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LISBON, July 4-6: While there for a couple of days, we will be staying at the Lisboa Plaza boutique hotel. Web site: http://www.heritage.pt/hotel_lisboa_plaza.html.
Flights yesterday and today were bumpy, mostly because of thermals from Saturday’s warm weather. After a commuter flight from Nashville to Philadelphia, we boarded a U.S, Air Boeing 757 for our overnight flight to Lisbon. Sharon and I sat in their Envoy section, which is U.S. Air’s 1st Class/Business Class. They were offering a good price for this perk, and we decided to splurge.
The food in that section was pretty good, and they pamper you like VIPs. Seats partially reclined and some foot rests rose to give us the opportunity to stretch out while sleeping. I slept very well, but Sharon had some problems getting comfortable enough to sleep for long intervals. The girls reported that they slept pretty well in their seats.
Baggage claim took a long time, customs lines were quick and easy, and the cab ride was tight with five people, our luggage and a cab driver. The cabbie spoke virtually no English, but rattled on to Sharon in Portuguese during the whole ride to the hotel. She and we had no clue what he was saying most of the way, but Sharon smiled and nodded and he kept right on talking. We do know he was upset because a 5-K race of some type disrupted his planned route to our hotel. Weather was sunny and very warm when we arrived.
The Lisboa Plaza Hotel let us check in immediately even though it was still just morning, and we all took a two-hour nap. The hotel is a boutique-style place in a very popular section of Lisbon. We are walking distance from the castle, the popular restaurant areas and the city’s big plazas.
We all rallied a little after 1 p.m., and set out walking to explore Lisbon. The first thing you notice here are the intricately interwoven cobblestone streets and plazas. They are everywhere, and are really beautiful. Said to have been made by prisoners, the cobblestone walkways present a variety of patterns, including sea-like waves on the main town square.
Mary Byrne, Connolly, Ellen, Sharon and I enjoyed a late outdoor lunch at Restaurante Esplanada Novo Passeio Publico, where almost all of us tried some local fish. It was very good and nicely presented, with colorful vegetables and potatoes surrounding our filets on the plates. The outdoor area of the restaurant looked like a beer garden, with the restaurant next door doubling as a walk-up bar and food counter. Fresh fish of all types hung in a refrigerator window for all to see.
Lisbon is reminiscent of San Francisco. It is very hilly, built by the ocean, features its own version of cable cars and has a bridge that looks like the Golden Gate. Please see the attached slide show to see what I mean.
We rode the famous #28 tram car to the top of the city, where we climbed around the cobblestone streets and explored some more. The ladies walked up to the old Middle Age-Castle de Sao Jorge, while I walked around the streets shooting photos. We all met back at the hotel late in the afternoon. Sharon said she and our girls found a very nice old neighborhood of the city on their walk, and watched some children playing in plastic swimming pool.
All of the people we encountered through the day were very welcoming and helpful. Most spoke English.
Another short nap was in order before we headed out to dinner at a restaurant/fado music club called Casa de Linhares. Fado is a mournful but beautiful form of Portuguese music. The format at the dinner club was for a different performer to sing three songs per set, with the crowd expected to listen intently when the music played. Lights were dimmed during the music and only candles lit the room. When the music was not playing, food was served, lights were lit and talking filled the room.
We took cabs back to the hotel after dinner, getting in around 11 p.m. Sharon and I are watching Achas Que Saes Dancar, a Portuguese knock-off of So You Think You Can Dance.
Flights yesterday and today were bumpy, mostly because of thermals from Saturday’s warm weather. After a commuter flight from Nashville to Philadelphia, we boarded a U.S, Air Boeing 757 for our overnight flight to Lisbon. Sharon and I sat in their Envoy section, which is U.S. Air’s 1st Class/Business Class. They were offering a good price for this perk, and we decided to splurge.
The food in that section was pretty good, and they pamper you like VIPs. Seats partially reclined and some foot rests rose to give us the opportunity to stretch out while sleeping. I slept very well, but Sharon had some problems getting comfortable enough to sleep for long intervals. The girls reported that they slept pretty well in their seats.
Baggage claim took a long time, customs lines were quick and easy, and the cab ride was tight with five people, our luggage and a cab driver. The cabbie spoke virtually no English, but rattled on to Sharon in Portuguese during the whole ride to the hotel. She and we had no clue what he was saying most of the way, but Sharon smiled and nodded and he kept right on talking. We do know he was upset because a 5-K race of some type disrupted his planned route to our hotel. Weather was sunny and very warm when we arrived.
