PORTUGAL, LISBON: MUSEO GULBENKIAN, IGREJA MUSEO SAO ROCQUE

 June 24, 2022

After our morning at the Belém Tower and Jerónimos Monastery, we got an Uber to take us to the Gulbenkian Art Museum.  A word here about Uber in Portugal: CHEAP. We rarely paid more than $7 for a ride, including a tip. We had planned to take the Lisbon metro everywhere, but why? This was faster and didn't break the bank, and somehow we were still getting in 10,000+ steps/day.

Established in 1957, the Gulbenkian Art Museum houses one of the most important private art collections in the world. It includes many pieces sold off by Leningrad's Hermitage Museum in 1930 and 1931, as well as works by the likes of Renoir, Rubens, Rembrandt, Rodin, Monet, Manet, Gainsborough, Ghirlandaio, Degas, Turner, and others.

Calouste Gulbenkian was born in what is now Turkey in 1869 and died in Lisbon in 1955. He made a fortune in petroleum and gave a lot of that fortune to philanthropic organizations. He also collected over 6,400 pieces of art during his lifetime, and a good portion of it is held by the museum that bears his name in Lisbon. Of the roughly 6,000 items held by the museum, about 1,000 are on display at any given time.

I was kind of hoping this gentleman in the lobby was Mr. Gulbenkian, but the plaque on the wall says he is Jean-D'Aire, the Burgher of Calais, and he was sculpted by Auguste Rodin in 1913.

The collection covers a wide swath of history and culture. The bas relief on the left is from Assyria in the 9th century BC, and the chimney tiles on the right are from 17th century Turkey.

PORTUGAL, LISBON: BELEM TOWER AND JERONIMOS MONASTERY

June 24, 2022

Borrowing the idea from history's Seven Wonders of the World, Portugal decided in the early 2000s to come up with the Seven Wonders of Portugal. Portugal is a wonder-filled place, and the initial list contained 793 national monuments. Experts whittled the list down to 77, and then to 21 finalists.  At that point, the public was allowed to vote. Six-month-long elections resulted in this final list:
          1. The Castle of Guimarães
          2. Castle of Óbidos
          3. Batalha Monastery
          4. Alcobaça Monastery
          5. Jerónimos Monastery
          6. Pena Palace
          7. Belém Tower

We had seen #6 the previous day, and on this day we were going to visit #7 and then #5, which is within walking distance of #7.  (Eventually we would get to all seven Portuguese Wonders.) 

The Belém Tower didn't open until 10:00, so there was no need to rush to get off early. We caught an Uber at about 9:30 AM and arrived in time to get our tickets and be among the first people to cross the bridge to the small, offshore island where the tower was built in the early 16th century to defend the entrance to the Tagus river and provide protection for the Jerónimos Monastery. It also served as a gateway to the city and a ceremonial point of arrival and departure for Portuguese explorers. Both the Belém Tower and the Jerónimos Monastery that we visited next are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The shallow water beneath the bridge was filled with small fish that were able to spot in the clear water.

PORTUGAL: CABO DA ROCA, CASCAIS, AND A LISBON PARK FESTIVAL

 June 23, 2022

Before returning to Lisbon, our guide took us to what she called "the end of the world" (known more officially as Cabo da Roca), the westernmost point of Portugal and, in fact, of continental Europe. A lighthouse began operating at this point in 1772.

PORTUGAL: SINTRA'S QUINTA DA REGALEIRA AND LUNCH

 June 23, 2022

Our second stop in Sintra was a large property called Quinta da Regaleira. In Portugal, a quinta is a large, primarily rural estate, especially one with a luxurious mansion or palace. The 10-acre property comprises steep hills and a warren of roads, footpaths, stairways, and tunnels that make it seem far larger than it is.

Our guide Filipa dropped our group of eight at the top of the property, gave us general guidelines and directions, and told us when to meet her at the bottom of the hill near the palace. We set out as a group and stayed together as we made our way through the luxuriant forests and gardens that were designed and created by Carvalho Monteiro, an eccentric Brazilian-Portuguese businessman, collector, and book lover who bought the property from the Viscountess of Regaleira in 1892. Between 1904 and 1910 and with the aid of Italian architect Luigi Manini, Monteiro created a dazzling and enigmatic estate that paid tribute to his varied interests. After 1942, the property changed hands several times, finally being acquired by the Sintra Town Council in 1997, which opened it to the public the following year. The property and castle are a key part of Sintra's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Given our time constraints, we couldn't do the exquisite gardens justice. This is a place that needs repeated visits and free exploration. However, what we did see was extraordinary. I would like to have met the two men whose imagination led to the creation of this park.

Towers and turrets along the way were not only good for photos, but provided less-obstructed views of the surrounding forest.

