“It would really mean a lot to your grandma if you visited Fatima while you’re in Portugal.”

Where? Oh right, there was some kind of Catholic miracle in Portugal a long time ago. My Irish Catholic grandparents are way into that kind of thing. I personally find Catholicism, which I was sort of half-assed raised in, to be one of the darker world religions. But to each their own. And good luck telling old Catholics that all that guilt is a waste of their life energy. It wasn’t really in my plan for Portugal, but what the hell, I can make time for a bus trip to Fatima if it makes grandma happy.

In 1916, three Portuguese children were tending their flock near the village of Fatima when they received the first of three visitations from the Angel of Peace, which is who visits you if you're not an asshole like Ebeneezer Scrooge. I’m not sure how they knew which angel it was, if it always shouted “PEACE!” as a way of saying goodbye when it left or what. These visits were followed in 1917 by a series of monthly visitations from an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who unlike the Angel of Peace probably had government ID. Mary visited the children on the 13th of every month for six months, imploring them to pray for humanity to help end World War I and letting them in on three hot secrets about the future of the world.

Mary told the children that her final appearance (no encores!) would come on October 13th, when she would prove her existence to anybody who dropped by. Roughly 70,000 people showed up in Fatima that day to call Mary’s bluff, and the assembled masses witnessed what was later called the Miracle of the Sun. Thousands of both Catholic and secular observers reported that the sun spun like a firewheel in the sky, casting a rainbow of radiant colors, before rapidly plummeting toward the Earth, sending the screaming crowd fleeing from what appeared to be the immediately impending end of the world. Then the sun zigzagged, dancing across the sky like “Fooled you! You should have seen your faces, oh man!” before returning to its regular hanging-out spot. The entire performance lasted about ten minutes.

I’d heard of this event before and found it interesting, but had completely forgotten about it by the time I actually went to Portugal. On the day I visited, I didn’t expect to find anything more in Fatima than a church I could take some photos of for grandma and maybe a gift shop where I could get her a t-shirt that said “I witnessed the Miracle of the Sun and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

I fell deeply asleep on the bus ride and woke up to the bus driver telling me to get my ass off his bus, we’re in Fatima. I blundered off the bus, still half-asleep. Maybe more like 95% asleep. Wow, what had I been dreaming about? I felt like I had put my body on backwards, as I struggled to make my feet work and not fall into the street. The street was lined with religious shwag shops as I staggered my way unsteadily toward the main square.

Wake up. Wake up! A car nearly hit me as I suddenly realized I was walking down the middle of the street. Gah! I am so groggy. Where in the hell am I again? Portugal? Oh, Fatima!

I turned the corner and shambled into a huge open square. I looked up. Oh my God, what’s going on in the sky??

Some kind of otherworldly light seemed to be pouring out of the sky. Looking up, I instinctively squinted both with my eyes and also on some kind of internal level, as both the physical light and something higher than that was completely overwhelming my senses. I felt like I was looking up and seeing straight through the sky, up into the heavens, where otherworldly figures were looking down at me. Everything seemed to be spinning and sparkling. Good Christ! What is this??

I stumbled forward and realized I was standing in a huge concrete courtyard between two massive churches. Some kind of prayer was being megaphoned across the square. I looked up and the heavens were still up there, spiraling light down at me. I felt overwhelmed, confused, but also aware that I was tuned into something more than I normally would be. It was like I was standing under some kind of massive portal into other dimensions, a spot where the fabric between worlds was so thin that you could see right through it. Wowsers.

In retrospect, I think some higher part of myself nudged me to fall asleep on that bus, both to prepare me for this experience and to ensure that I wouldn’t be in my normal doubting state of mind when I got to Fatima. Only being half awake, my defenses were down and I was able to just tune into what was there, rather than experiencing the place through my skepticism of it just being a bunch of Catholic bullshit.

I gazed up at the sky, trying ineffectively to use my hands to shield my eyes from the overwhelming light that streamed in whether my eyes were open or closed. Good God, it’s like the miracle is still happening! Has it been like this ever since 1917? Am I the only one who can see this?

I squinted and staggered through the square, wandering into the huge church to my left.