The Lisboa Plaza Hotel let us check in immediately even though it was still just morning, and we all took a two-hour nap. The hotel is a boutique-style place in a very popular section of Lisbon. We are walking distance from the castle, the popular restaurant areas and the city’s big plazas.
We all rallied a little after 1 p.m., and set out walking to explore Lisbon. The first thing you notice here are the intricately interwoven cobblestone streets and plazas. They are everywhere, and are really beautiful. Said to have been made by prisoners, the cobblestone walkways present a variety of patterns, including sea-like waves on the main town square.
Mary Byrne, Connolly, Ellen, Sharon and I enjoyed a late outdoor lunch at Restaurante Esplanada Novo Passeio Publico, where almost all of us tried some local fish. It was very good and nicely presented, with colorful vegetables and potatoes surrounding our filets on the plates. The outdoor area of the restaurant looked like a beer garden, with the restaurant next door doubling as a walk-up bar and food counter. Fresh fish of all types hung in a refrigerator window for all to see.
Lisbon is reminiscent of San Francisco. It is very hilly, built by the ocean, features its own version of cable cars and has a bridge that looks like the Golden Gate. Please see the attached slide show to see what I mean.
We rode the famous #28 tram car to the top of the city, where we climbed around the cobblestone streets and explored some more. The ladies walked up to the old Middle Age-Castle de Sao Jorge, while I walked around the streets shooting photos. We all met back at the hotel late in the afternoon. Sharon said she and our girls found a very nice old neighborhood of the city on their walk, and watched some children playing in plastic swimming pool.
All of the people we encountered through the day were very welcoming and helpful. Most spoke English.
Another short nap was in order before we headed out to dinner at a restaurant/fado music club called Casa de Linhares. Fado is a mournful but beautiful form of Portuguese music. The format at the dinner club was for a different performer to sing three songs per set, with the crowd expected to listen intently when the music played. Lights were dimmed during the music and only candles lit the room. When the music was not playing, food was served, lights were lit and talking filled the room.
We took cabs back to the hotel after dinner, getting in around 11 p.m. Sharon and I are watching Achas Que Saes Dancar, a Portuguese knock-off of So You Think You Can Dance.
JULY 5: Lisbon: We got moving around 8:30 a.m. and had breakfast at a simple neighborhood coffee and pastry place hear our hotel. The man who ran the place did not speak much English, but he took good care of us.
The women decided to go shopping, so I opted for walking around downtown Lisbon some more. The combination of steep hills and heat left me drained after a little more than an hour. Yesterday was hot, but at least there was a stiff breeze. No such luxury today.
We all met back at the hotel a little after noon and went walking some more, ending up at an interesting restaurant called Casa do Leao. A vat in the center of the place held a huge quantity of ice, and displayed all sorts of fresh fish, lobster, crabs and prawns. Slightly behind the fish display were about a dozen ham quarters hanging from the ceiling, drying. These were for preunto, the Portuguese version of prosciutto. One of the hams was hanging from a lower hook, and we saw a chef or server slicing the meat so thinly that they looked transparent.
The lunch specials included some good deals, and all five of us decided on the fish kebabs. They included grouper (I think), cod, prawns, peppers and onions. The prawns were overcooked, but everything else was great. They also served broccoli, carrots, boiled potatoes and French fries family style along with the entrée. Cost: about $8.50. Sharon enjoyed seeing the restaurant’s combination of old wood and azuleo (blue) Portuguese tiles.
The restaurant was about halfway between the hotel and the pier, which was our destination. We wanted to take a tour of the Lisbon waterfront, and the cruise sailed at 3. The stifling heat was getting worse, and we were pretty uncomfortable by the time we reached the pier. July temperatures in Lisbon are usually in the low to mid-80s, with cool, comfortable evenings, Leave it to us to catch a day when the thermometer rose to 102! The waiting area for the boats, and the boat itself, were without air conditioning
The cruise was interesting, but would have been much more fun if it weren’t so hot. The ride took us up and down the Tagus River, which empties into the Atlantic, so we could see all of the Lisbon waterfront. We saw Cristo Rei, similar to the huge Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, the Golden Gate-like25 de Abril Bridge and the Vasco de Gama Bridge, which is one of the world’s longest. We also saw the city’s huge Oceanarium.
By the time we were back at the pier, we were exhausted. We decided to try Lisbon’s subway system to get back to the hotel, and that plan worked out great. There was a station right near the pier that took us to one located a block from our hotel. Like the most of the rest of Lisbon, the subway was very clean . (Also apparently no smoking in public places - amazing for Europe!)
