But of course changing locations means some more time driving :(. Overall, we made good time on our way into Portugal and in fact we made up more time because the time zone had changed on us (who knew). What all of that meant is that we arrived to the hotel really early instead of just early. Check in time is scheduled for 4:00, and by our new adjusted time we were there at 1:30, oops. Oh well, off to see our new home for the night, Sagres, before check in.
Ok, so the really cool thing isn't the light house but the area around the lighthouse. Being in Sagres, we are in the southwestern most part of continental Europe. It was cool to hike around the cliffs a bit. One side felt a bit treacherous to get down, however, on the yond side of the cliffs we could make it all the way down to the water. Pretty cool. My first and only jaunt in all of Europe into the waters. And it was flipping cold! Good thing it was only a little wading, as anything more would not have been incredibly pleasant I'm sure.
After all the hiking around light house and fort, it was time to get a bit of beer, so we found a local spot and ponied up for some refreshments. The thing about a number of places is that they only serve one type of beer. And in sagres, well, what else would they serve but sagres beer. A beer we would find to be popular throughout Portugal. Fortunately it was some good beer.
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| Rob enjoying his favorite past-time with Sagres beer |
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| legend of old used to say that the sun setting over Sagres, the "most western point of the world", used to make the ocean water boil; today it just made for a beautiful sunset |
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2012
As we searched for places in Sagres, a number of places were full and we ended up staying at a place called Sagres Time Apartamentos, which really ended up being a one bedroom apartment with a hide-a-bed couch. And with every apartment comes a kitchen and in this case, it was a cool one at our disposal. I wanted to use it even if only quickly for breakfast before we left for Lisbon, so I took a stroll out around town to see what I could find. I first happened upon a small local market, the pickings were slim and so it was time to find something else. I finally found the main store and went in it. One of the greatest challenges about traveling is finding small enough quantities of food for one or two servings at a reasonable price. With that challenge in mind, the only thing I could come up with was making some egg sandwiches with a side order of potatoes. The breakfast turned out great! And I found that taking time in the morning to go seek out what was to be had by foot really helped set the tone for a great meal and a generally relaxing day.
Sadly, Sagres is really far away from Lisbon, it was like a 5 hour drive, and Portugal doesn't like street names, so as we came to roundabouts we were trying to guess which city to heads toward. Typically our map would have 3 or 4 cities "upcoming" so we were quickly double checking along the way and occasionally taking a wrong exit from the round about, but all well that ends well.
After the long drive, not much else got done. Being in cars that long makes me tired so it was siesta time when we finally arrived. Post siesta, I needed to get in a bit of a run, so off I went. I figured making it to a place called tower of Belem would be a good turn around point and was guessing 8 ish miles based on our tourist map. Turns out that it's 11 miles round trip to Belem. Unfortunately, it was pretty hot out and by the time I got back, I wasn't feeling like doing too much more and went to bed to rest up for the rest of the night and be ready for the next day.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2012
After not feeling well the night before, I slept in a bit on Thursday. It felt pretty good, and I was ready for a full day of adventure ahead.
Sao Jorge Castle
Another moorish relic of old, Sao Jorge castle is one of the earlier places reconquered from the Moors, and has gone through numerous ups and down including surviving the earthquake in the 1700's as well as one that occurred in the 1500's. It was once the royal palace, but later became solely military barracks, a school and finally a tourist attraction.
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| entrance to the castle |
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| main walk along the inside western wall |
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| I think this tree has seen better days |
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| a look over the former moat area |
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| ruins of older portions of the castle |
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| because there just isn't any fun going to a tourist attraction that doesn't involve climbing steps. lots of steps |
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| view of the city from the castle... Take note of two of the structures in the middle of the photo, they are adventures for another day. |
Discovery monument
With such a strong tradition in the 15th and 16th centuries of discovering (from a European perspective) so much of the world, or at least ways to get to those parts of the world, Portugal decided to build a monument to celebrate their past. This is actually their second version. They had built a non-permanent version for a world's fair and tore it down. Then they realized, they liked it and 15-20 years later built this one. Yes, there are more stairs and you can climb your way to the top or take an elevator and then climb the final story or so of steps. Overall this gives cool views of places near the river, as well as a top down view of a world map, depicting key dates in the history of European discovery of the world.