This was the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, devoted to the events of 1917. Inside are the tombs of the two younger shepherd children, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who died shortly afterwards in the Spanish flu epidemic and were sainted a full 100 years later.

The third child, their cousin Lúcia dos Santos, survived and went on to be a devoted Catholic nun for the rest of her life, which apparently is not enough to get you sainted. I’m not sure how that works, I guess the other two get extra credit for never having to experience the 1970s.

The church was quite lovely, but as I sat in the pew and looked up at the painting of Mary and some kind of elf monster above the altar, I couldn’t help but feel exasperated that everyone was in here, where nothing was happening. Guys! There’s a freaking miracle going on right outside! I guess they can’t see it.

I staggered back outside and across the square to the other massive church on the opposite side, the sky continuing to just belch up the entire universe majestically over my head.

This modern church was even deader than the other one, clearly built to comfortably accommodate the eight million pilgrims who come to Fatima from around the world every year. I sat in for part of the service before ducking back outside.

Between the two churches, the tiny Chapel of the Apparitions sits in the spot where Mary appeared to the children. This was the original monument, built in the 1920s, when I guess all of this wasn’t quite such a big deal.

I’d read that the Angel of Peace appeared to the children somewhere closer to their village, and I set off across town to find that spot. This was a bit of a walk but a very nice one, laid out as a pilgrimage path, with various small monuments along the way.

Gradually the path meandered into the woods, on and on, until I was alone when I found the monument.

Tucked behind some trees with the natural rock landscape wrapping around it, statues of the three children knelt before a statue of the Angel of Peace. They were all beautiful, the angel appearing in full beatific Joan of Arc mode. I really loved this monument for how off the beaten path it was, deep in the woods with the energy of nature all around me, and with no churro stand nearby. It felt like this really was the spot where the events had happened, frozen in time in these statues. Not paved over with concrete like that massive complex in the center of town. This was still recognizable as a place that early 20th century Porguese shepherd children might find themselves.

Wow. This might be my favorite monument to any event I’ve ever visited.

I soaked up the energy of the place until it was time for my return bus, popping into a shop to buy my grandma a little hand-carved wooden Mary that somehow survived in my bag over months and across countless countries until I finally returned to the US.

OK, good one Catholicism. I’m a fan of your miracle. You still persecuted these children for years until you reluctantly decided that the miracle was real, and even threw them in jail at one point, and the one little girl’s mother beat her for seeing an angel. So you’ve still got some work to do there. But nice miracle all the same.

Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and the people there prefer to be called Lisboners. I didn’t actually ask them but it stands to reason. What else are you going to call them? Lisboans? Lisabonets? A buncha Lisbos? Like I said, Lisboners.

The owner of my AirBnB assured me that the apartment was sturdy and had survived the earthquake. That’s nice dude, I was just asking if there was Wifi- Wait, what earthquake?

The Lisbon Story Centre clued me in on what earthquake. The museum used various multimedia tricks to edumuncate me on Lisbon’s development from one of the oldest cities in the world to a seafaring powerhouse by the 16th century, the golden age of Lisbon.

That golden age was short-lived though, because in 1755 the city was hit by a massive 9.0 earthquake that destroyed 85% of the buildings and killed 40,000 people. Lisbon was one of the largest and most important cities in the world at that time, so this would be like if Paris suddenly disappeared into a hole in the ground tomorrow.

The Story Centre caught me off guard with this one, since one minute I was strolling through exhibits about petty religious conflicts, then I was turning into a room ringed by a panoramic screen all the way around, and a morning wedding was abruptly descending into chaos as the Earth suddenly decided it didn’t like Lisbon any more.

Once Lisbon was reduced to a bunch of rubble with people trapped under it, it was then promptly hit by a tsunami. And then it caught on fire, just in case Lisbon missed the message the first two times.

Rather than repair the city, the Prime Minister cashed the insurance check and went on vacation- I’m kidding, he demolished what was left of the medieval city like a homeowner who always wanted a walk-in closet anyway, and rebuilt it all in the modern design that still stands to this day.

