Just beyond the reach of Europe

Europe » Portugal » Lisbon & Tagus Valley » Lisbon
March 23rd 2009

Published: March 27th 2009

Edit Blog Post

Waffle

Sintra

Artistic

Viernes 20 marzo 2009- We left the Alicante airport at about 11:30pm and arrive in Madrid about an hour later. Since our flight was at 7am, we found a quiet corner and tried to get some sleep. If you haven’t spent a night in an airport, consider yourself lucky, I’ll leave it at that. Because of time difference, we arrived in Lisboa, Portugal at 7:00am and made it to our hostel by way of city bus and great step by step directions to our hostel by 8am. We were starving and exhausted, but we couldn’t check in until 11, however, they allowed us to leave our bags in a room and then told us we could eat breakfast even though we hadn’t slept/paid for the night before. The hostel that we stayed at was called Oasis Backpacker’s Mansion and I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a worn in, homey feel when they travel. The kitchen felt like I was home with bread, cereal and a coffee maker that we could help ourselves too. I love the small, but strong coffee in Spain, but being able to sit out on the patio with a huge mug of ‘normal’ coffee while

Sintra

If you look close enough, you can see the castle in the fog.

I munched on my toast was amazing. With the aid of the food and caffeine, we (Tessa, Sarah and I) were feeling much better, so we made our way out of our hostel and just meandered around the city. We stared by heading down hill and ended up going thru a Mercado before walking along the water where the ferries were departing. To give you a general layout of Lisboa (is it called Lisboa in most languages other than English), it is very similar to San Francisco because it is very hilly, has a huge bay that really is a river delta, trolleys from the 1920’s and even the Golden Gate Bridge. After the water, we walked under this victory arch looking thing before stumbling onto two churches. The first one was this small chapel that was very ornate, but in the wood carvings, not gold, which is quite different than most churches that I have visited so far. The other church was the Sé Cathedral, which was very simple and felt like I was transported back to the Middle Ages because a guy was playing the ancient pipe organ as we entered, so we listened to that for about

Sintra

The city. The two huge dome chimmneys is the Arab palace.

half an hour. On our way out, I asked a lady at the info desk and she said that the cathedral was built in 1140. This experience was just the first of the numerous experiences that was just plain amazing and are just so hard to put into words. By the end of our time in Lisboa, Sarah, Tessa and I had run out of words to even describe how beautiful the places we were visiting were. We then made our way back to the hostel to crash for a while before going for lunch at Noo Bai, a restaurant that was about 50 feet from our hostel that basically was a roof-top terrace that over looked the bay and bridge. The food was amazing and sitting in the 75 degree sun looking over an amazing view was incredible. From here we walk up the Castle Sao Jorge that is located on the largest hill in town and is from the 12th century. This was like living out a childhood dream because we got to climb up the walls and turrets while looking over the city, there was even a street performer playing classical music to add to the feel

Palace

Our walk up to the castle, see why it felt to mystical

of being sent back in time. On our way home we bought supplies for dinner but ended up just eating bread and cheese along with our wine for dinner while we chatted on the outdoor patio before calling it an early night.

Sabado 21 marzo 2009- After another ‘home’ style breakfast, the three of us and an American that goes to school in Switzerland took a trolley to the other side of town for a flee market. If you thought flee market in the States were bad, you should have saw this one, lol. There was a lot of crap, but also a lot of really cool old stuff that I would have loved to have bought, but I’m limited to only a suitcase for all my clothes and souvenirs when I head home, so I settled on an oil painting on canvas of the city. We then by total chance ran across the Panteao Nacional, a church that looks more like a state capital that holds the crypts of some of Portugal’s most important explores and writers including Vaso de Gama. They also allowed you to climb to the base of the dome and look down and also

Palace

Hugging a Sequoia

go out on a terrace and get a 360 degree view of the city. This view was just plain amazing. I could have stayed up there all day and watched the boats while I tanned in the sun. We did Noo Bai again for lunch because they have this dish called Vitamins that is mango, peach, banana, pineapple, walnuts, yogurt, honey and popcorn that was amazing; the popcorn was a great addition to the dish. The dish was also so filling that with some green tea, this was all we needed for lunch and left the place feeling so refreshed. After a nice long siesta we went to the grocery store and bought tomatoes, bread, cheese and some bottles of wine and spent the evening playing rummy (yea, like old people) before we had supper at the hostel with our hostel mates. It been really fun just to relax at night and have some really deep conversations with Sarah and Tessa because in Alicante, everybody hangs out having a good time, but we never really get to know each other well, so this time to just chill with a few bottles of wine and cards was nice. Also, when I

Palace

Thanks Tessa for the idea of this picture

had to interact with a Lisboan, whether it is in the street or some store, I automatically start talking to them in Spanish even though it is very likely that they would understand my basic request in English and not in Spanish. It just proved to me that although I am not even close to being fluent in Spanish, I have advanced enough to feel comfortable talking in Spanish and that my first language when I meet someone in Europe is Spanish, not English.

