Thursday, May 6, 2010

Portugal countryside

Monday, May 3, 2010 – Sintra, Cabo do Boca, Cascais and Estoril, Portugal
We could not have asked for better weather for port day -- absolutely clear blue skies with breezes. And it was our Canadian friend’s birthday!

The local train to Sintra took about an hour, passing through the greener sections of the city and ancient aqueducts perched high on columns.

Sintra is in the mountains and is a Unesco World Heritage center, a storybook of pastel-hued manors folded in to luxuriant hills that roll down to the blue Atlantic. There are palaces with ivy-clad Rapunzel-esque turrets, nature-done-wild botanical gardens and forests strewn with megalithic granite boulders like giant’s marbles.

A smaller local bus transports you up a windy and steep cobblestone road to the Palacio Nacional Da Pena, a wacky confection of onion domes, Moorish keyhole gates, writhing stone snakes and crenellated towers in sherbet-bonbon pinks and lemons. Prussian architect Ludwig van Eschwege was commissioned in 1840 to build the Bavarian-Manueline epic palace (same architect as Neuschwanstein in Germany/the Disney castle as most people know it). Each room is a piece of kitschy art, extravagantly extraordinary with precious Meissen porcelain, trompe d’oeil murals and King Carlos’ unfinished nudes of buxom nymphs (the King was an artist). The ballroom has a chandelier holding 72 candles and there are four statues of Turks bearing electric candles. It was absolutely incredible and well worth the time and effort (meaning steep uphill climb). Once you arrive from the first public bus, there is a private bus to take you to the gates of the palace. There is also an elaborate garden with caves, grottos, fountains, lakes, walk paths and towers so you can easily spend the entire day here. The palace was last inhabited in 1910 by Don Manuel II.

The next site we visited was the Moorish Castle, an 8th century fortification conquered by Don Alonso Henriques. It was conceived as a vantage-point overlooking Lisbon, its surroundings and other adjacent towns. There is a cistern, archaeological site, Knight’s quarters, castle keep and granaries hollowed from the rock by the Moors for storing cereals; they were used as garbage containers from the Christian conquest (12th century) onward.

The Palacio Nacional de Sintra was formerly the Royal Palace. It was begun in the 15th century and added to the 16th century. Beautiful tiled walls, ceilings and floors made an exquisite example of the Portuguese

We boarded the local bus to Cabo da Roca, the most western point in Europe, with a sheer 450 foot cliff facing the sea, making it an ideal point to enjoy the sunset from this rugged windswept region. The roads were narrow and the scenery was rolling hills with the blue sea in the distance. We found our way to Cascais, a nice seaside town with walking streets, small inlets with beaches, marinas and a boardwalk that went all the way to the next town, Estoril, a holiday resort town on the outskirts of the busy city of Lisbon. LOVELY AREA and would be an ideal spot for your hotel while you explored the city, a short 20 minute train ride away.

It was perfect weather for a stroll; we found a large casino in Estoril and an old watch tower at the water’s edge. We took the fast train back to Lisbon and met my Portuguese friend (from my AFS year in Denmark in 1977-78) Miguel, and his wife Fatima and their two lovely daughters, Marta and Maria. They met us at the ship and we had a wonderful dinner talking about the last 28 years of our lives! I saw him last when I was backpacking around Europe and he was studying at the University in Lisbon; he is a managing director at a large bank in Lisbon -- Banco Popular. It was a great evening…another special moment when you realize how small the world really is; it takes some time and effort to find someone from your past but what a nice time you have with them when you do connect.

“What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a world, but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.” - Turgot