Portugal 2007

Dec 21
We left Vienna at 11.30pm and arrived at Lisbon airport at 1am. We waited for a bit for the luggage with huge numbers of people. It looked more like 1pm than 1am. We then met Hugo with our rented car and were instructed. Getting out of the parking lot took about 20 minutes and we had to sustain a great deal of honking as a consequence of rather impatient Portuguese Christmas holiday ready. Once out, we immediately had to fill up with gas. The car comes on empty and is supposed to be returned empty. Fat chance that we could actually bring it back empty. Alas, we were on the road with our navigator and maps, however, the navigator had one way to go and the google maps that we printed before the trip had another suggestion. In the end, we used both to some extent. It was rather exciting and of course, took longer than necessary.

We arrived at Praia Mar Hotel (http://www.carcaveloshotelmar.com/) at 2.30am and there was no one there and the doors were locked. Not fun. One never expects a hotel to be locked up and empty. We rang the bell for a bit until someone finally did wake up and let us in. The hotel is one block from the coastal highway and the coast. The lobby is very modern and pleasant and the rooms are also modern but a bit worn. Not too bad, but not the 4 star quality that we expected. It didn’t matter too much because we quickly unpacked and went straight to bed.

Portugal 2007

Dec 22
The next morning, we awoke rather late, at about 0900 and breakfast is only served until 1000, so we made our way up to the 8th floor to the breakfast room. It was sunny and the ocean was blue. The town we are in is called Carcavelos. It is next to the fortress St. Julian of Barra and rests on more than 1 Km of sandy beach. We could see the surfers out on their boards and could barely believe our eyes. It’s so mild here. The palm trees are everywhere. There’s bougainvillea in bloom. It’s incredible.



Our first day was in the car touring about to get a feel and a lay of the land. We drove along the coastal road towards Estoril and Cascais. The latter is pronounced Cachcaish because the s is like an sh. It’s kind of strange for us. The seaside towns are really pretty. We just drove around the small streets and watched the people doing their pre-Christmas shopping. Then, we decided to drive towards Lisbon on the coastal highway (more like a road). We stopped at the Tower of Belem and looked around. It’s very impressive. Belém Tower was built in the Age of the Discoveries (when defending the city was of paramount importance) in tribute to the patron saint of the city, Saint Vicente. In order to enhance Lisbon’s defence, King João II drew up a plan that consisted of forming a three-fortress-defence on the Tagus’s estuary. It formed a triangle and on each angle, a fortress was constructed: Cascais's fortress on the right bank, S. Sebastião da Caparica on the left bank and Belém Tower in the water. The tower is replete with Manueline decoration, symbols of the King’s power: cables encircling the building and terminating in elegant knots, armillary spheres, crosses of the Military Order of Christ and naturalistic elements such as the rhinoceros, the first such representation in stone known in Europe. In time, with the construction of new, more modern and more effective defences, the Tower of Belém lost its role as defender of the entrance of the River Tagus. As centuries passed, new functions were given to the tower. It was a customs control point, a telegraph station and even a lighthouse. It also served as a political prison, its storerooms transformed into dungeons, since the time when Philip II of Spain became king of Portugal (1580) and during periods of political unrest. We walked through the place enjoying the views of the other side of the bay and the suspension bridge that looks like the golden gate.




From the tower of Belem, we could see the incredible monument to the Discoveries that was inaugurated in 1960 during celebrations of the 500 year anniversary of the death of the Infant D. Henrique (Henry the Navigator). It evokes the maritime expansion and is designed in the shape of a caravel, showing Henry the Navigator at the prow holding a small caravel, as well as many relevant heroes of Portuguese history (Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral - discoverer of Brazil - Fernão Magalhães - who crossed the Pacific in1520 -, the writer Camões and many others). Seen from the huge mariners compass this monument fascinates visitors with its impressiveness and its 50 metres height. It is visited by millions of people each year. Cut into the paving stone, the compass (see panel above) was a present from the Republic of South Africa in 1960 and it's best seen from the top of the Monument to the Discoveries, that you can access by elevator located inside the building. The central map, depicting galleons and mermaids, shows the routes of the discoverers in the 15th and 16th centuries.





We then drove around the port of Lisbon and made a round tour from Beato towards the huge cemetery. We managed to make it into the center of the city and drove up and down the streets a bit. It’s such a lovely city with very interesting architecture. It was so busy with Christmas shoppers that there wasn’t a parking spot to be found. We decided to leave town and drive back to the hotel to relax. We stopped at a grocery store called Pingo Doce and bought some bread and fantastic cheese, which we ate with some very good wine. It was enough and so called it an early night.

