I'm on sabbatical this semester-- my mom's great realization about this was that for once I would be free on her spring break so we could travel somewhere. We chose Portugal-- I'm a little unclear on how this choice happened; I know it was somehow connected to the fact that I went to Hungary and Austria last summer (http://hungaryforaustria.blogspot.com) but Portugal had been on the short list when my friend Martha and I were making that decision and so it somehow became the first destination of choice this time.
Generally, I wouldn't even bother to include a description of the flight-- all long flights are terrible if you have to fly coach. However, getting onto our flight was somewhat eventful-- and almost didn't happen. We were in BWI in plenty of time-- and then our flight to Philadelphia kept getting delayed. We were assured multiple times by the person working the desk that everyone would make their connections because the flight was only 19 minutes long, and I was inclined to believe her because our layover in Philadelphia was supposed to be about two hours. When we finally took off, we still had plenty of time to make our flight-- you can tell my mom and I weren't particularly stressed.
However, while it did take only about 19 minutes to get into the Philadelphia airspace, we circled for about 45 minutes waiting for our turn to land. And then, we waited for the shuttle bus from terminal F to terminal A-- a shuttle which got caught in some kind of tarmac traffic, so it idled for a while somewhere between F and A while passengers on the shuttle started proclaiming that they had just missed their flights. We finally got to our terminal just in time to hear an announcement that the doors to the flight to Portugal would close in 3 minutes-- and, of course, the gate for that flight was at the end of the hall. I took off running with my mom right behind me; I knocked people standing and blocking the concourse out of my way to their stunned surprise (sorry!) and got to the gate with less than a minute to spare-- the people working there were in the process of giving our seats to standby passengers. My mom, however, was nowhere to be seen. While I tried to explain to the gate people that we were here and get them to give me back my seat, my mom came hobbling up-- she had fallen (like, splat, full out) when she was running. I feel badly about this-- I never knew. I assumed she had given up running and was making her way a bit more slowly than I had to the gate. It's probably better I didn't know-- had I stopped to help her, the plane would have taken off without us. We were both a bit anxious by the time we took our seats-- the other woman in our row was pretty nice about listening to my mom recount our adventure and, after we each took a Xanax, the flight experience got a little better-- as much better as it can get when you're cramped into a coach seat for more than six hours.
Friday, April 3: Lisbon
We arrived in Lisbon at around 9 am, cleared passport control and customs pretty quickly and, as promised, found our shuttle driver holding up a sign with my name on it outside of customs. (We used a service called 100 Rumos-- if you're ever in Portugal, I highly recommend them. We just used them to get to and from the airport, but I think they do tours as well.) We got to the hotel in about 15 minutes, dropped off our luggage since it was too early to check in, and set off to explore Lisbon. This turned out to be a bit of a trial at first.
Many sources had recommended riding Tram 28 around Lisbon to get a sense of the city as well as get close to many of the key sites like Castelo de. S. Jorge and the Se Cathedral. It was heralded as a must-do and so I thought a nice way to start off our tour of Lisbon would be to ride Tram 28. There was a stop for the tram a couple of blocks from our hotel, so we walked to the stop and waited. The first tram passed by us, the driver wagging a finger at us to indicate there was no more room-- which was evident since the tram was bursting with people. The same thing happened with the next tram that went by-- and by now we'd been standing on a side street for about 45 minutes. My plan to ride around Lisbon and get a sense of it wasn't working too well. So, we decided that we would take the metro (also quite close) to one of the first key sites and try to catch the tram at a mid-point in its route (the stop we were at was only about 2 stops from its origin point with no sites in-between. We were thinking that perhaps it was easier to get on later in the route when some people had gotten off to see touristy things). So, we took the metro to the Rato station, the closest station to the Estrela Church.
Outside the Rato station, however, there aren't really any signs, so it wasn't clear how to get from the station to anywhere we actually wanted to go. There were, however, tram lines going upward (and, I knew the tram went "up") so we started to follow those. We did not wind up where we wanted to go-- we did, however wind up in the Parque Eduardo VII, which clearly once used to have a place of worship though now only the facade remains (there's no building on the other side of the door in the archway).
We were in a neighborhood that looks like what I imagined Portugal would look like-- colorful and mixture of old and "newer".
We wandered for a little bit and realized we weren't where we meant to be, so we went back to the Rato station and found someone to ask. We had gone in the opposite direction we should have gone... so we headed up (everything in Portugal is up a hill) the other direction to the Jardim da Estrela, a very pretty park.
Spring came a little earlier to Lisbon (and Portugal in general) than it did to the east coast of the States-- and, along with actual leaves on trees, there were baby ducks in the park to prove that. (What isn't in this video are the children who were chasing the baby ducks trying to pet them-- this is a cute example of the babies following their mom-- or their desperate escape from the little kids.)
Jardim da Estrela is also the site of one of the strangest public restrooms ever; my mom went in to use it and quickly exited because the bathroom was co-ed. To the right were urinals and to the left was a stall with a door marked with a woman- but according to my mom it was impossible to enter the stall without looking at the men using the urinals. I thought maybe we went to the wrong bathroom, but it was marked for both men and women (though, only women were supposed to use the stall). There was only one set of sinks. We went in search of Basilica Estrela (one of the sites I wanted to see along the Tram 28 route) and a different, gender-specific, bathroom.
Estrela is easy to find-since it's across the street from the park entrance-- I had to take pictures of it from across the street to get the whole thing.
The Basilica was completed in 1790 by order of Dona Maria I. It was constructed in gratitude for a male heir. The inside is pink (a little odd given the whole gratitude for a male heir thing, but good to know Dona Maria wasn't into gender stereotypes) and black marble, though I don't think the "pinkness" shows up well in the photos. It's really gorgeous inside.
The stop for Tram 28 was between the garden and the church. We stood and waited with others-- and, like earlier, the tram passed us by, a driver wagging his finger at us. Many of the guides I had read had suggested not getting onto Tram 28 during rush hour because there were commuters on it. None of them said that it was always rush hour for Tram 28-- it's a very small tram and it's nearly impossible to get onto. We gave up and decided to get around on the metro for the rest of the day. (The metro in Lisbon is very efficient and inexpensive-- 6 euro buys an all-day pass that is good for the metro, buses and trams. We could have used our card to ride Tram 28 had we ever been able to get on.) So, we headed back through the garden (by now, my mom no longer cared that the bathroom was unisex and braved it-- she didn't notice the man who was in there with her because she was careful to walk sideways so as not to have to look at the urinals, though I told her about him later) towards the metro. We had walked quite a bit by now and were hungry. Fortunately, there was a gelato shop on the way back to the metro. My mom and I are on a life-long mission try out all the gelato in Europe in the name of comparison testing to find the best gelato. When on vacation, gelato is appropriate for every meal. This time, it was lunch.
There is a mixture of flavors in each cup-- but we both got something called Lisbon cream as one of our choices. I'm still not quite sure what it is, but it's very good.
After our gelato, I formed a slightly new plan (since following the Tram 28 route wasn't working), and so we headed towards the city center, getting off at the Praca do Comercio, sort of the end (or beginning) of the pedestrian road, right on the waterfront. This is also the square where Dom Carlos I and his son were assassinated in 1908, signaling the fall of the monarchy in Portugal.
In the center of the square is the statue of Dom Jose I, who was king when the square was rebuilt after the earthquake of 1755 (an important moment in much of Portugal, or at least the places we went, since a lot was destroyed and rebuilt following this earthquake. The earthquake was an 8.5-9.0 in magnitude.).
On this day, there was also some kind of cooking competition happening-- like Top Chef Portugal or something. I have Googled this event using multiple search terms; I still can't figure out exactly what cooking show this was for (but it was clearly a thing-- it comes back later).
Our eventual goal for the day was to get to the Castelo De Sao Jorge. You can see it in the distance in this picture, sitting above the Praca (though the cranes ruin the picture a bit).
