Day 6 - A Tour of Lisbon, The Portuguese Riviera, and Some Fado Music

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We started out our day, after a delicious breakfast of course, with a tour of Lisbon. Our local guide Leonore was great! The first portion of the tour was just a bus ride through Lisbon, pointing out some of the squares and a little of the local history. Lisbon proper isd about 800,000 people. But it has a traditional suburban community outside the city of about another 2 million people, many of whom work in the city and commute at the end of the day.

The city has been a major city for a very long time. It is the second oldest city in Europe – only Athens is older. It’s early days included about 500 years of of rule by the Moors. The heyday of Lisbon is in the 15^th and 16^th centuries when world exploration flourished, and Vasco de Gama discovered the first trade route to India. But Lisbon today is a very modern looking city, and doesn’t have the narrow street layout of a lot of European cities. The reason is that in 1755, there was a large earthquake, followed by a larger tsunami, both of which sparked fires throughout the city that lasted for over a week. The result is that over three-quarters of the city was totally destroyed. The rebuilt city involved new road layouts, and structured the city like any modern 18^th century city. The result today is a city that doesn’t look a lot different than any other major metropolis.

Our next stop was supposed to be at the Jeronimos Monastary. It is one of the few structures to survive the 1755 earthquake. But there was evidently a UN Ocean Conference going on today, and the area outside the monastery was shut down, patrolled by military, and setting up for a parade. So we were only able to view a little of the monastery from the outside until the police chased us away. We walked down the street, under the thoroughfare, and over to the Discoveries Monument, Portugal’s most famous monument commemorating the many voyages of discovery performed by Portuguese explorers. Waiting for us at the monument was Dominic, wearing a chef’s hat, and ready with some fresh Pasteis de Nata, which he claimed were the best Pasteis de Nata in the world. They were certainly delicious, and the best we had so far!

After our tour around the city, it was time to head out to the Portuguese Riviera, but first a stop at the Queluz National Palace, just outside Lisbon. This started out as a summer palace, but after Lisbon was destroyed in 1755, the royal family move to the Queluz Palace full time until another could be built. Lenore told us the story of the ugly royal family that somehow eventually were able to produce a few good looking heirs. She was definitely right, the royal portraits were some of the homeliest royals I had ever seen! The palace was beautiful, of course and we were able to tour it entirely. Leonore was a wealth of information about the palace and the royalty that occupied it. Especially about Carlota, a princess from Spain that married the 18 year old king when she was only 10. This was not the typical princess story however, it turns out she was a terrible child who grew up to be an even worse adult. Not only was she unattractive, but she was despised by both the Portuguese and Brazilian public, spent money wildly, and had several children, some with men other than the king. She was so bad, that Portuguese children today who misbehave are told that they are ugly and impolite like Carlota!

At the end of the Palace tour, we headed out to visit the Atlantic beachfront. The first part was Guincho Beach. This is a beautiful beach, but because of the bad luck of geography, nothing can really grow there. The beach is situated between the ocean and the surrounding mountains in such a way that the wind swirls off the mountains and back to the beach so that there is always a constant high wind. The beach sand blows over the road and needs to be swept off the road periodically, and the wind is so high, that the trees near the beach can only barely grow as high as a bush. We got out of the bus for a few minutes to take some pictures, but it wasn’t fun to walk around. As we headed further down the road, away from Guincho beach, the winds began to subside and the trees began to get taller until we arrived at our destination, the seaside resort town of Cascais. Now a word about Portuguese pronunciation. Evidently Portuguese is a very difficult language to learn, but there is evidently a rule that a letter “s” preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant is pronounce “sh”, and an “s” at the end of a word is also pronounced “sh”. Cascais contains both of these “s”, so it is pronounced as if were spelled Cashcaish. Very strange!

As the bus stopped in Cascais, Lenore took us into town and pointed out the various landmarks. She gave us some lunch recommendations, but reminded us that the Portuguese really enjoy the restaurant experience so there really isn’t much in the way of fast food. In the end, after yesterdays heavy lunch experience, we decided to do the gelato and Coke Zero lunch to give us some time to wander through the shops. Besides, Lenore said a gelato place called Sanitini’s had the best gelato in Portugal, and we wouldn’t want to miss out on that! The gelato certainly lived up to the hype as I had caramel, chocolate, and raspberry and Jody had caramel, chocolate, and vanilla and it was awesome!

After the gelato, we wandered down to the beach, checked out the water and the boats. The town looked great as a resort town, lots of the typical beach shops and lots of restaurants. It was still a little cool outside, only in the upper 70’s, which for a Floridian is practically winter, but the locals seemed to be having a good time on the beach, but the town did seem to be a little too windy for me.

We wandered up the shopping streets, and found a couple of great t-shirts, but there was one shop that took us a while to figure out what it was and it turned out to be a sardine shop. It had walls and racks full of canned sardines, all the exact size and shape, but you could by it labeled with the year you were born, your favorite sports team, special occasion, etc. I don’t know why anyone would want sardines marked this way, but obviously someone is buying them. By now it was getting time to head back to the bus, but we did notice some advertising in the window of the real estate shops. Houses in the area were the expected 900k to 5 million Euros. But rents were surprisingly reasonable. A small 1 bedroom apartment was running about 230 Euro per week or under 1000 Euro per month. But you couls get a nice 3 bedroom for less tha 1600 per month, cheaper than Orlando and this is in a beach resort town!

After Cascais, we headed back up the coast through what is called the Portuguese Riviera. This was a stretch of road along the beach with some very nice pricate homes and hotels similar to what you would expect in the states. The beaches were nice, and the waves were relatively calm, just everything was a little too cold for us. Maybe when the have their next heat wave it will be better for us!

Once at the hotel, it was just time to siesta and gather our thoughts. We’ve been really busy the last few days and tomorrow is an early start as we lose and hour as we travel east back into Spain. But tonight we are heading out to dinner and a performance of Portuguese Fado music. Fado music is unique to Portugal and is played with a mandolin, classical guitar, and bass guitar with a single singer. There is no microphone and the singer is expected to fill the hall with their voice. The music itself is mostly mournful and emotional though some of the songs are almost lively. The singer’s voice varies from soft and quiet to loud and room-filling, so it is important that everyone in the restaurant be perfectly quiet during the performance.

The food itself was pretty good, both Jody and I had the Portuguese style steak and potatoes and a chocolate mousse for dessert. This is the first thick steak we have seen since we were here and though small, it had good flavor. The Fado music itself was wonderful! The were 3 female singers and 1 male who all sang separately until the finale when they all took turns or sang harmony on the final song. I could feel my pores oozing culture during the performances. It’s not really my style of music, and since it was all sung in Portuguese, we really didn’t know what any of the songs were about. But I could feel the emotion in the singers voice, and I could certainly appreciate the art form.

By now it was 9:30 and it was time to get some sleep. Breakfast is at 7:00 tomorrow, and we’re looking forward to heading back to Spain and visiting Costa del Sol!

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