Portugal 2007

Dec 23
At 0800, the sun came streaming through the window. It’s even more beautiful on Dec 23 than it was the day before. It’s sunny and warmer, about 16-18C today. We decided to be tourists today and drove through Cascais to Sintra. We stopped along the way at the Jumbo grocery store for some groceries for lunch, and bought some deep fried bacalhau and went off to Sintra, which is only about 11 kms inland. It’s a mountain village that was the place where the royals enjoyed their summer holidays. It’s no doubt cooler than in Lisbon and more pleasant in the hot months. We wandered around the lovely village with very narrow streets and beautiful ceramic tiles everywhere. Then we visited the National Palace. It is less impressive outside than inside. However, it’s two chimneys make it rather distinctive. I am not sure when it was originally built, however, after the Reconquest, the Palace passed into the possession of the Crown and was enlarged, in the reign of Dom Dinis - who in 1281 laid down that the conservation of the Palace should be entrusted to the enfranchised Moors of Colares and especially during the reigns of Dom João I (1385-1433) and Dom Manuel (1495-1521). 




















Of special note, apart form the elements of Gothic, Mudejar, Manueline and Renaissance architecture, are the wonderful azulejos (coloured glazed tiles) from the 15th and 16th Centuries in various halls and patios, and in the Royal Chap. The mixture of Moorish and Indo-Portuguese architecture is very interesting and beautiful. They had many wooden ceilings with carvings and paintings. The walls were generally tiled. It’s an incredibly beautiful place to visit. There were cabinets, desks, and other furniture collected from India and China but very tasteful. I especially loved the Magpie room. Off the rooms and hallways, there were small courtyards and gardens that were so pretty. It is the most beautiful kitchen that I have ever seen. The milk-bottle like structures on the top of the building turned out to be sort of chimneys from the kitchen. It was exceptionally beautiful in that humungous kitchen.




















After the National Palace, we drove up to the Palace of Pena, Palácio da Pena, or "Castelo da Pena" as it is more commonly known, is the most complete and notable example of Portuguese architecture in the Romantic period. The Palace dates back to 1839, when the King Consort Dom Fernando II of Saxe Coburg-Gotha (1816-1885) bought the ruins of the Hieronymite Monastery of Nossa Senhora da Pena and started to adapt it for use as a residence, according to his Romantic taste. This was an entirely different palace. This is a 19th century mixture of styles that from the outside look like kitsch. It contains mosaics, tiles, some statues, some moor, Christian, and Arabic elements. The colours are bright and nice, but it looks like a hodge podge. Inside was really surprising. Instead of the spacious rooms sparsely decorated as in the castle below and in the others that I have loved in Vienna and in France, there were small bedrooms filled with bric a brac. It was so garish and over done. I did not find it pleasant. There were a few things that stuck out. The kitchen was nice with the collection of wonderful copper pots and molds. The showers and toilets were interesting. But the rooms stuffed with furniture were aesthetically unpleasant for me. The Indian room had lovely carved teak furniture and the papier mache room was very nice. There were relief plaster wallpapering in some rooms and that was very interesting too. All in all, the place is very odd and is something that might be interesting to see only once…










From the palace we took a short walk to the Moor Castle built in the 8th or 9th Century A.D. It’s a romantic ruin built in the 5th century. Not much left but some walls and steps leading to spectacular views.

It was almost 6 and getting dark, so we decided to hit the road. We drove back through Cascais towards Carcavelos to the hotel. On the coastal road we saw a person on a bike fall over the edge of the sidewalk towards the sea. We couldn’t stop immediately, but eventually found a place to stop and ran back 400 m or so to find the person. It was terrifying. Running along the cobble stone sidewalk next to, in some places a 20 meter drop onto the beach, we finally found a young girl. Her face was cut up a bit and she had bled a bit but someone else had helped her with the bike. She was sitting on the ledge and seemed okay. She was SO LUCKY. A few meters more and she could have potentially killed herself. She assured us that she was fine. She had a cell phone with her and if she couldn’t get back on her bike to ride home, she would call her father. That was a scare.

Back to the hotel and I am writing about our days so far. We had a bit of food that we didn’t finish at lunch time and opened a bottle of ruby port from Burmester. Very tasty. Can’t drink too much of it because it’s 20% alcohol content. We are trying to decide what to do this evening. Oskar wants grilled sardines. I am waiting to hear what the verdict will be.



That evening, we went to the Restaurante Atlantico around the corner from the hotel. It was full with Portuguese guests and bustling. At 8pm there were 2 tables left. Thankfully, we were able to get one of them. We ate an octopus salad starter with onions that was delicious. Then a huge platter filled with seafood arrived (65 EUR for 2 people). We ate chilled crab, prawns, shrimp, small lobster, barnacles, clams and a delicious seafood sauce in the center, which was made of crab, egg, onions, and mayonnaise. It was delicious. We had a 12.75 EUR bottle of white wine called BSE, a name that is hard to forget. It was fresh, not fruity and was very good with seafood. For dessert, I had a mixed bowl of gelado (ice cream) and Oskar had a sorvieto limao, a thick cold lemon sorbet type of drink that came with a straw. It was delicious.

