Her boyfriend joined us and we drove 3.5 more hours to Lisbon. Once he was in the car, I got demoted to the middle seat in the back (thanks to my small size and complete lack of legs) of Lourdes’s Ford Focus. His arrival also added a (hilarious) GPS unit, and annoying woman’s voice, to our group.
Thanks to the openness of the European Union, there was no border between Spain and Portugal. We could see where the old border posts used to be and all of a sudden the signs switched from Spanish to Portuguese (aka we no longer had any idea what they said).
We arrived in Lisbon and found our hotel, which proved to be really challenging because of all the one-way streets. It took us 20 minutes to get to the other side of the street to find parking.
Friday night we went to the Parque das Nações where the Lisbon World Expo ’98 was held. (Apparently it’s like an international fair where you pay to get in and then can try different foods and see cultural demonstrations from countries around the world.) They had built a mall, event halls and tons of restaurants in preparation for the Expo, so now the area has great nightlife. The longest suspension bridge in Europe (16 km), Ponte de Vasco da Gama, starts there. We ate at an “Argentine” restaurant where I had the most delicious grilled squid (not at all Argentine) ever.
Saturday morning we ate breakfast and went to the Alfama barrio and saw the Castelo de São Jorge which had spectacular views of Lisbon. One thing about Lisbon: it is not a flat city. There are hills everywhere and we were constantly going up and down. After the castle, we walked down the hill and went to the Cathedral, which was less than spectacular as compared to the millions of other churches I’ve been to. We had fun walking alongside the trollycars which speed up the narrow streets.
A trolly passes the Cathedral.
Next we headed to the Praça do Comércio, which used to be the main portal to the city. Now, it’s still an important plaza, located right on the river, with many governmental buildings around it. It’s probable that my great-grandfather walked through it on his way out of Lisbon (before boarding a ship to the US).
From here, we went to a market to check out the produce and building. It was also near the river and housed in what appeared to be an old train station. I also love markets and make a point to go to one in every country I visit.
Next stop was to walk through the Chiado and Baixa, two barrios with lots of trendy shopping. We ate sandwiches for lunch and window shopped a bit before climbing up a hill to the Convento do Carmo, a cathedral/convent built in the 1300s, but partially ruined in a 1755 earthquake that destroyed almost everything else around it. This was one of my favorite places that we visited because it was so surreal. I was inside a church with sculptures and columns and most of the lower structures still in places. Yet, at the same time, I was outside: there was grass and I could see the sky.
Next we went to a viewing tower on top of one of the many elevators around Lisbon. This elevator was 100 years old and most tourists waited to take it to the top, not knowing that you could walk up the hill for free. The views were pretty awesome – it was basically the opposite of the views from the castle.
We spent some more time walking around downtown Lisbon and tried to visit the Panteão Nacional, a huge dome. It took us forever to find because half the roads in the oldest part of the city are no wider than my twin-sized bed and almost nothing on the map was marked because the names are much longer than the space the road takes up. By the time we arrived, the dome was closing and we only got to peak inside.
Exhausted, we walked back to the hotel to rest a bit and get ready to go out to dinner. First we drove across to the other side of the river, crossing a bridge which looks just like the Golden Gate Bridge. We tried to find the huge statue of Jesus, which was really difficult because we put “Lisbon” into the GPS and the statue was in a different town outside Lisbon. Cecilia and Erin wanted to get some pictures of Lisbon from the statue which stands on a hill. However, once we finally arrived, the park had closed for the day. Instead, we drove to Belém, a different suburb of Lisbon and walker around a bit. Next we headed to Barrio Alto, one of the principle nightlife centers in the city, to see a Fado show. Fado is kind of like flamenco except it’s almost always a sad song and there isn’t any dancing. The dinner was decent, but wound up being much more expensive than we thought it would be (we were in the touristy area, after all).
Sunday morning we woke up and went back to Belém where we toured the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, an incredible monastery and church. The ornate carvings and gargoyles were awesome and the entire building was really pretty. Also in Belém, we saw the residence of the president of Portuguese…no secret-service-like security: just an open gate and two guards with serious faces and swords (yes, you read that correctly).
A detail of the St. Jeronimo Monastary in Belem.
We stopped for coffee at a café/factory which opened in 1837 and makes pastéis de Belém, filo dough filled with a custard of milk, cream, and vanilla. Not my thing...but Loudes’s boyfriend, Luis absolutely loved them and ate at least two a day. The factory was really cool because the walls were tiled with Portuguese azulejos and you could see the people at work in the kitchen. Azulejos are tiles and buildings all around Portugal are decorated with different tile motifs. There was even a tile museum, but we didn’t make it there.
Pasteis de Belem.
After Belém, we headed further west to Sintra, a “city” within the Parque Natural Sintra-Cascais. We got some maps and headed for the Cabo de Roca. Even with our maps we got lost on the crazy windy roads and wound up at a beach. After seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in a few months, we got back in the car and finally found the Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe.
The Portuguese coast was amazing!
We took a few photos and headed back to Sintra for lunch and a visit to the Palacio Nacional de Sintra which had some really amazing azulejos: entire rooms were covered in the tiles. Sintra is set on a hill in a park so the views from the palace were amazing. We shopped a little before heading back to Lisbon.
These are some tiles from a room in the National Palace at Sintra, Portugal. Sintra is also a UNESCO city and sits in the hills just west of Lisbon.
A view of Sintra as we approached the town.
Sunday night, the crabby old man at the hostel told us, in Portuguese, to go to Rossio for dinner. It was a short walk from our hostel and we found some pedestrian streets filled with restaurants. For a Sunday night, this part of the city was bustling. We ate Italian food before dragging our tired bodies back to the hostel and sleeping.
Monday morning we woke up really early and drove to Évora (1.5 hours east of Lisbon, on the way to Spain). The fortified city had some Roman ruins and many old buildings. After breakfast we walked around seeing as much as we could in the hour we spent there. Honestly, we could have spent two days visiting museums and churches, but we didn’t have time.
Évora, Portugal is a UNESCO city and deserves to be. There were Roman ruins everywhere and the fortification wall was almost entirely intact.
We drove back to Llerena (Spain) where Luis and Lourdes gave us a driving tour of the city: one of the principle tribunals during the crusades was housed there. We saw it, along with the church, main plaza and parts of the fortification wall that used to contain the city. Then we drove to Luis’s country house a few kilometers outside the city.
Luis's house in the countryside.
His parents, sister, her husband and two kids, other sister, her boyfriend, and some extended family members were there waiting for us with lunch. They had roasted an entire suckling pig, made salad, French fries, and fried eggs. I tasted the pig, which didn’t taste too meat-like because of all the roasting flavors. I didn’t eat more than a bite because I was afraid it would make me sick (I haven’t been eating that much meat lately). After lunch we walked Luis’s property to see the pigs his family is raising for food this year. Three humongous black pigs came running out of their pen to play with the family’s dogs. It was hilarious. After coffee and dessert, we thanked the family and headed back to Priego.
Of course, it was raining and much colder when we got back to Priego. It rained a bit in Lisbon, but it was so much warmer that we didn’t mind. The weekend was really great. Because we went with Lourdes and Luis, we got to see so much stuff. Their car and GPS really helped with getting around and visiting different towns.
No comments:
Post a Comment