This is a better image from below-- not that you can see the castle all that well, but you can see our view of it (and, there are no cranes in this picture).
The point is, we were well below it. But determined to find it, so we started up the winding streets of the Alfama neighborhood.
The Alfama neighborhood is really quaint. The streets are narrow (and, of course, uphill), the buildings are all different shades of pastel, and the tile that Portugal is so famous for is still on many of the buildings.
There are also the pictures of a photo project created by an artist named Camila Watson. She took photos of all of the residents of the neighborhood as "A Tribute" (the name of the project).
So, as you walk through the streets, there are photos hanging on the building exteriors.
It's hard to tell in these pictures, but all of them have the names of the person photographed on them, so if you pass that person on the street, you know who it is. It makes for a really lovely stroll, and gives you some license to walk slowly which is nice, since it's quite a hilly area to wind around, even when there are stairs provided.
The picture on the left is actually the stairs that start the journey; the hill/stairs on the right come after you've wound through the streets of the neighborhood. They are closer to the end of the trek to the castle; there are a lot of hills and stairs in between. (I know I keep mentioning the hills-- but there really are a lot, and it's not easy to tell that on the map. For example, the map places the Praca do Comercio [center bottom of the map] very close to the Castelo de S. Jorge [go a little right and up] and they would be very close if they were on the same elevation. Looking at the tourist map of Lisbon is deceiving. You can't see elevations.)
We finally reached the Castelo d. S. Jorge-- what is really left are the walls, so what you get is more a sense of how it was used as a defense point than as a place where people lived. It was built by the Moors in the mid-11th century and became a royal residence in the 13th century. It served mostly as a military barracks in the 17th and 18th centuries.
After an earthquake in 1755, restoration work was done, but restoration seems to have meant a lot of building on top of what was already there. There is an ongoing archaeological project meant to uncover the foundations from the Moorish period and later.
Three periods are represented in the dig site: the first known settlements from the 7th century B.C., remnants of the Moorish residential area, and the ruins of the last palatine residence which was destroyed by the earthquake.
Once you're inside the castle, there are more stairs to climb if you want to walk the towers and the walls.
This is my mom waving from a stone bench while I walked one section-- to be fair, she had climbed many castle stairs before this.
And, it was tiring for a lot of people, apparently (or they've moved in).
There are also great views of Lisbon from Castelo d S. Jorge since it is so high up. You can see the whole city from a variety of view points
including through castle walls and structures
as well as through defense points.
There are also a lot of peacocks wandering around the castle, though I have no idea why.
The rooster is the bird of Portugal (it's on lots of t-shirts and other souvenir items) but I never once saw a rooster. We kept encountering peacocks though, including this one, which was remarkable for the white strip in its feathers
and because someone seems to have trained it to be photo-op ready.
It would pose for pictures for a few seconds, and then turn so that a group of picture takers on another side could have an opportunity. Then, it would turn again. We watched for at least five minutes-- it just kept turning every few seconds to give a new group a chance to take a photo. The other peacocks largely wandered around; they weren't afraid of the tourists, but they weren't nearly this showy.
There are two "monuments" to Sao Jorge. This one is in the courtyard of the castle.
This one is mounted in the walls surrounding the streets as you walk up to the castle. Neither has him slaying a dragon which is how he is, apparently, usually represented.
We spent some time at the castle and then wandered around the little shops surrounding the castle and then headed down the hill back to the Rossio area-- or the city center. Down was a lot easier than up. On our way, an Easter processional passed us (as this was Good Friday).
I think they might have been going up to the Se Cathedral but it's hard to know because there are a lot of little churches along the way in the neighborhood. We were pretty close to the bottom of the hill by this point, so we didn't really want to follow them back up.
By this point, it was close to 6 in the evening and we hadn't been back to the hotel to actually get into our room. We had pushed through quite a bit of the day (and been up for more than 24 hours), so we headed back to the hotel to settle in and rest for a little bit (about an hour) before we headed to dinner. We stayed close to our hotel in the Anjos neighborhood for dinner, going to a restaurant that served Italian and Portuguese food.
We both got Portuguese dishes.
They were pretty basic (Portuguese food isn't very fancy from what I can tell); my mom got chicken (on the left) and I have steak in mustard sauce. The mustard sauce was amazing; I could have had a bowl of it and eaten it like a soup. I ate too much because I was trying to sop up the mustard sauce with my fries and then my mom's left-over fries. (I really can't say enough about the mustard sauce-- I wish I could figure out how to make it. I would put it on everything, though I bet the fact that it was so good also means it contains something really unhealthy.) Fries and rice came with a lot of dishes in Portugal-- the Portuguese seem to think that fries and white rice are vegetable sides and so a lot of food comes with those two as the sides. I also drank most of a bottle of wine; the wine menu was in Portuguese, but I ordered a wine that cost 5.95. It seemed reasonable to me that I had ordered a glass of house wine; it turns out I had ordered a small bottle of the house wine which, especially for the price, was quite good. Wine in general is pretty inexpensive in Portugal; like in a lot of other European countries, it tends to be less expensive than soft drinks. Much of Portugal is pretty inexpensive, really. Certainly, almost everything is cheap by American standards and since the euro and the dollar are pretty equitable at the moment, this makes Portugal a fairly inexpensive country to visit.
Our first day ended relatively early... we had been up for a while.
Saturday, April 4: Belem and Lisbon
Our second day in Lisbon was rather ambitious-- we were going to spend the early part of the day in Belem, an area just outside of Lisbon (it's not quite Lisbon but still sort of counts as being in Lisbon-- at least, our metro card still worked in this area), and the later part of the day on a food tour of Lisbon. So, we set off in the morning for Belem, which involved going to the last stop on one of the metro lines and then getting in line for either bus 728 or tram 15 to Belem. It took a couple of buses/trams to actually get on-- and then it was very crowded, prompting my mom to hop off early. So, we got off at the Praca Afonso de Alburquerque
which them meant walking through the small town of Belem,
which is full of buildings that are still beautifully tiled, until we got to the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos.
It's hard to get a picture of it all from up close-- but the panoramic I took from the garden across the street gives a sense of its size.
The up-close picture, however, gives a sense of how crowded it was. The line was hours long (which we weren't prepared for since again nothing I read had talked about the long lines)-- and we had to choose between standing in line for hours and missing the food tour or touring the area without going in. We chose the latter. So, we walked through the garden
towards the Praca do Imperio, with its monument to Henry the Navigator and other "Portuguese bigwigs" like Vasco da Gama built in 1960,
and the waterfront.
This was definitely the nicest weather day we had-- it was sunny and 80 degrees which made for a great sky against which to take photos. There are restaurants along the waterfront as well as this statue of bulls for which there was no explanation, but we took pictures with them anyway (because other people were doing it?).
Oddly-- or maybe not since I'm still unclear about what exactly was going on-- the people from the cooking competition the day before were now on the waterfront in Belem, filming again. There seemed to be fewer contestants than the day before, so I'm guessing some kind of elimination had happened in Lisbon.
On the other side of the waterfront plaza is the Torre de Belem, also with a long line to get in, so we didn't go, which is probably good since my tour guide warns that the stairwell is narrow and not good for claustrophobics (which my mom is).
It was designed to look like a chess piece, built in 1515 to defend Lisbon's harbor as it practically juts into the water.
The waterfront itself is well worth a visit, even if you don't go into any of the sites, especially on a nice day. We decided to spend the time we had left getting a small snack before heading to the food tour (small so we wouldn't ruin our appetite, a snack because well still had a little while and were really hungry). There is a bakery in Belem that people line up for-- the Antiga Confeittaria de Belem-- and we decided this was the line we should stand in. This is the line for take-away; there is also a restaurant with tables you can sit at.