Portugal 2007

Dec 24
Because we were leaving our hotel on the 25th, we spent the morning on the web finding a hotel for our next destination. It took some time but Oskar found something that looked good, booked it and we finally took the train from Carcavelos to Lisbon at noon. The train station is a 2 minute drive from the hotel. The tickets to Lisbon for 2 return cost 6.80 EUR. The train arrived 2 minutes after we arrived. It was a pleasant 20 minute trip to the last station, which was directly across from the big market we saw 2 days before.

We walked through the streets near the station to the Baixa. It was filled with happy and stressed shoppers on Christmas Eve. There were plenty of tourists too. The sun was shining and Lisbon really appears to be the white city. It was bright and sparkling from a distance. Close up, the buildings are a bit reminiscent of Rome. One gets the sense that the city is crumbling here and there. We enjoyed the afternoon a lot. We wandered aimlessly around. We saw the lovely Elevador do Cormo, the train station, the theatre, the Rossio square, which is very pretty. We tried to find a place for lunch that I had seen written up in every guide and walked up and down hills on the look for Cervejada da Trindade. Unfortunately, when we finally found it on Rua Nova da Trindade 20, it was closed for the holidays. We strolled around some more, made our way down the hill and decided to go into Buffet Livre, which was an all you can eat buffet for 5.90 euros. It was rather run down, a kind of hole in the wall place that we like. It was filled with tourists and inhabitants, so we tried it out. There was a salad/vegetable bar, 4 pans filled with rice, slices of baked fish, thin pork chops and French fries. Then there was a fellow cutting meats from long skewers, like you find in Brazilian restaurants. It was very good. We ate well and quickly and made our way to the Café Suica in the square to sit outdoor in the sunshine, watch people and have a coffee. Although the weather was pleasant, the coffee was not to my taste. Oh well, hard to beat Viennese coffee.








The next leg of our discovery tour of Lisbon lead us to the area behind the Rossio, where Oskar had tried to book a pension for us. It was a very unsavoury area and the pension really looked like a dive. We were so relieved that we had our nice hotel out of the city! We wandered around from there moving towards the Castle. We walked back towards the Tejo in the Baixa until we found the 37 bus stop, where we jumped on the small bus for 2.30 euros for two of us, one way. It was well worth it. The drive was short but steep and arrived outside the doors of the castle. It was free entrance (instead of 4 euros each) today. Saint George Castle is a hilltop citadel with geese, ducks, cats and peacocks roaming around the castle gardens. Conquered by the Moors in 1147, Saint George Castle has an area of around 6000 square metres with several towers, look-outs, a dry moat and two squares divided by an internal wall with a connecting door. The Ogival House has five ogival arches, where you can see the 17th-century door that made the connection to the jails once located here. The fortified walls are very impressive and the views of the city are spectacular. Oskar took many photos including the sunset. We went walking around the castle. Oskar walked along the castle wall and ramparts. I went up there but didn’t feel comfortable with the height. In fact, at one point during Oskar’s journey around the castle wall, it was so narrow that he even felt uncomfortable. My anxiety related to heights left me sitting on a bench under the trees watching the sunset. It was enough for me.








We then decided to walk down towards the Alfama. It was getting dark, but it was still nice to see the area. We walked down to the Baixa to see all the Christmas lights, which were quite spectacular. It was about 7 pm by then and so we decided that since it was Christmas eve it was better to make our way back to Carcavelos to find a place for dinner. We walked over to the train station, jumped on a train that was just about to leave and made our way back in 19 minutes. It went very smoothly.

We had a brief rest in the hotel and then made our way towards Cascais where we thought we might find dinner. Interestingly, it was quiet there too. We only saw three open places: a Thai restaurant that Oskar immediately said no to, an English pub called Checquers, and a nice looking place called Baia Grill in the Baia hotel on the seaside. We decided on that the latter one. However, when we went into the Grill, the waiter told us that dinner was for hotel guests only, which was a bit of a surprise since the Christmas menu was outside of the restaurant door. We started walked towards the next place, but we saw that there was a Baia restaurant next to the grill and decided to go into it to ask about dinner. Oddly enough, the waiter said okay. He asked us about the grill and we told him what the guy told us and he said, okay, no problem. We had the same menu and it was very pleasant. My main dish was a wonderful grilled octopus that was so tender, it was incredible. It was served with baby potatoes, and roasted small onions. Oskar ate a squid/prawn skewer. Both were great. We started with soup. Oskar had a seafood soup and I had a curry clam soup with cilantro. It was very tasty. We had a ½ bottle of BSE and felt very satisfied. It was a close call!