Where are Ron and Ellen?
Portugal (Ron and Ellen), Southeastern Africa (Ron), 19 September 2013 - 13 January 2014
Ron and Ellen in Porto, Portugal, October 2013
Lisbon, Portugal
To see photos of Lisbon (part 1), click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Lisbon (part 2), click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos of Belem, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Climbing Lisbon hills
To see photos of Sintra, click on the thumbnail at the left.
24 September 2013
Lisbon, PortugalDear Family and Friends,
Our flights from home to Lisbon were all on time and uneventful. We had to change terminals in Madrid, which took us a while to figure out, but we had a bit over two hours so our initial bumbling around was not a problem. But Ellen is a bit worried about her one hour connection coming home - changing terminals plus going through security for a flight to the US. Taking the metro from the airport to the stop near our apartment was easy, and following the directions to the apartment was also easy. Climbing the first very, very steep hill from the metro with our luggage was not easy - about two blocks!
The apartment is small but very nice and very comfortable, and has wonderful big windows in the main room that look out on a tiny square with a little playground in the center, and a bedroom window that looks into a small enclosed courtyard with trees. The most difficult thing about the apartment is the single flight of steps up from the street level entrance - they are incredibly steep (not quite like going up a ladder, but almost!), and the treads are very narrow. But there are only seven steps, there are railings on both sides, and we only have to get our luggage up once and down once. The building, and indeed the entire area, Alfama, is very old. It wraps around one of the many steep hills in Lisbon - people talk about the hills of Rome, but they are mere molehills compared to Lisbon's hills, which are more like some of San Francisco's steepest. There are cobblestones on streets and sidewalks, streets barely wide enough for cars, tiny passageways, narrow stairs up and down between streets, and absolutely no straight lines. We got lost multiple times in the first few days - Ron commented that we'd seen no mice or rats because they couldn't figure out the labyrinth!
On Friday we were both zombies after the plane flight, so wandered the neighborhood, ate grilled fish in a nearby restaurant, and managed to stay awake until 8 pm local time (1 am body time). Saturday we found local places to supply us with our standard yogurt and bananas for breakfast, bread and cheese for lunch, cookies and tea and lemon, and then set off with our picnic lunch for Castelo St. Jorge, a Moorish castle on the high point in Alfama. After getting turned around several times (you can't just go up, but have to go up and do the correct angling on the twisted streets), which was ok because we got to explore the various interesting streets, we finally made it to the very impressive castle and enjoyed wandering there. Walking home on a different face of the hill, we ran into a parade of costumed people with musicians, followed them for a while, and discovered they were headed for a folklore festival (lots of different groups singing and dancing) in a square to the bottom of the hill. After watching that for a while we headed home for tea, then later had dinner at a local restaurant where there was fado music on Friday and Saturday nights. Fado is like Portuguese blues, with two guitars and a female singer (look it up to find out more). Music and dinner were both good.
Sunday we picked a different area, one with a huge open plaza on the water, with wide walking streets (actually flat) going back from the plaza - lots of shops, restaurants, and people. We happened across the Museum of Design, and enjoyed that - permanent exhibit on classic designs from furniture to clothing to teapots to post-it notes. Leaving the flat area, we hiked steeply uphill to wander in the Botanical Garden, then headed back down to the flat to attend a free concert (baritone and accompanying piano) in an elegant building in a room that was kind of like a miniature Versailles Hall of Mirrors. For dinner we went back down by the water to a food festival serving typical Portuguese snacks, like tapas.
We'd bought a couple of 24-hour passes for city transportation, so Monday we set out along the coast to the Oceanario, the largest aquarium in Europe. There was a World Expo in Lisbon in 1998, and there is a huge and lovely area with all sorts of parks and buildings along the river constructed for that, including the Oceanario. It was the best aquarium we've ever been in. Their temporary exhibit was on sea turtles, and that alone was the size of the permanent exhibit in other places. The permanent exhibit includes an absolutely gigantic tank in the center that you walk around on two different floors and see from different angles, and then smaller exhibits on the perimeter. They have 420 species, the majority of which are in the big tank. We watched a fascinating video about running the place, including info on the water (they make their own, using tons and tons of salt from Israel, so they can control the cleanliness and salinity), the food they feed the fish and penguins and sea otters (they have their own kitchen), the feeding schedules (which explained how they keep the big fish from eating the smaller ones), how they keep the fish healthy (including surgery when necessary), and their breeding programs. We were very impressed.
After our picnic lunch in the park, we took several buses that went through residential areas (lots of multi-story apartment buildings, but with grassy open areas between them), and eventually ended up back down by the water, where we took a tram along the river to end up in the area called Belem, at the opposite end of the city from the aquarium. It was from here that the various Portuguese voyages of exploration (like Vasco da Gama) left, and there is an impressive monument to the discoverers. Unfortunately, the huge church and monastery there are closed on Mondays - we hope to get back to see that. Heading back towards home on the tram, we ended up walking the last bit because we expected to find a bus stop for the bus that goes a bit further along the river to where we climb the hill to our apartment, but the bus stop wasn't where we thought it would be! The first two restaurants we tried for dinner were closed - because it was Monday - but we had a good and cheap meal (big salad, roast pork loin, rice, french fries, black beans cooked with pork, and multi-layered cake - yes, heavy on carbs) a few doors away from our apartment in what is obviously a restaurant mainly for locals. After dinner (at 9 pm) Ron set out with his transport pass for night exploration and Ellen read and went to bed at what she considers a reasonable hour!