I napped for about a half hour, and then worked on the blog. Others slept longer. We finally headed for dinner at about 9:30 – early by Portuguese standards. We wanted to try a place for dinner called Santa Justa, up to which you ride the 110-year-old Santa Justa elevator. There is a walkway and restaurant at the top. We stood in line for about 15 minutes before someone noticed that the place was still on winter hours for two more weeks, and therefore had closed at 10. It’s July, 102 degrees today, and they are still on winter hours?
We walked to another place called Republica de Cerveja, with everyone in an “anything but seafood” mood after so much fish at recent meals. The restaurant seemed to specialize in great sauces, and I had a hamburger patty in a mustard cream sauce. Very good. Chicken and beef dishes were ordered by the others. The rest of the family stayed to share an apple strudel, while I chose to hoof it back to the hotel. I start driving tomorrow and wanted a good night’s sleep. It’s 11:30. Boa noite!
. Here is a link to our pousada in Guimaraes: http://www.pousadas.pt/historicalhotels/EN/pousadas/Portugal/Norte/NossaSenhoraDaOliveira/home/PousadaNossaSenhoradaOliveira_Home.htm
The women decided to go shopping, so I opted for walking around downtown Lisbon some more. The combination of steep hills and heat left me drained after a little more than an hour. Yesterday was hot, but at least there was a stiff breeze. No such luxury today.
We all met back at the hotel a little after noon and went walking some more, ending up at an interesting restaurant called Casa do Leao. A vat in the center of the place held a huge quantity of ice, and displayed all sorts of fresh fish, lobster, crabs and prawns. Slightly behind the fish display were about a dozen ham quarters hanging from the ceiling, drying. These were for preunto, the Portuguese version of prosciutto. One of the hams was hanging from a lower hook, and we saw a chef or server slicing the meat so thinly that they looked transparent.
The lunch specials included some good deals, and all five of us decided on the fish kebabs. They included grouper (I think), cod, prawns, peppers and onions. The prawns were overcooked, but everything else was great. They also served broccoli, carrots, boiled potatoes and French fries family style along with the entrée. Cost: about $8.50. Sharon enjoyed seeing the restaurant’s combination of old wood and azuleo (blue) Portuguese tiles.
The restaurant was about halfway between the hotel and the pier, which was our destination. We wanted to take a tour of the Lisbon waterfront, and the cruise sailed at 3. The stifling heat was getting worse, and we were pretty uncomfortable by the time we reached the pier. July temperatures in Lisbon are usually in the low to mid-80s, with cool, comfortable evenings, Leave it to us to catch a day when the thermometer rose to 102! The waiting area for the boats, and the boat itself, were without air conditioning
The cruise was interesting, but would have been much more fun if it weren’t so hot. The ride took us up and down the Tagus River, which empties into the Atlantic, so we could see all of the Lisbon waterfront. We saw Cristo Rei, similar to the huge Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, the Golden Gate-like25 de Abril Bridge and the Vasco de Gama Bridge, which is one of the world’s longest. We also saw the city’s huge Oceanarium.
By the time we were back at the pier, we were exhausted. We decided to try Lisbon’s subway system to get back to the hotel, and that plan worked out great. There was a station right near the pier that took us to one located a block from our hotel. Like the most of the rest of Lisbon, the subway was very clean . (Also apparently no smoking in public places - amazing for Europe!)
I napped for about a half hour, and then worked on the blog. Others slept longer. We finally headed for dinner at about 9:30 – early by Portuguese standards. We wanted to try a place for dinner called Santa Justa, up to which you ride the 110-year-old Santa Justa elevator. There is a walkway and restaurant at the top. We stood in line for about 15 minutes before someone noticed that the place was still on winter hours for two more weeks, and therefore had closed at 10. It’s July, 102 degrees today, and they are still on winter hours?
We walked to another place called Republica de Cerveja, with everyone in an “anything but seafood” mood after so much fish at recent meals. The restaurant seemed to specialize in great sauces, and I had a hamburger patty in a mustard cream sauce. Very good. Chicken and beef dishes were ordered by the others. The rest of the family stayed to share an apple strudel, while I chose to hoof it back to the hotel. I start driving tomorrow and wanted a good night’s sleep. It’s 11:30. Boa noite!
. Here is a link to our pousada in Guimaraes: http://www.pousadas.pt/historicalhotels/EN/pousadas/Portugal/Norte/NossaSenhoraDaOliveira/home/PousadaNossaSenhoradaOliveira_Home.htm
JULY 6, Lisbon to Guimaraes: Today started off very badly as we boarded our seven-passenger rental van after breakfast, made it about a mile and broke down in a bus lane on one of Lisbon’s busiest streets.
We waited with the car for three hours while a tow truck and cabs, etc. were slowly dispatched to get us and to take us to another car at the airport. About six different policemen stopped to talk with me and the family by the side of the street, and every one of them was very nice and helpful, despite the fact that I had messed up Lisbon traffic.