Domingo 22 marzo 2009- After a great night of sleep and an equally great breakfast, the three of us with two girls from the West Coast, did a day tour thru the hostel of the area around Lisboa. Bronho our guide, works for the hostel and decided a few years ago to start doing tours because he felt that people were leaving Lisboa and not seeing some of the best parts of the area, so now he gives cheap tours with his van twice a week. Let me just preface this with saying, the places he took us sold me on Lisboa being my favorite city in the world because all of these locations were

Palace

Up in the clouds

with 30 minutes of the city and were just breathtaking. We started with going to Sintra, an ancient town that has a 11th century Moorish castle above the town and an Arab palace located in the center of the city with a one of the old monarch’s summer palaces above all of that. The day was a little cooler than the previous days, but in the hills around the city it was really foggy which added to the magical feel that this city had because already it was this ancient city that had many trees and very old buildings. Bronho dropped us off at the edge of the downtown because he wanted us to the “Duke’s Walk” which was a walk into the main part of town along numerous statues, looking down the valley and included a stop at a 200 year old bakery to get some great pastries. It was a great start to the tour of Sintra. Bronho meet us at the Arab palace and took us thru the winding, cobble stone streets to another bakery that had a different pastry that in Portuguese meant pillow. Just imagine a warm and fluffy pastry with a cream, custard filling

Palace

Tessa and I

and you then can begin to see how good these pastries were. Then he drove us up this crazy cobblestone road that led to the summer palace where we bought our tickets and walked the last little bit. It felt like we were walking in the woods in the Beauty and the Beast because all the trees were covered in moss, it was foggy and we were climbing up a mountain to a summer palace. Then to top this walk off, one of the past kings loved horticulture and imported trees from all around the world, so I got to touch trees from China as well as a Sequoia from California. Once finally at the palace, we wondered around the residence for about an hour and a half before having to make our way back down to meet Bronho, I easily could have spent a better part of a day exploring the residence and extensive grounds around it. On our way to our next location, we stopped at a road-side stand and got these empanada things that were made by the wife and then cooked in a wood fired oven by the husband and were still warm when we ate

Palace

Landscape during our walk up

them, a great lunch that balanced off all the pastries we had been eating. Our next stop was at Cabo da Roc, the most western point in continental Europe. Just look at my pictures, this place was amazing and feel very Irish for some reason and words would not do it justice. From here we went to some beach that was popular with surfers. We watched the surfers and waves roll in and then Tessa, Sarah and I went for a walk along the beach. Where, I being a Mid-Western, am not good at predicting how far up the beach the waves come in, so my entire pants got soaked, pero no pasa nada porque they tried in about an hour. We then drove along the coast to the town of Cascais, which was filled with mansions because during WWII, the wealthy families of Europe moved here because of the beach, sun and Portugal was a neutral state during the war. We then stopped at the Tower of Belem, another more recent monument from the dictator era, Belem monastery and cathedral and finally at the Belem Pastry Shop. This shop was huge and easily had over 500 chairs filled with

Palace

Breathtaking

locals. Luckily, Bronho guided us threw the people and ordered us some of the pastries whose recipe dates back over 500 years to the friars and nuns of the next door monastery. We then headed back to the hostel, which included driving past the president’s residence, which is a big pink house on a busy street that raises a green flag when the president is there. Bronho says that since the country only has 10 million people and most are not politically active, there really is no threat to the president’s life, so there is really little security. On the ride home, Bronho informed about what Obama was doing in the States because the day before he had spent some time on CNN and Utube. This unintentionally made me feel like an ignorant American because this Portuguese guy is informing me on the happenings of my own country. Back at the hostel, Tessa, Sarah and I fried up some mushrooms and made some mean pasta before heading down to the outdoor patio to mingle with the other guest. If anyone visits Lisboa, the city is amazing, but even if you can’t do a tour like we did, it is very

Royal Palace

Here is a turret for you Will, I think that I'm too big for it though.

cheap to take a train to Sintra where you can easily spend the day exploring the city.

Lunes 23 marzo 2009- After a nice leisurely breakfast, we took a taxi to the airport at 11am. Once in Madrid we used the metro to get to the train stations and were able to catch a two hour earlier train to Alicante, which got us home 6 hours earlier than if we had flown. We slept most of the 4 hour train ride, but I did enjoy watching the flat countryside fly by at 200+ km an hour when I was awake. I was in mi casa by 8pm was in bed by 10. This whole trip was remarkable. I know that I just reduced it down to three pages, but really this isn’t even doing it justice. Maybe it was the amazing people I traveled with or the great weather that we had during the trip, but I arrived home more relaxed and with a different mindset that I really can’t explain. I highly recommend making a stop in Lisboa if you’re coming to Europe because as my guide book said, Lisboa is “A city just beyond the reach of