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| Western Side of Discovery Monument |
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| Eastern View from Discovery Monument |
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| Western View from discovery monument |
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| Northern view from discovery monument |
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| Map of the world showing when Portuguese explorers made it to various areas around the globe |
Belem
This may be one of the coolest facades for a tower that I've seen. It was built as a way to help protect Lisbon and initially built on a small island in the river. There's a legend that says that the earthquake in the mid 1700's was so strong that it actually re-routed the river a bit and made it so that the tower was on the main land. It really just looks like they through sand in between the two :)
Another of the interesting side stories in the monument is about how a rhinoceros was brought back from India, and was gifted to the pope. On the way to the pope the ship carrying the rhino actually sank, and they removed its body, stuffed it and send it along anyway. I'm not sure if in memory of that or not, but they have a rhino carved into the side of the Belem.
monasterio jeronimos
From our time at the Discovery monument, you could see the monastery (e.g. see northern view pic). This was ordered to be built by Henry the Navigator in the mid 1400's and
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| View walking up towards the monastery |
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| inner courtyard |
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| just a cool very large room |
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| the catheral |
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| Much as Columbus was buried in a special church is Seville, Vasco de Gama was buried here. An interesting side note is that before Vasco de Gama went off on his voyage to the east, he and his crew spent the night here in prayer. |
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| other view of the fountain |
pasteis de belem
Down the street from the tower of Belem and the monastery is a bakery that has been making a mini custard pie for a couple hundred years. And actually that recipe is older than the bakery. Story has it that the monastery we just saw used to be the center of a lot of life including the pastry shops. After one of the revolutions in the early 1800's, this monastery closed for a while and a monk in need of cash sold the secret recipe to a local businessman. The businessman, pretty much stopped doing everything else but making pastries and specifically this custard pie, and they've been using this recipe ever since. After having had these, I can tell why they haven't changed the recipe and haven't told anyone else the recipe. They're good stuff! Definitely a recommended treat after a day of touring around the city and you happen to be in the neighborhood.
beers, crisps and crepes and a bit more sight seeing.
Of course, no matter how could a pastry is, there's always need for a bit more nutritious food and what's more nutritious than beer, crisps and crepes? NOTHING! We head near our hotel and ate a bit at the major plaza on the river near us.
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| night shot of the plaza arch when we were leaving |
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| other side of the plaza arch |
Elevator
A cool thing about Lisbon is that, like a number of other cities including Edinburgh, where I was earlier on this trip, it was built on 7 hills. Turns out the hills got to be a bit much for people and when the elevator came into being, they installed a number of them throughout the city. The only remaining active elevator (others were converted to funiculars or shut down) was about 2 blocks from our hotel and so, in line we went and up we went. It's kind of crazy, the elevator actually has a schedule to it, just like a subway. It runs like every 20 minutes, at least in the evening, so we had to wait a bit, but it was cool to use the elevator to go from one level of the city to the next.
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| the elevator at night |
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| Sao Jorge Castle |
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| Restaurant behind our hotel. We tried to eat there one night, but the service was lousy and we, and a number of other folks, left without ever ordering |
offered drugs while photo taking
So near our hotel is a plaza with a statue and some cool lit up buildings, so I figured, I'd go over there and try to take a couple quick night time pics and all would be good. The photos are below, however, what's interesting is that while I was trying to take the photos, I was offered several times to buy hash and coke. Really??? And it's not like they we being discrete about it; They might as well have set up a tent and posted a sign. I guess I'm just not familiar enough with Portugal's drug laws, but one would think this wouldn't be as tolerated.
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| Out of the corner of my eye, I first thought this was a Pepsi machine sign. clearly not! LOL |
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2012
West of Lisbon by about a 30 minute drive is a town called Sintra. This used to be home to Portuguese royalty and before that, like much of the Iberian peninsula, the Moors. Whereas in Granada at Alhambra and in Seville at Alcázar, the moorish cattle was turned into the Catholic palace, this place actually had two separate structures atop two different adjoining hills. In fact, they're so close to each other, that as we were making the hike up, it almost looked as if the two of them were one and the same.
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| Moorish Castle a top a hill, Pena Palace is hidden behind the tree on the right. |
Moorish castle
It truly is in a state of ruins at this stage. The only thing remaining are the walls that used to protect it. Like many things in Lisbon, the earthquake in the mid 1700's had its impact, as well as neglect as it was not a proper residence for many years. That said, it's a pretty cool structure to run around and go up and down the various steps and into the various watch points along the way.
Pena Palacio and the park
After having visited some incredibly large palaces throughout Europe it came as a bit of a surprise to see how relatively modest the house of Portuguese royalty was on the inside. They haven't lived here since they were deposed in 1910, and were not as fortunate as the Spanish monarchy in terms of being reinstated after the regime ended.