What everyone is in line for are pasteis de belem
which are pastry nests filled with custard. You can find these at many patisseries throughout Portugal, but the best ones were here (we sampled many in our week)-- part is due to the "secret" recipe this bakery uses and in part its due to the fact that they are served warm here. No where else served them warm, but they are better that way. We got four of these and then a couple other pastries as well. Inside the restaurant, there's an open, glassed-in kitchen where you can watch bakers make the pasteis de belem.
It's all very charming.
After our pastry stop, we decided to head back to the Lisbon city center so we could be sure not to be late for the food tour, especially since we were supposed to meet in a small pedestrian square next to a Star of David sculpture and while I had a general idea of where it was located, I wasn't exactly sure. It was a bit off to the side, but we found it.
This statue itself was erected in 2006 as a memorial to the Jews who died on the weekend of April 19, 1506 during the Inquisition. In this same square is a small church, Igreja de Sao Domingos which has survived both the earthquake of 1755 and a fire in 1959. You can see the evidence of the "wear and tear" a bit on the pillars in the pictures, but when you go in, that's hardly what you notice since it's really spectacular.
We had a little bit of time (like 20 minutes) before the food tour began, so we wandered through the market in a nearby, larger square.
There were a lot of food vendors and vendors of handmade crafts here; we actually bought quite a few presents to take back with us here. There were several vendors selling products made from cork-- 50% of the world's cork comes from Portugal-- which we later found out were really being sold at bargain prices (shops priced the same kinds of items much higher) so we got to support local artisans and get a deal.
We made it back to David's Star and joined our food tour group, which was made up of 10 people and our tour guide, where got more history on the plaza, the massacre of 1506 and the culture of Lisbon in general before we walked a block to our first stop on the tour, Manteigaria Silva.
This place is really more of a market than a place to eat in-- one side sells fish products like a Portuguese favorite, cod-- though it doesn't look like cod the way Americans think of it. They eat it dried and cured-- and they eat pretty much all of it.
We did not sample any of the cod here. Rather, we sampled products that came from the other side of the market (which is in the picture above): olive oil, bread, corn bread, pata negra ham (which is a lot like prosciutto), and wine. Those who didn't drink wine were given some very sweet drink that tasted like drinking sugar (I tried a sip of it because that's what my mom got-- she didn't take more than a sip of it either).
From here, we walked around Rossio Square, stopping in front of Baltazar Castanheiso, a restaurant and bakery
to get a brief lesson on pastries-- namely that a lot of them, including the pasteis de belem, were created because the Portuguese were trying to figure out what to do with egg yolks. They had a lot of uses for the whites (including a lot of non-cooking uses) but then had a lot of yolks left over. The custard in the pasteis de belem is basically yolk and sugar, at least as a base. All the more yellow-y pastries that are everywhere are also yolk based.
We headed from Rossio Square out of the way a bit to Ze Dos Cornos
a really small restaurant where we tried a variety of cheeses, quince marmalade and pork steak sandwiches.
The cheeses were quite strong, especially the one in the picture on the right that was served with the marmalade. I didn't think it was terrible, though I don't think I would choose to eat it again, but a lot of people really didn't like it. However, the guy from the nice Irish couple sitting across from us really liked it-- he ate the majority of what was on the plate. (They also made us feel better because they too had gone to Belem earlier in the day and wandered around because the lines were so long-- so at least we weren't the only ones who chose not to wait in line for hours.)
We wandered down hill a bit to the Praca de Figueria, an international plaza which includes a dragon sculpture that gets repainted each Chinese New Year according to the colors for that year.
This year is red and gold. There are also several food vendors in this plaza including Moules & Gin which was our next stop.
Here, we had mussels served with a traditional Portuguese sauce which was basically garlic, wine and lemon.
For me, mussels are made (or not) by the sauce-- this was pretty good. From the plaza, we headed into the Alfama neighborhood, which meant going uphill for the rest of the tour. We passed this church along the way; the church itself is just a church, but if you look at the tile work in the street, you can see that it mirrors the church.
This black and white tile work is all over Lisbon sidewalks and walking streets-- apparently, people go to school and are certified to lay out these patterns. In some places, the designs are much more abstract and don't seem to have as much intent as this one-- but learning that all the sidewalk tile work is done by specialists did make me pay a lot more attention to it for the rest of our trip.
We then stopped by this monument to Fado music.
Fado is a style of music unique to Portugal; it's performed with a couple instruments including the guitar-like instrument in the monument (which has 12 strings) and all the Fado songs are of love and loss. It's a really depressing genre. But, we were about to enter the neighborhood that was the birthplace of Fado. The same photographer who had taken pictures of Alfama residents had taken photos or created images (if the singers have died) of Fado singers and they are all along the walls of the street behind the monument. Here, we stopped at Tasca os Amigos Da Severa, a really small bar, for Ginjinha-- a kind of cherry brandy. (The woman in the picture is our tour guide.)
All over Portugal (or, at least Lisbon, Sintra and Porto-- so I'm guessing all over), you can stop in at little shops and buy shots of Ginja for 1 euro. In a lot of places, it's served in a chocolate cup, but here we drank it out of little plastic cups. It tastes a lot like cough syrup, though slightly better. It wasn't good enough that I wanted to seek out a tasting in a chocolate cup despite how much I like chocolate.
Outside of this small bar are buildings that used to serve as both brothels and Fado houses.
Because of the importance of Fado, this one is now preserved and funded as cultural centers for Fado.
This neighborhood is a relatively ethnically diverse one; Lisbon is a very ethnically diverse city though it takes a bit of searching to find the pockets of diversity (they aren't in the city center). A lot of the ethnic pockets seem to be located in the hillier neighborhoods and in very tiny restaurants that kind of make you feel like you're walking into someones personal kitchen (and seem a little intimidating because of their smallness-- they are all neighborhood joints and you have to know they are there to find them or, in some cases, recognize them as restaurants). We went to one on our next stop: Cantinho do Azis.
Here, we had samosas and beer.
Those who didn't drink beer got fresh squeezed juice-- my mom got mango (which sort of made me wish I didn't drink beer. It was really good.) Our guide thinks the Portuguese are much more beer drinkers than wine drinkers which was surprising to me because the wine I had was really good but there seemed to be less diversity in the beer-- not that it wasn't good, but there wasn't the sort of microbrewery-specialty feeling that I get in the US. The beer was good-- though the one we were served wasn't Portuguese. (I think it was from somewhere in Africa-- which I realize is broad, but I really can't remember now.)
Our final stop was farther up the hills into Alfama. As we walked there, our guide talked a lot about the sense of community in the neighborhood and we saw small examples of community art projects like the photo project and this tree covered in crochet.
We wound through a few more streets and got to Leopold for dessert.
This restaurant is entirely unlike any other I've been to. It's definitely gourmet (though not priced like it is-- the prices are incredibly inexpensive) but because of ordinances, there is no oven in the restaurant. He cooks a lot of the food sous-vide. The restaurant itself has two seatings a night (which require reservations) and the menu is limited to what the chef is making that night (though there is generally a choice between a couple of entrees and a couple desserts). We couldn't get in for a reservation that night or we would have made one.
Our dessert was constructed of bananas (cooked sous-vide), chocolate, and a kind of biscuit. This is the first time I felt the portion was way too small-- this was a plate to be shared by two people. I could have eaten a whole plateful by myself.
We concluded our food tour another block up, about 6:30, near this "graffiti" dedicated to Fado.
This was about halfway up to the Castelo de S. Jorge, so many in our group continued up. We had already been there, so we opted to walk down the stairs back to city center and the market to do the shopping for gifts we had put off since we didn't want to carry them all around during the food tour.
Walking around, we passed the Elavador de Santa Justa which takes you up to a high platform with scenic views of the city-- it looks vaguely "familiar" because it was built by Gustave Eiffel's apprentice, Raul Mesnier. We opted not to pay 5 euro each to go up since it's hard to imagine what view we would have gotten that was different from the castle which is higher up.