We ended up getting on the road to Guimaraes around 2. All went fine with a new, smaller van, and we were in Guimaraes, in the northern part of Portugal, in three and a half hours. We didn’t get lost until we were already into town, and kind two policemen at the local university guided us to our pousada (historic hotel.)
Guimaraes dates back to 840, and was the first capital of Portugal. It is a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site today, meaning you can’t do much of anything to the properties without all sorts of permission. The central city looks much like it did in the Middle Ages, and our hotel is part of a 500-600 year-old building right on the main square.
Vehicles are prohibited from entering the town unless they have a special permit. We had to park outside the old city and pull our bags over the cobblestones to the pousada. The experience here is terrific. Sharon’s and my room is huge, with a separate den area and the main bedroom. Our windows overlook the square, restaurants, bars and shops. The girls’ room is similar only theirs has three beds. Pousadas are a great deal – each lovely room is under $100 a night under a deal we found for booking five pousada nights.
The town reminded me of a quaint German village, with lots of flags draped from buildings. In this case, most of the flags were from other countries, while a very large Portuguese flag/sign declared the town the birthplace of Portugal. The shops were very cute and well-kept, and the whole place had a very old-timey feel. The church of Nossa Senhora de Oliveira, parts of which date to the 10th Century, sits on the square near all the business.
The one exception to the feel of antiquity in the town were the wide-screen TVs that were mounted on some of the buildings and tuned to World Cup soccer. It seems Portugal’s 1-0 defeat by Spain last week didn’t totally dampen the locals’ interest. People were huddled around TVs.
Sharon camped out at a café table on the square to watch the action and sample the local “green” wine. Our daughters and I joined her for part of her stay there.
We all took a nap starting at about 7, and met for dinner at 9. We ate at a nearby place called Artigula’s, which was excellent. I had a salad topped with seafood, for starters. The women shared some white wine sangria, which they all seemed to enjoy. (Ellen is of legal drinking age over here.) Connolly tried the local “green soup” made with spinach and some sausage, which she found tasty.
We all shared a steak platter served with potatoes and some sort of greens – similar to collard greens. We ordered meat for three, but there was so much steak and other food that the five of us couldn’t eat it all. It was a very enjoyable evening in a very cool, historic small town.
JULY 7: Guimaraes-Porto: We all loved Guimaraes so much that we decided to stay and explore some more rather than rushing off to Porto. The pousada had a buffet breakfast included with our rooms, and Sharon and I went there earlier than the girls to have some coffee and enjoy the morning.
They opened the dining room doors to open air, but a generator hooked to a power washer blared in an otherwise quiet morning as workers cleaned the streets. The breakfast was okay – not great, and we enjoyed the coffee. I love strong coffee, but this stuff is like a cross between rocket fuel and mud – it is extremely strong, meant to be mixed with a large portion of hot milk. I still drank it close to “straight up.” Sharon liked lots of milk with hers.
Our three daughters repeated the breakfast drill around 9:45 and then we went walking up to the city’s Middle Ages era castle. It was already very hot in Guimaraes as we began our ascent. Luckily, the castle was not that high or far away. I liked it because the castle’s overseers haven’t built restraints into the place. American historic places not nearly this old are often so full of ropes, plexiglass panels, motion sensors and guards that you lose the feel for how they felt when they were functioning buildings. Here, you could climb around as you pleased and see what the castle was like.
We had drinks and ice cream on a Guimaraes plaza before taking off at about 1:00 for nearby Porto. Sharon drove. Armed with some sketchy directions from a hotel desk clerk, we got lost trying to get out of Guimaraes. We stopped to ask directions from two cab drivers, neither of whom spoke English. But one of them spoke French, as does Sharon. So we got our directions out of Guimaraes in French, and it worked.
It took about an hour to get to our pousada in Porto, which is Portugal’s second-largest city and the place where port wine originated. To get here, we took a toll road, as was the case the day before when we drove to Guimaraes.
The highway system in Portugal is quite nice and historic stops along the way are very well-marked. But most of those highways, except in the central cities, are very expensive toll roads. The three-hour ride from Lisbon to Guimaraes on Tuesday cost about $25. Today’s short ride was about $5. Some drivers apparently think the toll entitles them to drive like maniacs. We saw cars that were doing at least double the legal speed limit, which is normally 90 kph (56 mph). They create very dangerous situations.
The desk clerk’s directions worked better at the Porto end of our drive, because they put us at the otherwise hard-to-find Pousada do Freixo. This place is unbelievable. If our last place was the Hermitage Hotel of pousadas, this one is the pousada version of the Opryland Hotel. Built around 1750 as a royal palace, its exterior and much of its interior have been very well preserved.
