Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal – 06/06 – 06/07

(TJ)

We arrived in Lisbon after a bus ride that seemed like 9 hours since we driving about 45 mph on wide open freeways and stopping in all sorts random Portuguese towns. I did learn however during our 45 minute break for dinner that the Woman’s Turkish indoor volleyball team is a force to be reckoned with, in your face China. The one cool thing about the bus ride was that coming into town we crossed a 17 km bridge to get into Lisbon, I think that it is one of the longest in the world. Fortunately, we found our Hostel relatively quickly in very hilly Lisboa, which is a less clean Portuguese version of San Francisco (not that there is anything wrong with that). They even have old electric street cars that kind of resemble SF’s cable cars.

Our first day there we went to Belem which is slightly outside Lisbon. Unfortunately, we got on the wrong train and had to walk about 30 minutes to get to Belem, good times. There was bunch of museums, a nice park and an old fort - All of which we did not go in since we did not want to spend the money or the time. Once we got to Belem proper we were starving and stumbled upon a great Kabob/sandwich shop. It was so good I am revising the best food list.

1. Steak with Bourbon sauce and Sarlat Potatos at the Bonnet restaurant around Dordogne, some of the best potatos ever.
2. Pasta with Fresh Vegtables, made in Amboise by Michelle and Nadirah
3. Japanese Food in Paris
4. Frango (Chicken) Pita w/fries, 3 pepper Frango Baguette from Qui Qui P_ P_ Belem, Portugal
5. Duck with Fatty Potatoes, made by Nadirah in Trailer in Dordonge
6. Pasta at oddly fancy restaurant in Sligo, Ireland

Michelle also stopped at a nearby place that specializes in pastries that are famous around the world (Café Pasteis de Belem). She bought a sleeve of 6 and I must say that they were pretty good.

The second day we did a day trip to Sintra that is roughly 1 hour from Lisbon. We decided to go after hearing about a place called Quinta da Regaleira that was a must see. Apparently Sintra was the play ground of the Aristocrats and royalty during the late 1800’s so there is all sorts of palaces in the area. It is a very nice area that has some very large hills that border on mountains that are heavily wooded and the legend has it that they are magical (oooh). The Quinta da Regaleira was built in the early 1900s and the compound is built right into the side of a hill and probably takes up around 10 acres. The 10 acres are taken up by gardens, some of which are kept up nicely and others that are overgrown. The cool part about this mansion compound is that in addition to the gardens the guy who built the place had tunnels dug out where you could walk from one garden to another and even into buildings around the compound. I went into a bunch of these, fortunately I had brought a flashlight since many are hundreds of yards long and are pitch black. The mansion house itself was also very nice and reminded me of the Hearst Castle in California with Tunnels.

Afterwards we had some lunch and found out that there was a world toy museum in town. Of course I had to check this out, it was only 3 Euro. Let me just say that seeing their collection of toy soldiers over the past 150 years was totally worth it. They also had a display of some old sets of Lego’s. To my horror I recognized some of the boxes for a castle and fire station that they had on display as pieces that I owned (still do). Seeing that made me feel old.

(Michelle)

The bridge we crossed to get into Portugal was the Vasco De Gama bridge, and according to Wikipedia, it is the longest in Europe (not quite the world as TJ said, apparently China is building bridges like crazy). Cool scenery on the bus ride included many fields of Portuguese cork tree farms.

I have never been to San Francisco, so I can’t make the comparison to Lisbon, but I will say that they have the ugliest graffiti that I have seen so far in Europe. Regardless, Lisbon is a cool town and the price was right.

Belem is where Vasco De Gama left for his voyage to India and it has a cool age of discovery statue. The pastries from Belem are the bomb (coming from a person with relatively small sweet tooth).

In Sintra, we skipped the Moorish castle (since we saw Alhambra in Granada) and the Pena Palace for something a little different. The Quinta da Regaleira was created with the vision of the wealthy doctor who worked with architect Luigi Manini to create a property of mythological references. Even though I am not smart enough to understand all the references, I haven’t seen anything like it. We saw all those Chateaus in France which were very fancy, but none of them had a piece of land as interesting as this. We spent about 5 hours here and would have spent the full day if we hadn’t have been hungry and too cheap to eat at the one café on the property. We also would have needed a slightly better flashlight than the one TJ had, as the caves were immense and you never would know where you would pop up. Since the local tourist booth pushes people towards the castles, it was relatively quiet at the Quinta which made it even better. As TJ mentioned, some parts seemed purposely not kept up, which also looked really cool. See picture of the outdoor aquarium.