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We'd been eating for hours and yet, after walking around the Rossio and Baxia-Chiado neighborhoods for a while, we decided we needed something to eat before going back to the hotel. We had passed a really wonderful looking gelato place
that put gelato on waffles-- so we decided to have breakfast for dinner (it counts as a meal because there were waffles-- really good Belgian waffles).
We ate our fantastic dinner and watched the women behind the counter prepare cones for lots of people which was fascinating because they created all of them to look like flowers-- like in the picture outside the shop. (I would have taken a picture of an actual cone, but strangers seem to think it's weird when I want to photograph their food. And, I couldn't get a good surreptitious shot.)
We passed other food displays in restaurant windows that I found fascinating, mostly because they looked more like market or grocery displays than restaurant displays to me; this is also possibly the largest crab I've ever seen.
And then we headed back to our hotel for the evening. It was Saturday night, so I was surprised that there seemed to be some kind of Easter event going on at the church across the street from our hotel (I didn't think Saturday was a big night in all the Easter festivities).
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Sunday, April 5: Aquarium and Zoo
While most things in Lisbon are open on Sundays and closed on Mondays (like monuments, castles, etc.), this was Easter weekend and so lots of stuff was closed on this particular Sunday (which is why we had tried to rush to Belem the day before; we would have saved it for Sunday on any other weekend). However, the aquarium and zoo are open on Easter (the zoo is open 365 days a year).
We started our morning off by eating the remaining pastries from the patisserie in Belem (we had pastries for breakfast just about every day)
and then we headed to the metro to go to the aquarium-- or Oceanario as it's called in Lisbon. The difference seems to be that the Lisbon Aquarium is centered around the Atlantic Ocean with all the other oceans also represented-- it's organized by ocean, hence an oceanarium.
The Oceranario is located along a waterfront;
from the outside, it's not particularly attractive.
But it's really lovely inside-- and has some fish I've never seen before, including this large, prehistoric-looking one that we were fascinated with. It was really hard to photograph (partially because it's hard to take a picture of something that won't stop moving and partially because low light and glass make taking photos tricky), but you can get a pretty good sense of it through the video.
It was in the Atlantic Ocean tank, which is the central tank around which the rest of the aquarium is organized, so we got to see this fish a lot.
There were also other interesting fish:
and this crab/spider hybrid thing.
And, there were lots of colorful coral displays and pretty starfish.
There were also cute animals, like the otters
and the penguins.
This whole day actually felt very not-foreign. The signs in the aquarium were in Portuguese and English-- so, a little different since Portuguese isn't a language we usually see as one of the translations in the US. But otherwise, while this aquarium is amazing (and less expensive than a lot of US aquariums), it, like the zoo, sort of made me forget for a while that we were in a foreign country. But, my mom and I both love zoos and aquariums-- and it was Easter Sunday... we had fewer options than a normal Sunday would have afforded us.
There is a lovely, small park outside of the aquarium-- it has some nice, interactive kids features that are intended to teach a bit about ecology and water.
After our morning at the aquarium, we headed for the zoo, which is sort of on the other side of Lisbon, but a pretty easy metro ride.
Right inside the park, but outside the actual zoo, was an outdoor cafe where we decided to stop and get lunch before venturing into the zoo.
We got hot dogs and fries- the hot dogs weren't American hot dogs. I'm guessing they were actually made from pork rather than the beef that many American hot dogs are made out of. Not terrible-- just not the taste of hot dog. And, they were topped with crispy "onions", like the kind you put on top of a string-bean casserole. (That part was actually pretty good.)
After our lunch, we headed into the zoo. The zoo itself has a lot of great animals-- and it quite clearly used to be something else, part of some estate or some other historical building, though as much research as I did, I could only find out that the zoo was founded in 1884 and transferred to its current location in 1905, not what purpose that location served before 1905. It's clear from what is left in the zoo that there was something else there originally. For example, there are these stairs and arches in the mountain goat habitat.
And, near the large birds habitats,
there is this.
And, also near the large bird habitats, is this garden and maze which seems like it should be part of a garden attached to the "house" behind it, even though the garden is part of the zoo but the house doesn't seem to be.
And, on the other side of the zoo, near the giraffes, are these. They just sit off to the side and aren't integrated in any way, though they are inside the zoo fence.
It's all a mystery-- but it makes for a lovely zoo that is a mixture of animals and architectural history.
This zoo also has a lot of baby animals-- more than I feel like I'm accustomed to seeing. There were a lot of babies in the various monkey habitats (a lot more than pictured here-- but I thought the mom cuddling her baby was cute).
And a baby rhino (yes-- that's the baby. You can see the outline of its mother in the background).
And baby bison.
The zoo has several nice features to it that I haven't seen elsewhere. Like, there is a teleferico (which is free to ride). This is my mom looking scared to ride it-- being up in the air in a tiny, open air cable car isn't her favorite thing to do. She was a really good sport though.
There are some nice aerial views from the teleferico, like a better shot of the garden and maze
and a view of the flamingo habitat (I love flamingos).
The zoo also has the best dolphin and sea lion show I've ever seen--it's not that there aren't dolphin shows at other zoos (though they are becoming less common), but more that this one was 1) free and 2) quite elaborate. It was more than 30 minutes long and the trainers and animals seemed to love it.
I took some video, but it was hard to watch and record.
It's mostly dogs, but there are a few cats. Some of the graves are really elaborate.
It was totally strange-- it's clearly been there awhile. There were some pretty old graves-- and then also relatively new ones. And, there were family tombs, plots where people had buried all of their pets over the years. I have no idea how one would go about getting a plot-- or if there are even any left. It looked pretty full.
After the zoo, our initial idea was to go back to the street market in Rossio for dinner; however, most of the food on sale in the market was tapas, which in Portugal means a plate of meat, cheese and bread. I love meat, cheese and bread as much as the next person, but I was also feeling like I hadn't had a vegetable in a long time (because fries and rice don't seem like vegetables to me even if that's how they are listed on the menu). So, we wound up at one of the more touristy restaurants along the pedestrian street where we both got vegetable paella.
We probably could have split one, but our waiter didn't mention how big the portions were; it felt slightly sleazy, as did all of the places along the pedestrian street-- they're the kind of places where waiters or hosts shove menus in your face as you walk. But, it was Easter Sunday, so there was some limitation in choices. And, the paella wasn't bad; just a portion for more than one.
After buying pastries for both dessert and breakfast, we went back to the hotel after dinner-- we had to get up early the next day to get to Sintra.
Monday, April 6: Sintra
The sites in Sintra open at 9:30, so we woke up and got to the train station in time to arrive in Sintra a little before 9:30 so that we could be early to start the rounds of palaces and castles. Our timeliness didn't matter, however, because the trains were on strike-- something which a lot of the Portuguese seemed to know was going to happen but as tourists, we did not. But, there was no getting to Sintra by train.
My next plan was to go see if we could get on one of the tours that go to Sintra-- we'd have to be on someone else's schedule, but we'd get to see the sites we most wanted to see. But, apparently there were tourists who had known about the strike and, after waiting until 10 am for the tour office to open, we were told that all the tours were booked. So, no getting to Sintra on a tour.
At the train station, a couple of women had been talking about taking a taxi to Sintra-- a group of tourists had found a driver who would take a group of 4 for 40 euro. However, there was general chagrin about how much more that was than the train and fear that there was no guarantee of getting a taxi back to Lisbon later in the day (or, knowing how much that would cost-- though the cost fear seemed unwarranted as taxis are fairly regulated in Portugal. As long as you take an official taxi-- rather than a rogue one-- the price is consistent.). We really wanted to go to Sintra, so my mom and I decided to take a taxi.
