Portugal






I somehow managed to write a blog about getting to Europe, but nothing about actually being in Europe, which honestly might not be as eventful as the doozy of a trip through the Boston Airport.  Nevertheless I shall attempt to record/explain what we did!

We landed is Lisbon, the air had just a touch of balminess, the city was cute and colorful, and there was delicious, cheap food everywhere!  We visited the castle in the city (pictured above), walked around the different neighborhoods, saw where famous Portuguese explorers sailed from, and took silly pictures in a fantastic M.C. Escher Museum.  While teaching about Escher, his life, his perspectives, etc. the museum endeavored to teach the visitor about the principles of art that Escher used to create his mind-boggling images.  Overall we thought the museums in Portugal had remarkable history but lacked story-telling.  This one was an exception!

Unfortunately during out time in Lisbon we were SUPER jet lagged!  It seems like no one can remember which way is easier to go, West to East or vice versa.  Let me tell you, it is definitely East to West.  We slept for 12+ hours for the first four days, and never made it past 4 pm...which did save us a lot of money on the dinners we didn't buy!


William loves to visit castles (I like them too but he LOVES them).  I asked him what factors make one castle better than another, and one that he named is how much you can climb up on things :). I totally agree, the climby castles were the most fun!


Sunset (sunrise?) view from a place new our Air BnB

William Tessellations in the Escher Museum

We took a day trip to a little town called Sintra which is the most popular tourist destination near Lisbon, and for good reason.  As far as we could tell Sintra was like the Hollywood Hills of Lisbon with a little more history mixed it.  Lots of rich people built magnificent homes there between 100-300 years ago and now you can walk through all the fancy homes.  In addition there is a perfect little palace and satisfyingly mysterious Moorish ruin.

What would you do if you had endless money, a bunch of property, and were a freemason in the late 1800s?  Build a symbolic fantasy garden in your giant yard?  Right, me too.


That's what this guy did at the Quinta de Regaleira in Sintra!  He loved symbolism so he built a cave system, a spiral staircase in a well, a lake with stepping stones, lookout towers, and other symbolic features to teach about life!  We imagined creepy late night gatherings using these features for some kind of initiation rights...wwooooooooo spooky!  It never said they did that though, and we had fun for hours exploring this place, even in the rain!

Moorish Castle built on top of even more ancient ruins laced in mystical fog.  Such fantastic ambiance!  But bad weather.  This fog turned into a full-blown mountain storm a few hours later in which we got completely drenched.

This I believe is a picture of another castle we visited in a place called Tomar.  This castle was used by the Knights Templar and was a place where Portuguese voyages to discover the new world were planned (which we thought was weird because it was not on the coast).  The castle was really old and neat, but lacking in storytelling.  We did later discover that we enjoyed historical building visits much more when we rented audioguides.  We had not figured that out at this point to my memory and maybe that's why it was a little...underwhelming despite how much potential it had.

So that was the short short version of Portugal!  Leaving out the time I cried in McDonalds because I couldn't handle ordering on a giant screen in front of a crowd, the time William got attacked by a cat, the many many times we ate delicious pastries.  We loved Portugal and I would love to see more of the country at a time of year closer to summer :)

Comments

Sergio Aguilar said…
Looks like you had a wonderful time. Portugal is definitely on our bucket list. Thanks for sharing all of your photos, they are beautiful!!

5:58 PM
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