This morning we are doing laundry, writing messages, and working on the rental car we'll get on the weekend.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
More from Lisbon
27 September 2013
Lisbon, PortugalDear Family and Friends,
Last Tuesday we were very pleased with ourselves when we were able to find a local car rental company (we'd picked up a number of car company brochures at the Lisbon tourist office and checked various ones out on the Web) and get a good quote on the phone. We'll read that local (i.e. Portuguese companies) often have better prices than the big international companies (Budget, Enterprise, etc). After eating lunch we went by Metro to the company's office and did all the reservation arrangements, and will pick the car up tomorrow at noon. Getting that arranged was a big hurdle out of the way, since the rest of our trip involves exploring the country with the car.
Taking the metro again, we headed to Cais De Sodra, a metro station, suburban train station, and ferry terminal, and took a ferry across to the other side of the river, a quieter and more residential area than Lisbon proper. Big river - the ferry ride at this particular narrow point takes about 8 minutes to go the 2 km. All the ferries are passenger ferries, and cars have to take one of the two bridges, which are quite a distance apart. We walked quite a ways along the embankment on the other side of the river, ending up in a very pretty park on a point where we had wonderful views of Lisbon and of the boat traffic on the river. When we walked back we had dinner at what turned out to be a wonderful fish restaurant that we highly recommend to anyone traveling to Lisbon. Foolishly, we didn't write down the name [but we went back when we returned to Lisbon - it is Restaurant Farol, in Cacilhas], but if you take the ferry to Cacilhas and walk out of the ferry terminal, it is the restaurant on the right that has windows facing the water. There are several other restaurants to the left of this one, but none have windows facing the water. We had delicious seafood soup, followed by grilled grouper with potatoes and beautifully cooked vegetables (Ron) and a Portuguese dish called marisco acorda (Ellen). The waiter brought a metal serving dish with high sides to the table, and proceeded to chop and mix what was in it with two spoons. There was lots of shrimp, an egg (poached, I think), and something else that we spent a lot of the meal trying to identify. Vaguely the consistency of mashed potatoes, but not exactly. Potato? Rice? Farina? When we asked the waiter, it turned out it was bread, with broth poured over it, then mixed. There was also butter and lots of garlic in it. It was wonderful!
Everyone who has been to Portugal told us, "Don't miss Sintra." It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, about 45 minutes by suburban train from Lisbon and has palaces, parks, hiking trails, and is supposed to be quite beautiful. So on Wednesday we took the train to Sintra. We can see that it is quite beautiful and a place that people want to see, but it was packed with tourists and many, many tour groups. We went through the Royal Palace that is right in the center of town, interesting, but way too many tour groups. When we came out, there were people everywhere. There is a bus that makes the circuit between palaces (including the Moorish castle ruins on the crest of the mountain, so we took that to get an overview. And when we got back to the center we decided to go back to Lisbon! It was a foggy and gray day, with occasional mist and drizzle, and we might have felt differently about the place if we'd been able to walk in some of the many parks or trails through the woods. We said it felt like we were in Disneyland. Wednesday evening we had dinner in a neighborhood restaurant, a very tasty rice and beans and pork dish.
Thursday we used our second day pass on the transportation system. (The transportation system, by the way, is wonderful - metro, bus, tram, ferries - all frequent, all very clean.) We went first to the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum), in an old convent, which has beautiful examples of the ceramic tiles that cover many of the buildings we see, and that also form decorative wall pieces inside them. Ellen was most fascinated by the stacks of wooden boxes with tiles stored in them, all the boxes numbered, in an area where they appeared to be restoring tile murals. An archive for tiles! After the tile museum we took the bus back to the center and went to the cathedral, which has a surprisingly plain stone interior, then took the famous tram 28, which passes most of the historical sites. At the end of the tram line we oriented ourselves on the map, then walked to the Portuguese Automobile Club (the equivalent of the US AAA), where we purchased a detailed road map of Portugal. Then back on the transit system to the monastery in Belem that had been closed on Monday, whose huge church had a stone interior, very carved and ornate. Vasco da Gama is buried there, and the church was built as a thanksgiving for his successful voyage. We finished the day by taking the ferry again for another wonderful fish dinner at the restaurant where we had eaten on Tuesday.
During the night and early this morning, there were thunderstorms, with heavy rain and lots of lightning and thunder, but by mid-morning it had stopped, and we headed down the hill a couple of blocks to the Fado Museum. That was fascinating, with lots of audio and video exhibits about Fado and Fado singers (and I was wrong when I said in the last message that the singers are always women - there are both women and men, and also wrong when I called the instrument a Spanish guitar - it is a Portuguese guitar!). We came home again for lunch, then, because it had cleared up, took the metro to Edward VII Park, a huge park at the crest of a hill with sweeping views over Lisbon and the river, and with beautiful gardens built into an old quarry.
After dinner tonight we'll finish packing, and then tomorrow we pick up the rental car and start the next part of the trip. Our destination tomorrow is Tomar, a small town about 120 km to the northeast.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
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Last updated: 31 October 2013