Lisbon of course has tons of history, like that on display at the Panteão Nacional, where many famous Portuguese folks are buried, like former presidents, football dudes, Vasco de Gama and Henry the Navigator.

Bizarrely, Vasco de Gama is also buried at the Jeronimos monastery across town.

I wonder if either church knows he's two-timing them?

I was on my way across Lisbon to see Belem tower when I encountered both the mysterious Vincent Van Gogh Pop Up Exhibit and numerous monuments to Portugal’s glory days of sea exploration. You got the distinct feeling that Portugal still wished it was 1500, as finding an adequate second act to the Age of Discoveries had proved difficult.

The Belem Tower itself was quite nice to explore.

I was standing inside one of the little watchtowers on the corners of the tower, eyes scanning out across the river and imaginging enemy ships coming up the river, when a trumpeter across the way began to play Taps, the sound reverberating sadly and echoing out across the stone surfaces of the tower and out across the water. Eerie.

Lisbon also has a baller aquarium. I mean, they don't have a tank full of imprisoned ballers, well actually maybe they do have that somewhere but I can't read Portuguese.

The star of the aquarium was this sunfish, who was just beautiful and bizarre.

The sunfish likes to lay flat on the top of the water, so seabirds can come along and pick off their parasites for a tasty snack.

The sunfish was majestically gliding back and forth inside the aquarium's massive central tank. The thing that made this tank special was that you could go down to the ground level and sit right up against a curved section of the glass, where it felt like you were just sitting on the bottom of the ocean, holding your breath comfortably forever and watching the sea life happen all around you. I felt like I had astral projected down into the depths just to check things out.

The Lisbon Aquarium also had the good taste to employ one of my good friends, the Axolotl.

Not to mention a Weedy Sea Dragon, who are quite reliable in spite of their name.

And numerous jellyfish, whom I can't vouch for.

And this cheerful crab.

Well done, Lisbon Aquarium!

And last but very much not least, Lisbon had absolutely fantastic food. Everything was great, but the vegan pizza in particular was the best I've ever had anywhere. Who knew?

After discovering this heavenly pizza place, I returned for every meal until I left Lisbon, and I would happy go back to Portugal just to have that pizza again.

The can't-miss day trip from Lisbon is out to Sintra, a historic town on the Portuguese Riviera that's packed full of pretty things to see.

First stop was the fabulous Sintra National Palace, with its iconic twin white chimneys that tower over the town.

Inside was a lovely spectacle of art, decor...

...and Jesus in a negligee? Oooohkay.

Thankfully that was wiped from my memory by the splendor and the ceiling of the Coat of Arms Room.

From there you make your way up many many many steps to the Castelo dos Mouros, a castle where two Moors lived. Wait, I'm not reading that right. Damned Portuguese, not having the courtesy to be Spanish. The Castle of the Moors, rather, is where the Moops kept watch over the countryside in the 8th century. A dizzying walk along the castle walls rewards you with grand views far out across the landscape.

The walls are really all that's left of the castle, except for a few museum-displays tucked away down in the Earth.

But this is all, I warn you, total bullshit compared to what lies ahead, further up the hills. The Pena Palace.

When I first began sending people photos from the Palace, the responses were all along the lines of "Are you at Disneyland?" No! I'm somewhere real. I mean, Disneyland is real. I think. But this is real and old.

Oh hey! They sent the alligator to greet me. That's nice.

Oh look! They also sent Grandpa. I could have done without that. The Pena Palace was built by King Ferdinand II of Portugal in the 1840s, on the ruins of a monastery that was destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake. The king and queen built and decorated the palace in the 19th-century Romanticist style, and it remains the exemplar of that style.

The candy-colored outsides of the Palace still didn't prepare me for the splendors within.

My favorite room in the complex was King Ferdinand II's bedroom, which featured walls decorated in intricate and colorful three-dimensional patterns that were both gorgeous and mesmerizing.

Another stand-out room was a round hall with antlers all the way around the circumference.