Adjacent to the palace building is another old and historic site that once housed Harmonie Flour Co. How a palace and a flour company ended up feet apart has not been explained, but now the two are joined to form the pousada. We are in the flour company part, which has been renovated to include ultra-modern seeming rooms.
The whole place is right on the Douro River, which runs through the heart of Portuguese wine country. It has both and indoor and outdoor pool, a health spa and full convention and banquet facilities. It is located away from Porto’s center, so if you are here, you can’t really walk to anything else.
We ended up spending the remainder of our day enjoying this great facility, with Sharon and the girls lounging poolside. (I know they are too old to be called girls, but they will always be my girls.) We ate a pretty mediocre sandwich dinner in front of World Cup replays at about 10 p.m. and then went to bed. We chose this instead of dinner in the fancy dining room. There is no such thing as a “quick bite to eat” in Portugal. It is a two-hour experience.
JULY 8: Porto: There is no telling what a couple oif billion dollars could do for Porto. We toured the old city center for several hours today and saw some of the world's prettiest historic buildings in very drastic need of repair. Yet we left feeling a real fondness for the city and the people we met here.
Our day started with strong Portuguese coffee and a pleasant breakfast at a table overlooking the Douro River. It was much cooler today - high of just 86 with a nice breeze, and the breakfast room had some doors open. The hotel breakfast buffet had some attractive options. Portugal is known for its pies and pastries, and there were plenty of those options along with bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit and cereal.
After discussing a 10-hour Douro River wine country cruise/train ride, we decided instead on sightseeing on our own in historic Porto. The Ribeiro older section is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it has buildings that date back as far as the 1300s. But the disrepair is everywhere, and there doesn't appear to be much \of a solution in sight.
Take any block of buildings from Ribeiro and put them in a U.S. other European city, and they would be repaired and converted to successful hotels, shops and living areas. The structures are gorgeous and would be a big draw. But here, no major hotel chains have touched, them, no trendy renovated areas have sprung up, and no construction cranes interrupt the horizon.
The beautiful architecture goes on for miles, as we found today as we walked up and down steep hills and walked the main roads and back alleys. We had a quiet lunch in the upstairs of Porto's oldest cafe before we did an hour's river cruise that took us under the city's many large bridges over the Douro. Porto's claim to fame is port wine, which is produced in and around here. We saw one market that had a table set up outside on the sidewalk with three port bottles and three wine glasses, there to be used unwashed for tastings by passers-by.
After the cruise, we walked back to our car and drove about 10 minutes back to our pousada/hotel. Everyone is enjoying this great lodging facility, equivilent to a $300 or $400 a night hotel back home.
We ate dinner at the pousada, with Sharon and Mary Byrne trying the local favorite cod. Ellen had scampi spaghetti, I had stuffed pork and Connolly had Portuguese sea bass. Everyone liked their meal.
QUELUZ, July 10: We wanted to make the most of our last full day in Portugal, so we got going around 7:30 a.m. The breakfast in the beautiful dining room at Estremoz was so-so at best. The sausage and bacon, which have been good at some of the other pousadas, were sitting in water or grease, and I didn’t take any. Eggs were pretty dry.
What is always good at Portuguese restaurants is the bread – which I had been avoiding before this trip to try to lose weight. The carb diet took a week off on this vacation, because I had plenty of bread.
The desk at the pousada was very slow in getting us checked out, mostly because there was just one desk clerk and the woman in line in front of us had a bad credit card. We finally got on the road a bit after 9, deciding to visit the old city of Evora en route to the Lisbon area.
Evora was once occupied by the Romans, and there is architecture to prove it. In fact, there is a wide variety of well-preserved architecture here. We wandered through the streets for a couple of hours, visiting the Chapel of Bones during the walk. The interior of the chapel is lined almost entirely with human bones – skulls, bones of all types.
The chapel was built in the 16th Century and is supposed to remind us as we pray there that we are all going to die. Kind of a more graphic version of Ash Wednesday. There are two full skeletal systems hanging on the wall there – supposedly an adulterer and his illegit son. The whole thing was just weird. But it is worth seeing.
We were pretty tired by the time we had walked up and down the cobblestones of the hilly city for a long time, and our car was a welcome sight. We boarded, cranked up the air conditioning and headed for Queluz, a suburb of Lisbon which is near the beach.
With Sharon at the wheel, we followed our Google Maps directions and found ourselves headed into pretty heavy Lisbon traffic and soon unexpectedly were in line to cross their version of the Golden Gate Bridge. At first we thought we had made a wrong turn and were going to be lost. To add to the confusion, Portuguese roads almost all have three sets of numbers (why?) and so it is always hard to follow maps.
