Sintra: The Royal Palace of Pena

Travel Date 22nd June 2013. Click on any picture to see a larger version.

Just a brief note on a day trip from Lisbon.

Sintra is a town about 30km (20miles) from Lisbon on the edge of the Sintra mountains, with a World Heritage collection of old castles, palaces and gardens climbing the nearby slopes. I spent a slightly disappointing day at Sintra. It was my own fault: a result of poor research. I had not realized how vast the area was and the difficulties involved in using the local buses. 

The place was packed on the day I went. It was also a hot and cloudless day. That led to long waits in the sun at bus stops, sometimes needing to wait up to an hour for three or four to arrive at 15 minute intervals before the queue moved up enough to allow boarding. 

 

 

I took the local train from Rossio station to Sintra. I paused for a pleasant lunch at the café opposite the rail and bus station. After chatting with the bus driver to learn the rules I paid 5 euros and boarded the 434 bus. 

Click on the picture for the story of the castle's use by Royalty and the State.

I alighted at the main information and ticket office, then continued on to the Pena Palace where I bought another ticket, then a further ticket for the internal tram through the gardens up to the Palace. 

At each point queues were long and moved slowly.

 

I’d love to go again. If I do, I will stay at least a night, possibly two, and try to choose a time when the crowds are less.

 

The views from the Palace were glorious for those who were lords of all they surveyed - and much further.

The Palace was a fascinating collection of differing, colourful and sometimes very strange architectural styles. I’ll let the pictures do the talking to explain that.

 

 

 

  

My Republican distaste for aristocracy tends to colour my thoughts when wandering places like this. When viewing the extravagance of the palace and its interiors and reading the history on the display signs I had to wonder why the Portuguese took so long to become a Republic. They finally did so in 1910. 

I spent a couple of hours wandering the Palace and gardens, intending to move on to the Moorish castles, but after waiting again for the bus time had slipped away so I headed for home. 

 

I returned to Lisbon on the train, hot and tired after a very interesting but unsatisfying day. Fado that night with sardines for dinner, washed down with excellent red wine, restored my spirits quickly.

Cheers, Alan

Lisbon: Food and Fado

Fado performers were mainly mature age with excellent voices.

Travel Date 20th-24th June 2013.

Click on any picture to see a larger version.

As I love fish and fresh salads I ate well in Lisbon. I have learned the hard way to carefully avoid washed vegetables such as lettuce when I travel but I decided to take a chance on my first day in Lisbon when the side salad at lunch looked so good. I waited nervously until the following morning. When the feared traveller's curse failed to appear, I happily included side salads for the rest of my stay in Lisbon.  I returned to my usual caution later in Spain and Morocco.

I wasn't sure if sardines were available all year 'round or if there was a season for them in Portugal. When I started visiting restaurants I thought I must have arrived in the middle of the season. In a way I had, as you will see in a moment. Every restaurant or taberna I ate in had them on the menu. These are not the little sardines we see in cans in Australia. These are BIG sardines. They are very similar to, but bigger than, the West Australian Pilchards I use for bait sometimes at home.

 

Some care is needed to eat them, picking the flesh from the bones as you go, but they are worth the effort. I ate them at three or four meals in my short stay in Lisbon. They were usually cooked over hot coals; always delicious.

This was my next door neighbour who also liked the hot coals cooking method but didn't want to smoke out her apartment. She wasn't the only one who cooked her sardines in the street.

Eventually I discovered I had happened by serendipitous chance to be in the Alfama for the Feast of San Antonio. I usually research the local festivals but I had not heard of this one. No wonder sardines were everywhere. Every vacant space became decorated on the weekend with bunting and filled with trestle tables and barbecues. 

As well as sardines there was a wide variety of other dishes at these very inexpensive impromptu restaurants - various sausages, other meats, salads and desserts - and drinks. Super Bock beer was cheaply available as was home-made Sangria. I tried one, but it was far too sweet for my taste and my blood glucose levels. Apart from the occasional beer at lunch I stuck to the excellent Portuguese dry red wines unadulterated by sugars and fruits.

Despite not understanding a word of the lyrics, I found I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time over the evening meal accompanied by Fado singers and musicians. The Fado tradition is very old, first documented in the 1820s and 1830s but with narrative history far older. The songs are mainly laments, a form of blues I am told, but I just liked the music and the singers. This lady was probably the youngest I heard; most were quite mature. Now that I'm 67 I rarely use the word old...