The palace is situated on lush grounds, which I wandered through for some time before I found what I was looking for, the Chalet da Condessa D’Edla, a bizarre cottage on the far side of the grounds that was designed after a Swiss chalet, if you saw a Swiss chalet one time when you were on drugs. The walls are covered in cork and the trim has a bizarre organic quality to it, as if tree bark had just somehow grown in these shapes.

The grounds had closed while I was hiking around looking for the chalet, so I had to climb a gate to get out and then wander the narrow and steep winding roads leading back down into Sintra, occasionally stepping onto the leaf-litter-strewn shoulder to allow the passage of a car or a bicyclist who was having the time of his life going balls-out down that road.

I made it back into town just in time to see the brain-melting sunset and hop onto my train back to Lisbon.

I like to think that as I travel, people can look at me and tell they're dealing with a spiritual individual, a-

"MARIJUANA."

No man, I'm good. Anyway, a-

"HASHISH."

What? No! Are you working with the other guy? Jeez. Anyway-

"COCAIIIIIINA."

Oh man, that’s very thoughtful of you, but hard street drugs actually aren’t in my plan for today. By the way, how many of you guys are there on this street?

And I don’t mean standing in the shadows and whispering as you walk by, I mean walking straight up to you like you’re old friends and completely blocking your forward progress so they can let you know this is your last chance to buy hashish for at least fifteen feet.

After the seventh guy in a row had tried to sell me drugs as I was walking back to my apartment, I looked at him like "Jeez man, dial it down, how do you know I'm not a narc?" and then I suddenly realized I was in Portugal. Drugs are legal here. I mean, not like Amsterdam Legal, I didn't see a Cocaine Store as I was walking down the street, but definitely decriminalized.

Wow, so… do I want cocaine? No. I'm good. Okay.

I looked at the guy waving a little baggie of cocaine he had just pulled out of his crotch. Jesus, I wouldn't buy a Dr Pepper from these guys. What if they sweat in it? I guess you don't think about that when you're hot in the mood for cocaiiiiiine.

I'm generally of the opinion that drugs are a health problem, not a crime problem, so I'd had positive feelings years ago when learning about Portugal's decriminalization. I continued to think this right up until I stepped over a guy smoking heroin with a prostitute in the doorway of my apartment. Hmmmm. I guess it is Saturday night!

I'd grown used to this in Lisbon but when I got to Porto, things really kicked up a notch. I literally saw drug dealers spot me from three blocks away and come running like they'd heard there's a long haired guy who's desperately low on smack. They were always quite insistent and then VERY disappointed when I didn't want to buy any drugs, like I had conned them in some kind of bait and switch.

"But.. but.. it's cocaine!"

"All the same. Have a good one!"

And then I'd turn to walk away and run right into the next guy who was trying to sell me all his drugs.

Before very long at all I realized that if I ever moved to Portugal, I'd have to cut my hair. I'll never get anywhere on time at this rate.

The highlight of Porto for me was Livraria Lello, which is famous as one of the best bookstores in the world and is definitely the most beautiful, if my experience is anything to go on. The story goes that the whimsically designed store served as an inspiration to JK Rowling when she was living in Porto and teaching English. This completely makes sense when you see the inside of the store, except Rowling has said she never visited the store and didn't even know it was there, but what the hell does she know.

As I was walking around Porto, I kept marveling at how many seagulls there were, watching my every move. Excuse me, Portu-gulls.

Porto didn't disappoint on the food front either. One restaurant made me a vegan version of Porto's famous Francesinha Sandwich, which featured layers of vegan bread, ham, sausages and steak, and was complete with vegan cheese and egg on top, drenched in their secret sauce.

They even hit me up with some Pastéis de natas, Portuguese egg tarts made up vegan style, which I ate too fast to take a picture of. Sorry.

One night I hit up a Tex Mex place late for a take-out order of three of their vegan tacos, which were so good that I turned around and walked right back and ordered three more, confusing the guys behind the counter at this sleepy eatery.

"Uhm... are we in the Matrix?

Eventually, though, it was time to leave the lovely land of Portugal.

"Welcome to Porto Aeroporto."

"Porto Aeroporto? Are you making fun of me, Porto?"

"How would that be making fun of you? Wouldn't we be making fun of ourselves?"

"Hmmmmm."