But after crossing the bridge, many of the roads in Google Maps started appearing, and we found ourselves at the Queluz exit before we knew it. While most of the earlier pousadas we visited were in tricky spots to find, this one was right there at the exit. A big pink 17th Century church-looking building stood right in front of us. We were delighted.
We checked in and the girls and Sharon donned bathing suits to head to the beach. Not a beach person, I rested at the pousada for a while, uploaded some photos to Facebook and our blog, and then went walking.
The whole area around the hotel had pink buildings. Don’t know why. The pousada itself was a summer home for a Portuguese king who was born there and who died there. Maybe he liked pink.
The beach-goers came back about two and half hours after their departure, reporting that the beaches were very, very crowded, but that they had a good time there. People-watching was the top activity. It was a beautiful day – high in the mid-80s with gusty winds.
We had dinner at 8, with Connolly and I ordering the pork loin special, Sharon had a pig knuckle, Mary Byrne had gigantic prawns and Ellen ordered fettuccine with salmon on top. Everyone enjoyed the meal. We headed for bed relatively early because we have a long flight tomorrow. 6 a.m. wakeup calls were placed.
They opened the dining room doors to open air, but a generator hooked to a power washer blared in an otherwise quiet morning as workers cleaned the streets. The breakfast was okay – not great, and we enjoyed the coffee. I love strong coffee, but this stuff is like a cross between rocket fuel and mud – it is extremely strong, meant to be mixed with a large portion of hot milk. I still drank it close to “straight up.” Sharon liked lots of milk with hers.
Our three daughters repeated the breakfast drill around 9:45 and then we went walking up to the city’s Middle Ages era castle. It was already very hot in Guimaraes as we began our ascent. Luckily, the castle was not that high or far away. I liked it because the castle’s overseers haven’t built restraints into the place. American historic places not nearly this old are often so full of ropes, plexiglass panels, motion sensors and guards that you lose the feel for how they felt when they were functioning buildings. Here, you could climb around as you pleased and see what the castle was like.
We had drinks and ice cream on a Guimaraes plaza before taking off at about 1:00 for nearby Porto. Sharon drove. Armed with some sketchy directions from a hotel desk clerk, we got lost trying to get out of Guimaraes. We stopped to ask directions from two cab drivers, neither of whom spoke English. But one of them spoke French, as does Sharon. So we got our directions out of Guimaraes in French, and it worked.
It took about an hour to get to our pousada in Porto, which is Portugal’s second-largest city and the place where port wine originated. To get here, we took a toll road, as was the case the day before when we drove to Guimaraes.
The highway system in Portugal is quite nice and historic stops along the way are very well-marked. But most of those highways, except in the central cities, are very expensive toll roads. The three-hour ride from Lisbon to Guimaraes on Tuesday cost about $25. Today’s short ride was about $5. Some drivers apparently think the toll entitles them to drive like maniacs. We saw cars that were doing at least double the legal speed limit, which is normally 90 kph (56 mph). They create very dangerous situations.
The desk clerk’s directions worked better at the Porto end of our drive, because they put us at the otherwise hard-to-find Pousada do Freixo. This place is unbelievable. If our last place was the Hermitage Hotel of pousadas, this one is the pousada version of the Opryland Hotel. Built around 1750 as a royal palace, its exterior and much of its interior have been very well preserved.
Adjacent to the palace building is another old and historic site that once housed Harmonie Flour Co. How a palace and a flour company ended up feet apart has not been explained, but now the two are joined to form the pousada. We are in the flour company part, which has been renovated to include ultra-modern seeming rooms.
The whole place is right on the Douro River, which runs through the heart of Portuguese wine country. It has both and indoor and outdoor pool, a health spa and full convention and banquet facilities. It is located away from Porto’s center, so if you are here, you can’t really walk to anything else.
We ended up spending the remainder of our day enjoying this great facility, with Sharon and the girls lounging poolside. (I know they are too old to be called girls, but they will always be my girls.) We ate a pretty mediocre sandwich dinner in front of World Cup replays at about 10 p.m. and then went to bed. We chose this instead of dinner in the fancy dining room. There is no such thing as a “quick bite to eat” in Portugal. It is a two-hour experience.
JULY 8: Porto: There is no telling what a couple oif billion dollars could do for Porto. We toured the old city center for several hours today and saw some of the world's prettiest historic buildings in very drastic need of repair. Yet we left feeling a real fondness for the city and the people we met here.