As in many other European countries, you can't simply hail a taxi in Lisbon-- you have to go to a taxi stand and take whichever taxi is next in line. (Like I said, very regulated.) The next one in line when we arrived was driven by the only driver in Lisbon to speak not a single word of English-- but I thought I navigated this pretty well. Portuguese is a strange language-- it has a lot of similarities to Spanish until it doesn't. For example, basic phrases, like "hello," "please," and "how are you?" are exactly the same as in Spanish. But then, you get to something like "thank you" and there is a completely different word-- obrigado (or, obrigada if you're a woman saying thank you). It's nothing like the Spanish. At any rate, I seemed to have explained well enough to the driver that we wanted to go to Sintra and discerned that it would be about 35 euro for us to get there. But then, on the way to Sintra, some confusion seemed to ensue; I understood that our driver was asking us if we wanted him to drive us up to the Palace of Pena and while I had initially intended for us to be dropped off in the city center so we could catch the bus that went up to Pena, taking the taxi up (Pena is the highest point) and then working our way down seemed like a good idea, so I said yes (which, as in Spanish, is "si"). For some reason "si, Pena" seemed to confuse our driver but I never figured out why. And so, for the rest of the drive, he tried to get me to talk on the phone to some friend of his who spoke English and would translate what we wanted to him. The first time he dialed this friend, I was clearly an afterthought on the other end of the line-- the friend was talking to a whole bunch of other people on his end and would start to say something to me and then get distracted and so he never finished a sentence. And then our call got disconnected. The second time the friend got on the phone, he asked me if we wanted to go to Pena and I said yes and he said ok and I handed the phone back to the driver who listened for a few moments and then seemed to understand something he hadn't before (though I don't know what the friend said that was different from, "si, Pena"). Eventually though, we made our way up the very windy, narrow roads to the Palace of Pena, my new favorite castle.
We had circumvented the majority of the walk uphill (which I'm guessing most people don't do-- it's described in tour guides as a pretty arduous hike, though there are walking paths that have been created for those who want to do it) but once you get to Pena there is still a hill to climb. You can pay 3 euro to take a shuttle up part of that hill (which we didn't do-- we walked) but even the shuttle drops off before the hill is completely climbed. It drops people off with this view.
The whole ordeal to get to Sintra was worth it to get to see Pena. This is what it looks like once you climb the final hill.
Pena started off as a monastery which was built in the 12th century-- and was much smaller in the beginning. The red part of the palace is the original monastery structure.
In 1755, like many other places we'd seen (like Castelo de S. Jorge and churches in Lisbon), the earthquake caused damage to the monastery and fell into decline. In 1838, Don Fernando II bought the monastery and from 1842-1854 reconstructed the monastery and built the "new palace" along with his wife and queen Dona Maria II. Don Fernando II was King-consort, but never King. Don Pedro V became King in 1853 when Dona Maria II died; however, the palace still belonged to Don Fernando II and became the property of his second wife, the Countess of Edla, when he died. It became the property of the state in 1889, 4 years after the Countess died.
There is a family tree of royalty who contributed to Pena (though a little hard to see because I was having a hard time getting a shot of it straight on).
What makes me love this palace so much is the color. It is blue and yellow and red-- and vibrantly so. And, it's almost frothy.
The walls don't look as foreboding as the walls of the Moorish castles-- it's like some kind of fairyland palace rather than a fortification.
And, there is some amazing tile, both on outer walls and in the courtyards.
And, of course, there is tile on the interior as well.
Part of the reason for all the tile in Portugal is that it doesn't burn. There was a great fire after the earthquake in 1755 and what the people learned is that those buildings that were covered in tile largely didn't burn. That's why there is so much tile in Portugal-- fire prevention. The aesthetic of it is a lovely afterthought.
Inside the palace, the rooms are filled with artifacts from the time of Dona Maria II and Don Fernando II. So, there are cabinets with service
and dining rooms (this is the small one for private dinners)
and bedrooms
and bathrooms (which I always find fascinating-- I think it's the one way in which royalty become "normal").
There was also this early example of a telephone.
And, of course, the kitchen (I also really like kitchens and other domains of the servants. I often find the "downstairs" more interesting.).
The day we went to Sintra was the only really rainy day we had on our trip-- and with the rain came a lot of fog. So, there are great views from the Palace of Pena (because it's so high up), but the pictures weren't really doing it justice (and, the view was a bit compromised by the fog).
There were also some lovely gardens, but the weather wasn't making wandering outside in them as attractive a prospect as it might have been on another day. (I'm also guessing they are really great now, as I'm writing this, since everything has had another 10 days to bloom. We were there at the very beginning of things starting to bloom.)
From Pena, we decided to head down into the city center. We decided to skip the Moorish Castle, which is a little downhill from Pena (we could see it from Pena, though it wasn't showing up well in pictures) which seemed much like the Castelo de S. Jorge-- built by the same people during the same time of the same materials. We were waiting for bus 435, the bus that runs the circuit from the train station through city center to the Moorish Castle and then to Pena (in that order-- you can't do it backwards. I don't know what it did on that day since there would have been no one at the train station-- I suppose it rode through.) when a tuk-tuk came by and offered to drive us down for the same price as the bus, so we did that. (The bus pass would have been an all day pass rather than the fee for one ride, but we weren't planning to go back up so we didn't really need the bus pass.) The city center is quite small and quaint. And colorful.
There are little shops and restaurants tucked into the narrow streets (all of which run uphill-- they are largely cobblestone which on a wet day made going downhill actually harder than going up because it was so slippery. It was the one time when up was better.). We decided to get lunch before exploring the National Palace of Sintra which is also in the center.
The cafe we went to was out of whatever it was I had ordered, so we split a salad misto and tapas (which once again meant meat, cheese and bread-- and some olives).
The food was really good; what was really interesting was that the menu prices were different if you wanted to sit inside or outside. I'm used to European restaurants charging more for food served at the table than take-away, but I hadn't ever seen prices vary depending on where the table was located. (It didn't really matter on this day since it was raining and outdoor service wasn't available. But the patio was right through the doors in the back of the first picture-- it's not like it was far away, so I thought it was interesting that food was about 1.50 euro more if it was eaten outside.)
We were wandering in and out of shops as we headed back down to the National Palace-- and then decided that we should just go to the palace first because much of what were interested was pottery and it seemed like it would be heavy to carry around for hours.
The National Palace of Sintra stands out because of the two chimneys that jut out (both of which are attached to the kitchen).
You can see them a little better here, but the picture isn't as nice.
There are some spots of color in the National Palace, but they are accents to the largely white construction.
This Palace is much older than Pena-- or at least much older than all the parts other than the monastery. It began as a Moorish fort in the 11th century and was first extended in 1281 by King Dinis. It was extended many times between then and the 16th century, but the silhouette hasn't changed since then (though it too has been restored since the earthquake when it was damaged).
The National Palace is a bit more austere than the Palace of Pena; even the staging is more formal. And, there is a formal chapel in this palace.
It was a little hard to get good pictures inside the palace. Flash isn't allowed and it was quite dark, especially since there was no sunlight (it was raining pretty hard when we entered the palace). Many of the rooms in the National Palace are named for the artwork on the ceilings, which was quite intricate. This is the ceiling from the Swan Room (again, hard to get pictures of because of the light).
And the ceiling from Blazons Hall (or part of it-- it extends beyond the picture).
All the coats of arms of the elite citizens from the first half of the 16th century are represented in the ceiling.
Many of the doorways were intricate too (people kept walking through them though so I never got a really good picture of one).
And, this is the kitchen that attaches to the two chimneys-- it's the brightest room in the palace because every surface is white tile.
The steps of palace offer a nice spot from which to take pictures of the whole of "downtown" Sintra (which looks bigger in the picture than it feels). At the very top of the picture is the Moorish Castle.