If you look very carefully at the photo on the above right, you'll see the Moorish Castle that we could see from the Sintra Pena Palace wall walk. Here's a zoomed-in version:

PORTUGAL: SINTRA'S PENA PALACE

 June 23, 2022

After our first night of blissful sleep in Lisbon, I walked down to breakfast in the hotel and passed under a waterfall coming from the ceiling. Apparently it was part of the "little leak" that had set of our alarms the previous evening.

After a very quick breakfast, we walked to another hotel two blocks away to be picked up for a small group day-trip to Sintra, a beautiful town about 17 miles west-northwest of Lisbon that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We met our guide, Filipa, there, and then picked up another couple from Great Britain and a family of four from Northern California. As is usually our experience on tours like these, everyone turned out to be very nice, and we had a wonderful day together.

Anticipating crowds later in the day, Filipa drove straight to Sintra's main attraction, Pena National Palace, built on top of and around an early 16-century monastery in the 1800s by Ferdinand II, King of Portugal from 1837-1853.

We began with a lovely walk from our parking spot through Pena Park, a rather dense forest of trees from all over the world. In fact, there are 500 different species, including some giant redwoods from California.

Doesn't that look like Narnia's lamppost on the left?

I was not quite prepared for our first views of the colorful palace. Gold, blue, purple, black, red--I'd never seen anything like it before. Each section was a different architectural style and a different color.

PORTUGAL, LISBON: CITY VIEWS AND THE CASTELO DE SAO JORGE (ST. GEORGE'S CASTLE)

 June 22, 2022

Feeling fortified by an excellent seafood meal, we continued what had turned out to be a much more lengthy and difficult "walk" to the St. George Castle than we anticipated.  Suddenly stops along the way to take in the view seemed unusually appealing. Of course, how could we say no to this view?

The large dome on the left is the Church of Santa Engrácia, one of the many churches we never made it to.

One of the building walls near the view area had this azulejo (glazed ceramic tile) depiction of Commerce Square, the large plaza facing the ocean we had seen at the beginning of our walk.

The bougainvillea was in bloom all over town. I'd like to copy this look in my backyard, right down to the real bird on the edge of the birdbath.

Still going uphill, we reached another large plaza with a large statue at the center.

PORTUGAL, LISBON: WATERFRONT, SANTO ANTONIO CHURCH, AND GREAT FOOD

 June 22, 2022

Lisbon is a very walkable, pedestrian-friendly city. Most of what we wanted to see was within a few miles of our hotel. After our l-o-n-g day of travel, we still had just enough energy left to walk to what we thought were fairly close-by sites.

So off we went.

We passed by the Santa Justa Elevator (below, left), built between 1900 and 1902 to make it easier for Lisbonians (Is that a word?) and tourists to move between two levels of the city. We had read about the long lines and since there was nothing on the upper level that we wanted to see, we decided to bypass it.  I regret that now. It's such an iconic landmark; we should have investigated it more closely. 

We kept on walking down the pedestrian-only street, following our GPS directions to the main cathedral.

PORTUGAL, LISBON: GETTING THERE IN THE TIME OF COVID

 June 21-22, 2022

This post probably has a bunch of information in it that no one but Bob and I care about, but since this blog functions as our trip journal, I want to put it down here anyway. Feel free to scan or skip.

Three weeks before we were scheduled to leave for Portugal, when we were babysitting our granddaughters for a week while our daughter and son-in-law were on a getaway to Mexico, Bob started feeling ill. He test positive for Covid on the evening of May 30th. I took him to the Urgent Care the following morning. They did another test, also positive, and prescribed Paxlovid, an antiviral developed to treat high-risk Covid patients. He went into quarantine in our daughter's basement.

Two days later I woke up sick, tested negative, but went to Urgent Care, where I tested positive. Later in the day our oldest granddaughter also tested positive at home. It was clear we needed to go home before we infected everyone. Our daughter and SIL canceled the remainder of their trip and booked a flight home. Feeling that it wasn't right to expose a plane full of people to Covid, we rented a car and drove the 650 miles home.

After three days on Paxlovid, Bob tested negative (at home) for Covid on June 4. It was ten days before I tested negative on June 11. However, Bob had a rebound on June 10, something that occasionally happens with Paxlovid. The rebound commonly lasts three days, but on June 20, the day before our trip, Bob still hadn't had an official negative test, which was required for entry into Portugal. (As far as we could tell, Portugal was one of the last EU countries to require that, and it was on every site we looked at. I see that the requirement was officially lifted on July 1.) It was 21 days since Bob's original positive test. He hadn't had any symptoms for days, so a friend who is a Physician's  Assistant wrote a letter for him that cleared him for travel, but we were still nervous about Portugal's requirements.  We weren't sure if the letter would be accepted as it wasn't on an EU form, which seemed to be required, but visitors from outside the EU can't use the EU forms. So complicated.