Our day started with strong Portuguese coffee and a pleasant breakfast at a table overlooking the Douro River. It was much cooler today - high of just 86 with a nice breeze, and the breakfast room had some doors open. The hotel breakfast buffet had some attractive options. Portugal is known for its pies and pastries, and there were plenty of those options along with bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit and cereal.
After discussing a 10-hour Douro River wine country cruise/train ride, we decided instead on sightseeing on our own in historic Porto. The Ribeiro older section is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it has buildings that date back as far as the 1300s. But the disrepair is everywhere, and there doesn't appear to be much \of a solution in sight.
Take any block of buildings from Ribeiro and put them in a U.S. other European city, and they would be repaired and converted to successful hotels, shops and living areas. The structures are gorgeous and would be a big draw. But here, no major hotel chains have touched, them, no trendy renovated areas have sprung up, and no construction cranes interrupt the horizon.
The beautiful architecture goes on for miles, as we found today as we walked up and down steep hills and walked the main roads and back alleys. We had a quiet lunch in the upstairs of Porto's oldest cafe before we did an hour's river cruise that took us under the city's many large bridges over the Douro. Porto's claim to fame is port wine, which is produced in and around here. We saw one market that had a table set up outside on the sidewalk with three port bottles and three wine glasses, there to be used unwashed for tastings by passers-by.
After the cruise, we walked back to our car and drove about 10 minutes back to our pousada/hotel. Everyone is enjoying this great lodging facility, equivilent to a $300 or $400 a night hotel back home.
We ate dinner at the pousada, with Sharon and Mary Byrne trying the local favorite cod. Ellen had scampi spaghetti, I had stuffed pork and Connolly had Portuguese sea bass. Everyone liked their meal.
ESTREMOZ, July 9-10: Now we know what it is like to stay in a 13th Century palace. For about $100 a night. It's going to be hard to head back to the Holday Inn Express.
We are at the Pousada Raina Santa Isabel, located in Estremoz, in the central part of Portugal right near the Spanish border. Each of our stays in pousadas, which are government-owned and restored historic places and conservation lodges, has been amazing. This one tops them all.
Queen Isabel used this palace as her summer home up until her death here in 1336. It sits atop a large hill overlooking the tiny town of Estremoz. It appears that farming keeps most of the people here employed.
The palace has a long three-story building which now houses guest rooms, lounge areas and the huge restaurant, and a large stone tower occupies the end of the structure. The walls all through place are very thick - Sharon estimated 42". To get up here, you have to go through some tiny village streets, through a stone archway that barely accomodated our van, and up a steep hairpin drive.
Our drive here from Porto, which included a stop in Aveiro to see its canals and gondolas, took about four and a half hours. The scenery was very interesting, with plenty of hills and olive groves.
Once at the palace, we decided to try its prix fixe lunch menu, which was really, really good. Homemade soups, sea bass, lamb chops, rice, ice cream, other great food for about 20 Euros ($25). Like many places in Europe, there is normally a service charge per person for bread butter, possibly some small appetizers. This was included in our meal here.
Whoever the chef is knows what he or she is doing. We decided to have dinner there again, with those who ordered lamb chops at lunch ordering the sea bass, and vice versa.
Between the meals, however, we had naps, walked around Estremoz (a hike up and down from the palace) and enjoyed the very nice pool. The pool, by the way, is behind a jutting castle wall over which you can see the city. This was a day to remember!
We are at the Pousada Raina Santa Isabel, located in Estremoz, in the central part of Portugal right near the Spanish border. Each of our stays in pousadas, which are government-owned and restored historic places and conservation lodges, has been amazing. This one tops them all.
Queen Isabel used this palace as her summer home up until her death here in 1336. It sits atop a large hill overlooking the tiny town of Estremoz. It appears that farming keeps most of the people here employed.
The palace has a long three-story building which now houses guest rooms, lounge areas and the huge restaurant, and a large stone tower occupies the end of the structure. The walls all through place are very thick - Sharon estimated 42". To get up here, you have to go through some tiny village streets, through a stone archway that barely accomodated our van, and up a steep hairpin drive.
Our drive here from Porto, which included a stop in Aveiro to see its canals and gondolas, took about four and a half hours. The scenery was very interesting, with plenty of hills and olive groves.
Once at the palace, we decided to try its prix fixe lunch menu, which was really, really good. Homemade soups, sea bass, lamb chops, rice, ice cream, other great food for about 20 Euros ($25). Like many places in Europe, there is normally a service charge per person for bread butter, possibly some small appetizers. This was included in our meal here.
Whoever the chef is knows what he or she is doing. We decided to have dinner there again, with those who ordered lamb chops at lunch ordering the sea bass, and vice versa.