We went and shopped (and bought pottery and some other things) and then decided we had to try the one gelateria that Sintra offered-- it was pretty much obligatory.
Here, because it was rather cold and wet out, I opted to get a hot chocolate (I also opted for this because it was made from real, melted chocolate. Europeans make great hot chocolate.) and my mom got a milk shake made from pistachio gelato.
Before we decided to leave Sintra (and from our seats in the gelateria), I noticed that there were gardens attached to the palace that we hadn't been in-- there hadn't seemed to be a way to get to them from the tour. But, we headed across the street to see if we could get in since the rain had largely stopped. There was a sign that instructed visitors to buy a ticket from the shop, but it was unclear if the gardens needed a separate ticket from the palace or if it was simply possible to buy a gardens only ticket. And, there was no one around to ask nor to take a ticket, so we just went in. I figured if we were stopped, we would just play dumb Americans and say we thought our palace ticket covered the gardens as well (which it might have... I'm still not sure). At any rate, two people who worked at the palace passed us while we were in the gardens and never said anything, so I'm going to take that to mean it was ok that we were there.
The palace is built on a hill and the structure accommodates that hill which is easier to see from the gardens (you can see there are levels to it). It also means that parts of the garden are pretty high up and so afford good scenic spots to take pictures from (again, the structure at the top is the Moorish Castle-- it's a little easier to see). In the picture on the left, you can kind of get a sense of the garden levels; the interior rooms of the palace also accommodate the hill (so, there are a lot of stairs).
After the gardens, we decided to try to find a taxi back to Lisbon; this is a little more complicated than getting a taxi from Lisbon since there are significantly fewer taxis in Sintra. The first one that came along went to an English couple who were going to Cascais. We were willing to share a taxi back, though I really don't think we would have wanted to share with them even if they were going to Lisbon-- there were having a pretty heated fight, punctuated by nastily calling each other darling at the beginning and end of each insult.(Their fight provided some pretty good entertainment for a while.) Instead, we agreed to share the next taxi that came along (maybe 15 or 20 minutes later) with an American couple (who currently live in Amsterdam) who were headed to the airport in Lisbon. First we had to drop by their hotel (which was a converted palace-- and absolutely gorgeous) to get their luggage and then we were off, back to Lisbon. The taxi ride is less expensive when shared, so the whole day probably cost us less than it would have if we had gotten on a tour bus (and, in the end, a taxi between cities still cost less than an airport shuttle in the US).
We got back to Lisbon around 6:30 and headed to the hotel to change clothes before going out to dinner. We went to restaurant in our neighborhood, Carvaoaria Jacto, that was highly rated on Yelp (it was actually one we had intended to go to on our first night but it had been closed for Easter weekend).
We were first offered appetizers-- a large tray of different plates was brought to our table and we just chose what we wanted off of it. We choose a plate of various fried things stuffed with a variety of fillings.
The reviews on Yelp suggested that this was a great place for steak, so we ordered the steak for two, which came with the salad bar (which was exciting because it was actual vegetables-- though we were also encouraged to order vegetable sides like fries or rice. We didn't though-- the salad seemed like enough.) The steak for two that came was huge-- we could probably have split the steak for one.
And, despite the fact that we ordered the steak cooked medium, it was really rare-- like the char marks were made and then it was taken off the grill, bright red inside. And, I don't this was a mistake because the people next to us ordered a shrimp and steak kabob and asked for their steak to be medium and from what I could tell, their steak was really rare as well. (I thought the kebab presentation was cool, so I took a picture of it when the couple went to the salad bar.)
So, when in Portugal, apparently medium means what Americans think of as rare; I'm not sure how one would order so as to get an American version of medium... It was clearly really high quality steak; it just would have been better if cooked a little more.
We walked back to our hotel and repacked all of our stuff because we were leaving for Porto in the morning.
Tuesday, April 7: Porto
Porto is in northern Portugal, pretty close to Spain. We woke up pretty early on Tuesday to catch a train, trying to arrive in Porto late morning (it's about a 3 hour train ride from Lisbon; there's a train just about every hour, but we wanted to have almost a full day in Porto since we were only going to be there for two days.). Getting our luggage through the metro to the train station was something of a pain-- dragging suitcases up and down stairs isn't fun. However, this was the day that my metro card decided to let me start riding for free. In Lisbon, you pay 50 cents for a card that you keep recharging every day. On this day, I put my card in the machine, added fare to it, got my change from the bill I put in and waited while the machine added the fare to my card. Then, when I pulled my card out of the machine, the money I had placed on it fell into the change return. But, the card said it was charged-- and it opened the gate when I went through. For the rest of the trip, this continued to happen-- the machines would all return my money after the card was filled. And, it wasn't just one machine-- it was machines in a variety of metro stations. I had some magic metro card. (This never happened to my mom-- the machine kept the money for her metro card, so it wasn't that the machines were malfunctioning. This returning of money was unique to my card. I considered trying to sell it-- who knows how much one could get for a magic metro card. But, I also didn't know how to explain a magic metro card in Portuguese, so I just kept it.) So, despite my efforts to play within the system and pay my fare, I never actually paid to ride the metro in Lisbon again. The machines kept giving me my money back-- and I didn't know how to explain to the machines that they were supposed to keep my money (plus who am I to argue if they wanted to let me ride for free).
After struggling to get our luggage to the train station, we had about 40 minutes before our train, so we bought pastries in the station for breakfast.
And then rode the train to Porto, found a taxi to take us to our hotel-- and arrived at the castle we had booked, Castelo Santa Catarina.
The castle was undergoing renovations while we were there-- and, the day before we arrived, a 150 year old tree had fallen.
But it was still a castle and it was still lovely. Because we had arrived late morning, our room wasn't ready, so we decided to go explore Porto. Our very helpful concierge pointed out areas of interest on the walk from our hotel to the Ribeira. That walk is downhill; he also recommended that we take a taxi or the metro back since uphill is quite steep.
The first thing we did was walk towards the historic city center for lunch. Our concierge had recommended that we go to the Majestic at some point-- he said it was a little touristy but really pretty and well worth at least stopping for a coffee. We decided to go for lunch.
The interior of the Majestic is art deco-- and very fancy feeling. The outside patio is also lovely and lavender filled.
We sat inside-- and since we said we were ordering lunch, we got a table with a tablecloth and were offered the couvert.
Couvert in Portugal is interesting; some restaurants ask if you want it and others just bring it-- but in either case, you are charged for what you eat of it. If you're not asked if you want it (so, if it's just delivered) and you don't touch it, you also (likely) aren't charged for it. Even if you do ask for it, you are only charged for what you eat (so, you can be charged for how many pieces of the bread in the basket you eat individually. I discovered this later in out trip when I tried just eating parts of the couvert-- it turns out that if you are served both butter and cheese but you don't touch the butter, you are only charged for the cheese.) In any case, when you are brought bread to your table in Portugal (often accompanied by other interesting things), this isn't complimentary. It is, however, often quite good. The variety of couvert from restaurant to restaurant was interesting.
I ordered a tropical salad and my mom ordered an omelet. The picture doesn't do justice to how good my salad was-- it had mango and papaya and pineapple in it, the first fresh fruit I had had in Portugal. It was really yummy.
I also ordered a sangria with lunch. This is a picture of, easily, the best sangria I have ever had. Better than any sangria I had in Spain, even (this could convert me to being a sangria person). It is easy to imagine drinking several of these on a hot day.
It was so good my mom even liked it. You would have to know my mom-- but the fact that she is drinking an alcoholic drink, and enjoying it, is remarkable. My mom doesn't drink-- she can't stand the taste of alcohol. But, here she is, drinking my sangria. (I think she would have ordered one were it not for the fact that she's never had a whole alcoholic drink in her life-- we weren't sure what would happen.)
