They told us it was hard to get a taxi in Portugal, but we never thought we'd experience the situation. Not like this.
    There are no taxis, the hotel receptionist declares as we ask him to call for a cab. There's bigger chance of getting a taxi by waiting at the taxi stop. But we still got an hour left till the bullfight begins, so we nod our heads in agreement and head towards the taxis stop.
    Half an hour later we're still in the middle of a taxi queue and there are several people in front of us. A taxi stops in the middle of the line and a pair standing right in front of us impudently steps in and are gone as red lights in the dark. The girls standing very first in the line just watch the red color disappear in the dark without as much as a noise. My company's gazes meet in a silent agreement. Tourists!
    From nowhere dad appears. Just in time, saving us from what could have been a night outside the bullfight arena. There's a taxi outside the hotel, waiting for us. We run back through the neonlit city. Trauma is still playing outside that pub and neon lights are flashing in gaudy fonts and colors.
    The music is incredible — I can still hear it as I make the corner to our hotel — and not only the music. The whole show is preformed with that something extra. The guys are in their twenties and freaking it good there on the scene. Mom agrees — they're good, she nods speaking something I don't quite catch. But we don't have time to stay freaking to the tunes; there's a cab waiting for us just around the corner.
    C'mon, c'mon, hurry up please, the cab driver stresses us. I can't stand here, there's traffic puling up behind me. And we're off.
    The bullfights here in Portugal are supposed to be faint-hearted compared to the ones in the fellow nation, Spain, but for my taste Portuguese bullfighting is spicy enough. Perhaps one shouldn't visit bullfights when pitying the bull already after the first spear hits, but I enjoyed it in a cruel and sadistic kind of way It's like watching a horror movie and sometimes having turn away or in other ways express that you are unpleased.
    But it was only Simon, Mom and I who went there. The others either simply refused, or came up with a smooth excuse for not going. Vera declared it was cruelty to animals, and faint-hearted or not, not merely the bulls got hurt. People did too — though none severe.

They don't kill the bull. Not here in Portugal. After paining it a bit with these particular spears, which gets shorter for each pain-round — and teasing it with the two-sided pink and yellow cloaks, they simply calm it down.

There were three of them, the matadors. Two men and a woman, young actually and rather small. But for a time she stroke me more fierce than both the other bullfighters and the bulls. Perhaps it was her size, and her look, taunting the bull to rage, just before she hit it with the spear, which made her seem so fierce. And I think I could hear the bull she was fighting, cry.
    But we laughed when leaving the arena. Some tourist had pulled of her red sweatshirt and waved it at a corner of the ring. Laughter everywhere. We went out joking, and cheering and imitating the bull and the fighters.
    The lack of taxis was still enormous.