Between the meals, however, we had naps, walked around Estremoz (a hike up and down from the palace) and enjoyed the very nice pool. The pool, by the way, is behind a jutting castle wall over which you can see the city. This was a day to remember!
What is always good at Portuguese restaurants is the bread – which I had been avoiding before this trip to try to lose weight. The carb diet took a week off on this vacation, because I had plenty of bread.
The desk at the pousada was very slow in getting us checked out, mostly because there was just one desk clerk and the woman in line in front of us had a bad credit card. We finally got on the road a bit after 9, deciding to visit the old city of Evora en route to the Lisbon area.
Evora was once occupied by the Romans, and there is architecture to prove it. In fact, there is a wide variety of well-preserved architecture here. We wandered through the streets for a couple of hours, visiting the Chapel of Bones during the walk. The interior of the chapel is lined almost entirely with human bones – skulls, bones of all types.
The chapel was built in the 16th Century and is supposed to remind us as we pray there that we are all going to die. Kind of a more graphic version of Ash Wednesday. There are two full skeletal systems hanging on the wall there – supposedly an adulterer and his illegit son. The whole thing was just weird. But it is worth seeing.
We were pretty tired by the time we had walked up and down the cobblestones of the hilly city for a long time, and our car was a welcome sight. We boarded, cranked up the air conditioning and headed for Queluz, a suburb of Lisbon which is near the beach.
With Sharon at the wheel, we followed our Google Maps directions and found ourselves headed into pretty heavy Lisbon traffic and soon unexpectedly were in line to cross their version of the Golden Gate Bridge. At first we thought we had made a wrong turn and were going to be lost. To add to the confusion, Portuguese roads almost all have three sets of numbers (why?) and so it is always hard to follow maps.
But after crossing the bridge, many of the roads in Google Maps started appearing, and we found ourselves at the Queluz exit before we knew it. While most of the earlier pousadas we visited were in tricky spots to find, this one was right there at the exit. A big pink 17th Century church-looking building stood right in front of us. We were delighted.
We checked in and the girls and Sharon donned bathing suits to head to the beach. Not a beach person, I rested at the pousada for a while, uploaded some photos to Facebook and our blog, and then went walking.
The whole area around the hotel had pink buildings. Don’t know why. The pousada itself was a summer home for a Portuguese king who was born there and who died there. Maybe he liked pink.
The beach-goers came back about two and half hours after their departure, reporting that the beaches were very, very crowded, but that they had a good time there. People-watching was the top activity. It was a beautiful day – high in the mid-80s with gusty winds.
We had dinner at 8, with Connolly and I ordering the pork loin special, Sharon had a pig knuckle, Mary Byrne had gigantic prawns and Ellen ordered fettuccine with salmon on top. Everyone enjoyed the meal. We headed for bed relatively early because we have a long flight tomorrow. 6 a.m. wakeup calls were placed.
JULY 11, Quleuz/Airport/Home: We were up on time and enjoyed a good breakfast at the pousada. This pousada and the last one set the coffee pot and hot milk on a table and let you serve yourself. We prefer this because service is usually slow and the Portuguese servers probably thought we were crazy for drinking so much coffee so fast in the mornings. (Restaurants in Europe and other parts of the world usually charge by the cup for coffee and don't offer free coffee and soft drink refills like most U.S. places. This wasn't an issue at the pousadas because breakfast was included in the price.)
We found the airport pretty quickly, given that it was close by and this is a Sunday. The rental car return was a huge hassle. No quick computer scanners or express lanes. It took a long time! We rented from Hertz, but I can tell you from observing other companies that you never want to rent from Europcar if you can help it. Their lines and service are horrible. I'll bet there was an hour's wait at the rental and return ends with that company. Hertz had problems, too, but they were a better alternative.
Sharon and I had already found cut-rate first class/business class tickets for our US Air flights, and Sharon upgraded the girls on the way home. They thought they had died and gone to heaven!
The security, immigration and check-in lines at Lisbon airport took a long time. We got there two and a half hours before flight time and still didn't have much time to spare by the time we boarded.
But our flights were very pleasant, as our smily daughters savored every second of their airline upgrade experience. Mary Byrne declared, "You've created a monster!" Ellen's seat put her next to the pilots as they took turns resting, and Connolly chatted with her seat neighbor, th U.S, ambassador to Portugal. The scented hot towels, reclining seats with foot rests, decent food and personal TV screens were a hit.
Our coach turned into a pumpkin on our cramped commuter flight from Philadelphia to Nashville, but we had a smooth ride despite heavy rain around Music City. We ere exhausted, but happy to be home again.
Looking back last night, the family declared it one of our best trips ever. ....Where next?
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