After lunch, we continued our walk through the city center
towards the Ribeira, hitting almost all of the spots our concierge had recommended. There is a lot of art deco influence in Porto, including in the more centrally located train station (not the one we arrived at) of Sao Bento, which I'm assuming was a church before it was converted to a train station. In the interior, you can see that mixture of older (likely church related) and more art deco.
From Sao Bento, we headed uphill (as hilly as Lisbon was, it was nothing compared to Porto; even when you were walking downhill, there were still hills to go up) towards the Torre de Clerigos, built in the mid-1700s (you can see we were on a downhill slope heading towards it, and that then there was a climb up to it, which is steeper than it looks).
The Torre de Clerigos is a church attached to a tower, so it looks really different from the front and the back.
Inside, the church is pretty
and also has one of the creepiest alters ever (from far away it's kind of pretty; it's the close up coffin for a pre-resurrected and bloody Jesus that was strange).
From the Torre de Clerigos, we headed back down towards the Se Cathedral, passing the Praca da Liberdade.
The building at the back of the Praca is the Porto municipal building; it wasn't actually on our list of things we had to see, but I think it's a very pretty municipal square.
The Se Cathedral is downhill, and then uphill, from the Praca da Liberdade.
The Se Cathedral was initially built in the 12th century but then largely rebuilt in the 13th century and and altered extensively in the 18th century.
And, it has modern additions to it.
Inside, it's gorgeous and very ornate.
From the Se Cathedral, we walked over to the Mercado Ferreira Borges, though I'm not exactly sure why. I was expecting it to be a market, but it was largely an empty building.
There is a restaurant in this building, but who would know? It was on the list of things our concierge told us to check out-- and maybe there's something here on other days. But the day we went, it didn't seem like much of anything. Near the market is Igreja Sao Francisco.
We didn't go inside the church. For one, I think I was "churched out" by this point. There is also a fee to go in; most churches are free to go into because they are still in use (and so you can't charge people to enter a place of worship). However, Sao Francisco is largely a tourist attraction now; the catacombs are the big draw, but you have to pay just to walk through the front door. Instead of exploring the catacombs (which I would have really had to do by myself), we decided to head down to the Ribeira.
The Ribeira itself is mostly restaurants-- and a few souvenir shops. It actually photographs better either from the Ponte de Dom Luis I, which was built from 1881-1886 by Teophile Seyrig (a student of Gustave Eiffel, but not the same one who built the Elavador in Lisbon),
or from the other side of the bridge, in Gaia. So, we walked the lower walkway over to the Gaia side to get a better view of the Riberia. We were going to walk the upper pedestrian bridge the next day, when we intended to explore Gaia (which is where the port lodges largely are).
When we crossed back across the lower walking bridge, we decided to take the funicular up to the Muralha Fernandina. (Again, the map is deceiving. This looks quite close to the Ribeira, but it actually quite high above it.)
It's hard to see, but there is a door to the right at the top of the stairs; when we got there, around 5 pm, it was locked. There are, however, no hours posted so it's hard to know when it's open (though it seemed reasonable that it was closed for the day when we got there). The next day as we were crossing the Ponte de D. Luis, we noticed people walking around the interior walls but when we returned later in the day, around 3, it was once again closed. So, I'm not sure when the Muralha Fernandina is open, but I'm going to guess only in the morning.
Since down is easier than up, we walked down the nearby stairs back to the Ribeira to get a snack: macarons that we bought at one of the smaller bars along the waterfront. We took them with us as we walked up towards where the taxis were waiting (it cost about the same to take a taxi back to our hotel as two metro fares would) and went to settle in to our castle room.
This is the door to our room.
We were on the first floor, so we were actually in an out building in the courtyard that wasn't initially intended to be a bedroom
but it was converted well.
The shower had both a rain shower head and nozzles that shot water horizontally. I've never been in a shower with multi-directional water. It was fantastic.
We rested for about an hour and then headed up (away from the city center) to find Mamma Mia, a restaurant recommended by Yelp.
The reviews were really good and yet I don't think they do the restaurant justice-- it was even better than stated. It was perhaps the best Italian food we've ever had. The couvert itself was really good; had we known how big it was, we probably wouldn't have ordered an appetizer.
But, we had ordered the bruschetta with goat cheese and walnuts.
For dinner, my mom ordered a mushroom pizza and I ordered spaghetti bolognese. Everything was made in-house; the crust on the pizza was amazing and the house-made pasta was incredible.
We both ate too much because it was so good, and still had to leave some of each behind because it was too much to eat. Between Cafe Majestic and Mamma Mia, this was easily the best food day we had in Portugal; it was even better as a whole than the food tour food.
And then, we headed back to sleep in a castle.
Wednesday, April 8: Porto and Gaia
Breakfast was included in our stay, so we headed to the castle proper to eat in the morning. Even the stairs up were glamorous,
as were the hallways and dining rooms.
Breakfast itself was eggs, sausage, yogurt, fruits, and a variety of breads.
After breakfast, we headed out towards Gaia, though we meandered through the shops in the city center for a while, shopping on our way to the upper pedestrian bridge. (My mom bought a cork purse.) Like Porto is best seen (or, photographed) from the Gaia side, the best view of Gaia is from the Porto side.
This is my mom looking brave as she's crossing the upper walkway of the Ponte de Dom Luis I, high above water.
It actually feels very sturdy, not at all a scary bridge to cross. There's probably more danger from the trams that also use this bridge than anything else. From the upper walkway, you can see the Mosterio da Serra do Pilar, which was built in the 17th century.
It's not open to the public except for Mass on Sunday from 10 am until noon, so we couldn't go in. Once on the Gaia side, we took the teleferico down to the pedestrian streets, where the port lodges are. The teleferico offers a nice view on the way down, though the pictures don't come out very well because of the glass.
Near the teleferico exit is this building
which based on the sign, we think is a rehab center. It seems strange to locate a rehab center right in the heart of the port lodges, but I guess that would teach one how to resist temptation.
Our teleferico ticket also entitled us to free tastings at one of the port lodges, so we headed out to find that one. (My thought was that I don't really think I like port, so at least if we tried the port and didn't like it, we hadn't spent any money.) However, we were trying to find this place using the really badly drawn map on the back of our ticket. We wandered, uphill, and didn't find the place we were looking for, but did come across Graham's, one of the original wine caves in Gaia. (It's not the oldest-- the oldest is Sogevinus, founded in 1638. But you can't take tours of Sogevinus.) It wasn't what we were looking for, but Graham's is an iconic port lodge, so we decided to take a tour.
A tour of Graham's comes with a tasting; you can determine which flight of ports you want to try and this determines your ticket price (so, you're really paying for the port and the tour comes with it). We decided to get the slightly nicer flight, one which came with a variety of ports ranging from 15 euro a bottle to 150 a bottle so that 1) we could try a better variety and 2) because with the slightly more expensive flight, my mom (who doesn't drink) could tour the caves for free. It cost almost the same amount as paying for the cheaper flight plus a 5 euro ticket for my mom to tour the caves without purchasing port.
To work at Graham's, you must have to speak at least five languages. Tours depart every few minutes and each is in a different language. They do tours in French, Spanish, English and Portuguese and then other languages as well (our guide had a button with pins from all the nations whose languages she speaks-- I think there were 5). We had to wait about 15 minutes for the English tour, so we went through the small museum which includes a history of the Graham and Symington families. The Symington family is represented on the right. They wholly own Graham's now.
Graham's is the only independently family owned British port company. They own five vineyards, each of which produces something slightly different. Our tour guide provided a history of the Graham and Symington families as well as an explanation of how port is made.
The caves contain barrels
and larger barrels
in which port is aged. But now, I can't remember which kind is in which barrel. There are also cages in which the reserve ports are stored.
Reserve ports come from years when conditions for the grapes were perfect. A reserve year happens 2 or 3 times a decade. The cage above is from relatively recent years, so there are quite a few bottles. They have reserve bottles from the early and mid 20th century. There are significantly fewer of those.
