So later that evening I walked around a bit, ended up at the Praça do
Comércio, and sat down and had a beer (in bright sunshine! at 8pm! I
called some friends in Cambridge to gloat but it turned out they were
having fabulous weather as well. Always happens to me.) The square was
enormous and strangely empty, about 30 people in all, of which 25
looked like tourists and the other 5 were trying to sell them
hash. Absolutely no sign of life otherwise. I am told by my
Portuguese/Lisboeta acquaintances that 8pm is *way* to early, people
are just then having dinner/thinking about dinner/having lunch/waking
up, depending on the level of exaggeration. Funny how some people take
great pride in having daily routines that are significantly offset
from everyone else.
Then I walked around a bit more on the Rua Augusta which is the main
shopping drag, taking random photographs of things such as the girl
having an altercation with the street performer/vendor/beggar dude. It
looked interesting at the time but now I've forgotten the story.
And so back up to the hotel, with another pause at the viewpoint,
natch. From the viewpoint you can go down the hillside a little bit
down some steps, and there's a little garden sort of thing, which no
one seemed to go to (tons of sightseers up on top), except the people
who had left a very evident stench of urine on the stairs. Recessed
into the hill side of the garden was a sort of nook with something
that was either homeless-people-bedding without the homeless people,
or some kind of urban art that I don't get.
So, Sintra. The first place we went to was the famous Palácio Nacional
da Pena, aka Disney castle, a few km from the centre of Sintra but
quite a pleasant hike, especially the last bit that goes through
Parque da Pena. Actually you had to walk 300m up from the park
entrance, buy the tickets, and then hike back down if you wanted to
walk up again through the park. By now I considered myself a veteran
of Portuguese pointer-chasing. You get some really fabulous view from
the castle.
And the castle itself was the most fantastical mix of styles and
colours, Gothic arches, Victorian turrets, minarets, you name it, and
every now and then stunning blue and white walls of azulejos. The only
thing like it that I've ever seen before is Schloss Neuschwanstein in
Bavaria.
That's Helke on one of the balconies of this crazy-ass building.
Funnily enough, the castle was designed by a German dude,
though not a Bavarian, and he also had a huge Don-Quixote like statue
of himself erected on a hill across the valley. Modest chap.
I quite liked the gargoyle or whatever it was over one of the
doorways. That splash of pink near the top is my fingers. So I'm not
the world's most professional photographer.
There was tons of other stuff to see around the Pálacio and in Sintra,
but we decided to do a 5 km hike to the Convento dos Capuchos, a now
defunct Franciscan convent. Everyone calls it that, its official name
I don't remember exactly, something like the Convent of the most holy
only-shower-once-a-year beardy weirdies Christ upside down on a
bleeding cross Holy Maria and all the angels. Some nice scenery along
the way.
Actually, I didn't take any photographs at the convent itself because it was pretty dim, and also I was listening very intently to the tour guide. You can only take guided tours, and we'd missed the English one, so rather than wait half an hour we took the Portuguese one. I found if I listened hard, and by now I'd picked up the rudiments of Portuguese pronunciation, I could make out many words and then it's not that different from Italian. So I understood quite a lot, and pretty interesting it was too.
We were trudging back from the convent and then decided to try and
hitch to Sintra, and actually got a lift from some people who were
also in our tour group. I got in one car and Kurt and Helke in
another. Mine was an English-Spanish couple with one very talkative
kid (we'd already seen him in action during the tour), so all in all
the time passed quickly. (they gave us a lift all the way into Lisbon,
which was pretty cool). We all headed to our respective hotels to
wash, and then met for dinner. By this time it was about 10:30pm, and
not a single dinner place seemed to be open. Either Lisboetas start
really really late, or they actually shut down pretty early
at least on Sunday evenings. I am inclined to the latter theory. We
struck out in the Praça do Comércio area, and wound our way into the
Bairro Alto. Finally we found one very inviting looking place, a
Cantina do someone or the other where people were digging into
enormous and very tasty looking plates of grilled and fried
seafood. Unfortunately we couldn't get a place, the owner making
go-away-we're-already-overflowing signs before we even entered. After
more wandering, we found a restaurant that was open and had a table,
in fact it was alarmingly empty. And as we found out later, it was a
Thai-Portuguese fusion place run by a Moroccan guy with a Bangladeshi
chef. Despite all of which, the food was actually pretty good.
And then to the castle itself, which has great views over the river
but isn't much to speak of architecturally, most of the building I
gather having been reconstructed in the 19th century. There's a café
with pretty dire looking food, but the peacocks and pigeons seem to
like it.
By about 3 we were thinking food thoughts (I was ravenous, hadn't eaten anything all day), and wandered around trying to find something based on the Lonely Planet. Always a bad idea. In general a good guide book but I've never had luck with their eating advice. Everything seems closed, we take an unintended tour of Alfama, and finally find this one place in a basement that seems open. I poke my head in and it was covered with this azulejos, except tacky imitation kind rather than classy world heritage kind. Gave me the feeling of having wandered into someone's bathroom. At one table in a corner there was an old couple sitting almost motionless, conserving energy I guess (did I mention it was very very hot, the basement was actually a win in this regard being a bit cooler). I attract attention and the lady gets up and walks over, I try my bad Portuguese, making it abundantly clear that I am a clueless tourist, so she decides to speak French to me. Why French I don't know. Maybe it was the only foreign language she spoke. Anyway, she wants to know are we eating or just drinking, and we say eating. I got the impression it wasn't worth her while to walk all the way to the bar just to get us beers.
I figure, I'm in Portugal I've got to try Bacalhau à Brás at least once, so I order that and a nice cold beer. Salt cod, egges, and potatoes all scrambled up in a pan neither sounds nor looks very appetizing, but it is tasty. And extremely filling. Waddle out of this place barely able to stay upright, and walk back towards Saldanha. Maurice et al go off somewhere, and I'm trying to decide if I should soak in the world's smallest swimming pool, really a glorified tub on the top of the Holiday Inn, but hey you can lie in the sun and look around at Lisbon.
But instead I decided to head down to Belém, home among other
things of the famous Pastéis de Belém and also lots of
architectural stuff commemorating the golden age of Portuguese
seafaring, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, all that. I got off the
tram ride, very proud of myself for having figured it all out with
only the Lonely Planet and my sketchy Portuguese, and then opened the
LP again to read "don't go to Belém on Monday, everything's
closed". So I had a pastéis and looked at things from the
outside.
This one's the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos.
And then there's the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, or rather the outside
of it. The guys on the big limestone prow are Enrique himself, our
friends Vasco (da Gama) and Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan to
you and me, the Cape of Good Hope dude), also Camões (who wrote the
Lusiads, including hey a reference to
Mylapore). It's all very cute but a little sad, it's like being
caught in a nostalgic time warp, everyone is still stuck in the late
15th century because that was the only time in history when Portugal
was top of the pops.
On the way back, I just had had to photograph this. Recognize them golden arches? Junky fast food ... but with typical
Portuguese laid-back flair, patio seating and all.
And one last photo from the São Pedro viewpoint, this time at night.