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| view as you walk up the hill to the castle |
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| Just inside the gate |
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| view of the Moorish castle from Pena Palacio |
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| Plaza of arches leading up to the chapel |
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| Facade of Palace from the living quarters balcony |
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| bird fountain in the park adjoining the palace |
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| Geese Pond |
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| More Geese :) |
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| the tower built for the geese in another pond down further into the park |
cabo do roca
While we were near the coast, Rob suggested we see a lighthouse area he'd seen once before when he was in Portugal years ago. I was game for the adventure, but didn't know what to expect. Turns out it was nearly as scenic as the cliffs of moher, which made this one of my favorite places overall.
dinner under the bridge
After a quick breakfast entailing food from a random super market, we hadn't ate pretty much all day. I was getting pretty hungry and just a bit grouchy, to say the least, which wasn't helped by the stream of bad food choices at restaurants (seems like fish and pork of some sort is in everything). We finally made it to a series of restaurants near the huge bridge in Lisbon. We ultimately had a good dinner (who knew pineapple and sweet corn went with pasta with a cream sauce) overlooking Crist Rei (details later). Of course what really set the dinner apart was the dessert, cheese cake with a side of some really great mousse :)
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 8, 2012
Today is the last full day in Lisbon and Europe as a whole. 6 weeks have come and gone in a heart beat. Tomorrow will be a very long day. From the time the flight departs 'til we land, it will be 12 hours. That doesn't include the time to get to the airport and checked in in the morning, nor the time to actually pick up the car and get home on the tale end of the day. For now however, I'm still in Europe and there are a few more cool things to do, after checking out of the downtown hotel, so we can stay at the airport tonight to make it a bit easier and more predictable in the morning.
Cathedral
I have to admit, I have seen my fill of cathedrals in Europe and I made the decision in Lisbon, that there would be no more to be seen. However, I have to say, once I saw this one, I had to go in. But only because it had no roof as that was destroyed by a one-two combination punch earthquake and then fire back in the mid 1700's. Originally they were going to rebuild the church completely however ideas changed and the romance era came along and people really liked burned out relics of the past and thus it stands today a shell of its former self. A few cool things in the back portion of the church, which is a museum (and still has a roof) are mummified children from south America (creepy as their lifeless bodies are just propped up in a fetal position), mummy from Egypt in his sarcophycous like thing (you can really only see his feet) and various artefacts (bowls, hammers, pins, etc...) from inhabitants of the area in the 3500-1500 BC timeframe. Sadly, it was a no pictures allowed area in the museum, so the pics of the cathedral will have to do.
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| each section of the inside walls has a series of notable items, such as coat-of-arms, graves, fountains, etc... this is just one example |
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| plan of the wall |
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| moon peaking through what would have been a stained class window |
Museo do marihna
In both Spain and Portugal, there is such a deference to the discovery days of old. This museum really does take you back to those days, back to the late 1400's through the mid 1600's when Portugal was leading the world in discovery around the southern cape of Africa through to India and back again. The museum was a cool collection of ship models, maps, and other memorabilia, of the early days through the mid 1900's.
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| wall map of the world as Portugal knew it |
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| torpedo that looked like it has a happy face |
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| royal ship |
Ferry, Jesus amd Drinks at the square
Rob and I knew we wanted to make it to the Crist Rei monument, but weren't yet sure how to get there. The car was an obvious choice but was there a bit of a cooler trip to get over there. As we were taking the train back from the museum, the stopping point was the main station for a lot of travel in Lisbon, which is saying a lot because in Lisbon you can get aound by underground subway, buses, trolley, train, tram, ferries, taxis, elevators, funiculars and who know how else. Anyway, at the main station, we found a ferry that would take us across the river and after a bit of a walk we arrived. It has been around since the 50's and was built based on the one in Rio de Janeiro.
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| Ferry to the other side |
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| Christ through the window of the Ferry |
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| As with everything good in Europe, it was a ways a way and up a winding, hilly road. |
Hotel, tennis, pizza and emails
I'm a huge tennis fan. It's one of the few sports that I can really get into watching on TV on a regular basis, and very fortunately when we arrived at the hotel, the first men's singles semi-finals was on. It was good to have something fun to watch as I got everything organized by throwing out things I no longer needed like receipts, shoes that had seen better days and a few shirts that were ready to say their last good-byes. As we were watching, I ordered a pizza and a bit of beer and settled in for a good evening. Sadly, the second semi final and women's final was postponed due to weather, but that just means I've got plans for Sunday and Monday nights, when I'm back in the USA :)
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 9, 2012
Another of the interesting side stories in the monument is about how a rhinoceros was brought back from India, and was gifted to the pope. On the way to the pope the ship carrying the rhino actually sank, and they removed its body, stuffed it and send it along anyway. I'm not sure if in memory of that or not, but they have a rhino carved into the side of the Belem. 
