information, but honestly it's taken forever to wrangle up any of that. Nothing at all was really known about Elizabeth Stetson despite how many contributions she made to the university so Jess's senior project is to assemble a clear narrative and timeline of her life, considering her life as important a legacy to Stetson University as her first husband and Henry Deland's. That has been no easy task, but one huge piece missing is her whole life in Portugal! No one knows anything about it, even where she lived! Jess knew from her research that she lived in a 100 room castle that sources claim to be in Gloria "overlooking Lisbon." We discovered here that that's a total lie. The Gloria part, not the 100 room bit. All we've had to go on is a postcard with a picture of the castle's outside and the newspaper bits claiming it was in Gloria, but the discovery of a book from a cousin of the Count's says Alexio inherited a castle in Porto called Paco de Gloria! The newspapers obviously assumed the name Gloria meant it was in Gloria and misakenly printed a lie. So we know where the castle is! Great! We are staying where the castle isn't. Not great. In fact we're on the complete opposite side of the country. Corroios is in the south while Porto is in the north. Still, the archives are in Lisbon, which we needed to visit, so it isn't a complete waste!
We dedicated the day to visiting the archives of Lisbon, or the Torra de Tombo. I had sandwiches and goodies packed the night before but we slept in until about 10:00am so we weren't out the door until 11:00am. We walked towards the train station and attempted to use the machine to reload our Zapping cards or whatever, but we couldn't figure it out so we has to see the ticket attendant. She was super nice and told us on the way back that we had to tap into the machine identical to the one's we used here before we left the Lisbon station. Seemed simple enough so off we went! We rode the Roma-Areeiro - Sebtual towards Roma-Areeiro (which we only knew to do because the lady told us to go to Line 2) and rode 4 stops until we got to Entrecampos. There we were supposed to take a metro from Campo Pequeno to Cidade Universitaria but the walk was only 10-20 minutes and we came to Portugal to see Portugal, not the metro. We had a lovely stroll across the street from a park we decided to walk through on our way back and actually managed to not get lost on our way to the archives!
When we got there there were people hanging around the doors so we thought they were either locked or the wrong doors and went to find another entrance. Upon finding none we realized we were being silly and walked past the people huddled around the door to enter the building. A security guard inside got us sorted out, checking our ID's and giving us a paper pass to use the archives. He also gave us a key to the lockers because bags and purses aren't permitted. We happily obliged, taking only Jessica's phone for notes, and followed his directions up the stairs with two rights to speak with the reference workers. There was a language barrier there but the woman we spoke to helped us to use a website that locates documents in the archives. We only found one item of use listed, a set of letters between the Count and Countess and requested a Consoltation with the item. That meant we had to take another slip and go to a room on the other side of the building where they locate the document(s) and give them to you to look at and study at a desk. Jess and I were seated at desk 65 and waited about 30 minutes for the letters to be found and brought to our desk.
'Letters' is the correct term to use, but only barely. 4,000 miles of travel, several thousand dollars spent, and we were presented with 2 letters. One from the count and one from the countess, neither to each other. Still, 2 letters is something so we transcribed the two short letters as best we could given that the count's letter was written in Portuguese. Elizabeth's letter was from her American home congratulating someone on their choice of person for hire, meanwhile Alexio's we didn't transcribe yet, but does mention John B. Stetson Jr. which is of interest! That being done we handed the letters back and exited the building, quite proud of a job well done! The Torra de Tombo is right next to a university so Jess and I took a walk before finding somewhere to sit and eat our sandwiches. We discussed full-volume what the letters meant, literally and in terms of the research, while contemplating visiting the physical castle in the coming days.
Following our quaint meal we walked back through the park which was just darling! There was a climbable Spider Pyramid we both just had to play on and an assortment of sculptures which were total Kodak moments! It was nice to get out of the house and exlore a little of Portugal and we both appriciated the fresh air! Eventually we found our way back to the train station where we got a little confused once again about the correct line to take. We'd taken the Line 2 in, but Line 4 said it was going to Coina which I remembered from our first day arriving had been the direction we needed to go. We ended up tapping our Zapping cards twice when we switched lines which I hoped didn't matter as we switched lines. We chose the Coina one and it was the correct train, learning at the Corroios station that the lines are different at all the station and what was Line 4 at Entrecampos was Line 2 in Corroios!
When we left the train, however, we ran into the same problen as our first day with the tickets not letting us out! An attendant came to help us and did the same thing the last attendant had to let us in. When we got through we checked our balance and saw we'd both lost 2 more euro than we were supposed to. The friendly woman from the morning was still there though and asked us what Verification stand we had tapped in at. We said the green one and she told us that was for the wrong line. The ones identical to the machines at the station were the ones we needed to tap into. We felt very silly even though she said it happens all the time to native Portuguese people, but we were still out 4 euros for our foolishness.
Not overly bummed about it Jess and I hit the shop again on the way home to pick up some more food (we'd run out of bread because of all the toast) then returned to our usual pattern of dividing the house into our own spaces. Dinnertime I made the rest of the pizza on the stove and more peas and we watched Modern Family while we sorted the next days castle trip out. A snafu occurred then though. We discovered there are no trains or metros listed that take people from Lisbon to Porto but the Paco de Gloria website claims trains and metros basically arrive on the property. Confused by the whole matter Jess elected to call the Paco de Gloria the following day to see if they had any information to offer her. That being handled we returned to watching our programs in seperate rooms until we both fell asleep! A job well done for the day, even if we did pay 4 extra euros to get just 2 letters. Thats research for you though!
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