Liston, Belen, Sintra Pension Geres 2/28---3/5/11

The bus ride to Lisbon from Sevilla was a long one, but it showed us much of the Spanish and Portugese countryside with many small white ground flowers, gnarly cork trees, grape vines ready to sprout green leaves, orange trees with those beautiful orbs, rocky hills, cows and sheep. We stopped in Faro, a town almost at the Algarve, in the southern part of the country to change buses at the halfway point, then on to Lisbon.

Rossio Square--heart of old town Lisbon

Gulbankian Museum, Turkish room

Gulbankian Museum, Mrs. Claude Monet

African influence in Portugal

our streetcar

Carriage Museum--Cinderella's ??

Cathedral of Jeronimo

Pena Palace, Sintra

Lisbon is a very big and busy city although we kept pretty much to the old town center and learned it fairly easily and quickly. There are lots of squares usually with fountains or statues of Portugese heroes and surrounded by outdoor cafes and restaurants. It certainly suits our tastes, and we took every advantage to have breakfast, lunch and dinner outside. Rossio Square, the area our hotel is in, is the heart of the oldest part of the city, and was rebuilt on a grid system after the 1755 earthquake (it was estimated at 9.0) toppled nearly the entire center. We are in a perfect place for seeing the major sites of the city. Our hotel is, however, in a very old building and is definitely “old world” including the old bed that conjures up an altar (it's that hard) that might be used for a sacrifice. The pillows are at least 1' thick, almost a mirage, and we think they might have been from the 1800's, too. The garbage is collected in the middle of the night, and, the first time I heard the old carts coming down the narrow and winding street of marble squares, it sounded like we might be living during the plague epidemic. Well, it was very inexpensive and in the perfect location.

One day we took the old trolley around town, up to the castle, down narrow streets that we heard were so small cars can't pass and might stop the trolley in its tracks. Sure enough, we started up one street, met a car that couldn't or wouldn't back up, and the trolley driver just stopped. Of course, the people, who were all locals except for us, were so aggravated they stood up and started yelling at the driver who thought he might just walk away from his car. But no, they chastised him so badly that he got back in and made the attempt to get closer to the building; we inched by, missing him by such a tiny bit that I was sure I'd hear a crunch before we passed entirely.

The Gulbenkian Art Museum was a great surprise. We had never heard of it but read about it and decided it'd be interesting to visit. Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian oil tycoon, fled to Portugal during WWII, and when granted asylum here, he decided to donate all his art covering 5000 years to the Portugese people. It is really an amazing collection.

The next day we took the trolley again to another part of town called Belem district. We first had coffee at an 1837 establishment, a cafe that produced the very first pastel de Belem, a phyllo cup filled with warm vanilla custard, covered with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Yum. Then we could start our day properly. First, we went to the Carriage Museum, an astounding collection of beautiful horse-drawn coaches, from as early at the 14^th century. What ostentatious pieces of transportation, all of them belonging to royalty or the early popes, given to one another for weddings, birthdays, or other special occasions. No wonder the common people became so disgusted with the way their tax money was used that they revolted and drove out the aristocracy in many cases.

The Jeronimo Cathedral holds Vasco da Gama's tomb, but since he died in India, chances are he's not there. It's very ornate, though, and looks at home in the 1500's Manueline architecture of the church which is blinding white on the outside with what seems like hundreds of statues carved in the walls, corners and parts of the roofline. There are lots of curlicues, braided ropes, spires, motifs from the sea, and artichokes (sailors ate them to prevent scurvv during early exploration) built into the church's décor. This was the time during which Portugese sailors brought back spices from their exploration and made Portugal one of the richest countries in the world.

Everyone kept talking about Sintra, the city where the nobility would go to get out of Lisbon (probably in the heat of the summer). We took the train for the 45 minute journey and were delighted with this little town at the base of many hills that held the Pena Palace, a very colorful and ornate castle built by Ferdinand II in the late 1800's. He was the cousin of Ludwig of Germany, the one who designed Neuschwanstein Castle, and Ferdinand evidently had the idea that the more elaborate and fantastic he could make Pena Palace, the better. It is a cross between Walt Disney and 1001 Arabian Nights.

The other site we took in was the National Palace, begun in the 13^th Century by King John I and last changed in the 15^th century by King Manuel II. Also very beautiful, it was calmer than Pena Palace and though it contained many rooms, they were more useable and majestic. The kitchen was enormous and obviously built for entertaining.