My mom's birth year was a reserve year; mine was not. After the tour, you're led to the tasting. The German couple who were with us had bought the least expensive flight and were shown to this room. (All the glasses on the tables were from a large group that had passed through right before us.)
Because we had paid for the nicer flight, we were also led to a smaller, special tasting room.
I'm not really sure why our flight merited a special room; there were certainly more expensive flights available, but maybe there were also other tasting rooms we didn't see. At any rate, it was nice to feel elite. In this room there were free postcards available; you could write what you wanted and put them in a box and Graham's would post them for you. Or, you could keep them as souvenirs. (I'm not sure that this was actually what Graham's intended for the postcards, but it's what my mom and I did. Mine is now framed.)
The port flight we had contained three different kinds of port.
On the left is a ruby port, in the middle is a tawny port, and on the right is the reserve port. My mom did actually try all three. This is her drinking port (those who know her would need photographic proof).
My mom liked the ruby port best, probably because it was the lightest and fruitiest; I liked the reserve port best, I think because it tasted the most like wine. (It was also the most expensive at about 150 euro a bottle.) Neither of us like the tawny port; it tasted quite a bit like cognac and was pretty harsh.
Port has a higher alcohol content than wine, so after finishing the ruby port and the reserve port and having had nothing to eat for hours, I was a little buzzed. And, we both felt like we had had our port experience; if port were really your thing, however you could easily spend a couple days in Gaia touring the lodges (or, one very long, rushed day). We walked back down the hill, passing lots of port lodges on the way (but never the one located on the map on our teleferico ticket. We never even found the street it was supposedly on) and headed towards the Gaia riverfront for lunch. We chose Ristorante Pizzeria
and split a pizza and salad.
It wasn't as good as the pizza from the night before, mainly because the cheese wasn't fresh mozzarella. But, the crust was really good-- it's amazing the quality of pizza a few euro can buy in Portugal. After lunch, we wandered around Gaia a bit more. Most of the shops are artisan or antique shops (though, of course, there are port shops as well) and we picked up a few things (like antique earrings that look like Portuguese tile) and then headed back across the lower pedestrian bridge towards the Porto side.
In order to get back to the city center, we decided we would walk. It's not a terribly long walk, but it is a very steep one. These are some shots of the stairs we climbed.
You can tell how close we are to the top by the last picture on the right because that's the upper pedestrian walkway of the Ponte de D. Luis.
The day before, we hadn't walked far enough past the Torre dos Clerigos to reach the Livaria Lello, a library turned bookstore that is the basis for Harry Potter's Hogwarts' Library, so we headed in that direction to find it. It's up a small street perpendicular to the Torre dos Clerigos.
J.K Rowling lived and taught English in Porto in the early 1990s, so this is now a popular stop for all those who love Harry Potter. There is a man at the door who hands out visitor passes for crowd control. It wasn't high tourist season, so we got to walk right in, but I can imagine there's a line during the busy tourist season. Despite what some web sites say (I found one that said pictures are strictly forbidden and those who work in the store are vigilant), you can take photos. The store just asks that you be mindful of actual, paying customers. (I both took photos and bought something: a Portuguese copy of one in the series of Roger Hargreave's Little Miss books: Senhora Sarilhos.) It really does look like the Hogwarts' Library.
And, obviously, something used to run through the library, because there are tracks in the floor.
as well as an expensive shopping street with fancy window displays. I liked this one because of the mannequin's red lips.
The day before, we had passed a gelato stand in the city center, so we headed down and then up the street to get gelato: reward for the uphill walking we'd done so far as well as fortification for the uphill walk back to the hotel.
Our concierge had admonished us against the arduous walk back from the Ribeira, but we had done the whole thing! It's actually not too bad if you do it in stages, stopping to visit sites, shop and snack along the way. But, at the end of the day, it will make you want a nap.
For dinner, we headed up to a cafe the concierge had recommended.
The couvert here was pretty basic
as were our meals, one with steak, one with chicken. They did come with some vegetables though.
And, then, they also came with the requisite rice and chips (a variation on fries). We got a tirimisu-like cake for dessert, though it was pretty mediocre. It looked better than it tasted; by far the most disappointing pastry of our trip.
After dinner, we headed back for our last night sleeping in a castle.
Thursday, April 9: Lisbon
After breakfast, we went to the train station to catch an early-ish train back to Lisbon. We took our luggage to the hotel (Lisbon City Hotel again) and then walked into the city center for lunch at Baltazar Castanheiro, the restaurant and bakery that had been recommended on our food tour. Downstairs, it's a bakery
and upstairs is a more formal restaurant as well as a self-serve area.
The couvert at lunch was really good. By now, I had decided that you can tell the quality of the restaurant by its couvert-- how good the food is matches pretty much directly to how creative and fresh the couvert is. This one had two kinds of cheese, olives and a shrimp tapenade as well as a variety of bread (and I was proven right about the whole pricing thing-- there was butter we never touched and weren't charged for and we were only charged for the few pieces of bread we ate).
Lunch was equally good; my mom had a tropical shrimp salad and I had spinach quiche and a salad.
I had ordered the lunch special, so mine came with a drink and dessert. I was going to order wine, but then I found out that the juice of the day was a mixture of peach and papaya, so I got that. It was much less sweet than I would have expected, and very good.
And then, I ordered rice pudding for dessert.
After lunch, we decided to make one last ditch effort to ride Tram 28. I had noticed a stop near the Praca do Comercio where no one ever seemed to be-- and, it was halfway through the route, so I was hoping maybe we would be able to get on there. And, amazingly, event thought the tram was quite full, the driver stopped for us. We were finally on Tram 28! (And, I was on for free because once again, my magic metro card had returned all of my money to me after the card was charged.)
Our tram ride was cut short because our tram had brakes that weren't working well (which may also explain why the ride seemed particularly harrowing) and so our driver took us all back to the start of the route in Martim Moniz. We decided to try one more time to ride the full tram route and went to stand in line. Because Martim Moniz is the first stop, it's where most people queue to get on. I think we got on the third tram to come by-- and this time were able to ride it all the way to the end, to Campo d'Orique and the market that was there.
I really like markets-- and this one had been recommended by our food tour guide. However, it takes about an hour to get from one end of the tram line to the other, and it had taken us much more than that because our first attempt had been cut short by bad brakes. So, by the time we got to Mercado de Campo de Ourique, it was about 5 pm and many of the merchants had left. Most of what was open were small bars that catered to something like happy hour.
But, there was enough left open that you could get some sense of what the full market might be like.
We bought a couple of caramel and nut pastries for the ride back down to city center
and went to wait for either Tram 28 or a bus that could take us back. Tram 28 came first; it wasn't all the crowded at the beginning because we were at the end of the line, but as we went closer to the city center, it got really crowded, so rather than go back to Martim Moriz, we got off at Baxia-Chiado and wandered the side streets that we hadn't explored earlier in the week.
I did find a store that sold cork wallets at a reasonable price (it turns out cork wallets are quite expensive, more expensive even than many purses. I think it has to do with the fact that there are more pockets and cuts in a wallet than in a purse so the work is more intricate.) which made me really happy because I thought I was going to leave Portugal without one.
After wandering and shopping (and stopping back by Baltazar Castanheiso to pick up some pastries for dessert and breakfast), we headed back to our hotel and then out to dinner. We went to dinner at the same Italian/Portuguese restaurant we went to on our first night, mostly for the mustard sauce (which was still quite good despite the lack of any couvert). And then, we went back to our hotel to pack because we had to leave for the airport at 8:15 am.
The flight back was uneventful (despite delays on our flight from Philadelphia to National airport) except for this: the woman who had been in our row with us on the way to Lisbon in the same row with us again on our way back to the States. What are the odds?
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