Fado accompaniment was free in the restaurants. I was ready to follow local customs but I never saw any of the performers tipped, which surprised me. I thought about tipping despite that, but did not wish to offend. I hope that failure did not offend as well.

All of the Fado restaurants I chose for the evenings were within 200 metres of my door. I could stumble uphill as late as I liked without worrying about cabs or trams. Yet another reason why I liked my flat in the Rua da Regueira.

Unfortunately my movies of Fado are terrible visually, but I hope the brief sound bites give some idea of the atmosphere. I was still learning how to take movies in low light at the time; well, that's my excuse anyway...listen, don't look.

 

Down-town restaurants at night.

I often eat soups for lunch. Every restaurant and taberna had an excellent vegetable soup available at lunchtime. On my final day I discovered, only twenty metres away around the corner, a 'lunch-only' restaurant with a limited set menu of cheap tasty lunches. It was just a door on the outside; no signs at all. I discovered it by following my nose. Good finds like that always happen on the last day.

Apart from sardines my other favourite in Lisbon was Dourada, Gilt-head Bream. 

A downtown street restaurant and performers.

I cannot recall the full details of this lunch, except that the section beside the salad was delicious. I was never served a meal I did not like in Lisbon.

Cheers, Alan

Lisbon

Typical streets in the Alfama

Travel Date 20th-24th June 2013.
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The apartment was only a ten minute walk from Santa Apolónia train station, initially flat and level beside the harbour then steeply up-hill. I spent a while waiting outside the apartment for the owner, and was about to try to call her on the phone when she opened the door and looked out. It had not occurred to me to knock on the door. Idiot! My excuse was that I was tired. The apartment was marvellous for the price and location, but I had some interesting moments in it. More on that later. 

The apartment is the third door down the little alley on the left. The entrance for the flat above mine is in the other street to the right.

After a few hours much needed sleep I went wandering Lisbon in the afternoon.

I discovered my apartment's location in the Alfama was excellent for seeing the old town but the old suburb was built by mountain goats.

The only flat spots in the Alfama are indoors. The streets and alleys are cobble-stoned and all seem to be not far from vertical, as my aging legs quickly informed me. 

After leaving my apartment I climbed this street, then turned the corner. 

The cobblestones are occasionally replaced by forty or fifty steps, just for variety. I had to climb these to reach the tram stop.

 

Those trams could handle very steep slopes, but when even they found the going too hard there is the Lavra Funicular.

The apartment is somewhere behind the pink house in the centre of this picture.

I ate a little unwisely on this trip, lots of fish but also some spuds and bread, but I am fairly sure the additional exercise compensated nicely. Well, my meter seemed to be saying so, but my belt didn't become much looser...

With no particular destination in mind I walked a km or two until I found a metro station where I could purchase my daily Viagem card. It cost €0.50 for the card and €6.00 to charge it for unlimited metro and tram rides for 24 hours.

I used it a lot over the next few days, re-charging daily. I found that tram 28 was only 200m from my apartment, although it seemed to be also 200m vertically. I like to get on trams and buses and ride to the end of the line, just to see where they go. This is the end of the tram line in modern Lisbon. 

Over the next three days I wandered the old town by foot, tram, train and ferry. I also took a day trip to Sintra; I will write about that later.

Among its multitude of churches is the Basílica do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (Sacred Heart of Jesus) which was on the tram route home.

I spent several hours in the Castelo de São Jorge. It occupies a commanding position high above the town and harbour. Settlements on the site date back to Roman times but the Castle is now preserved in its mediaeval state.

 

The food was wonderful in Lisbon. I cooked my own breakfasts but ate fish at almost every other meal. I will follow this post with some comments on food and fado in the next. In the evenings I only had to stroll a short distance down the Rua da Regueira to choose from several restaurants.

 

I would wander back after a couple of hours of dining and free fado entertainment. Despite the alleys and darkness I never felt threatened at any time after hours in the Alfama.

I took a ferry ride to the other side of the Tagus River. When crossing this magnificent harbour it is easy to understand how Lisbon helped Portugal become one of the great sea powers of the world in the Colonial era.

This section was very definitely 'tourist central'. I chose to eat at a little taberna, just a hole in the wall, but they served wonderful dourada (gilt-head bream).

After all my climbs and descents in the Alfama I decided not to go up to Lisbon's Cristo Rei. The 28 meter statue was built in 1959 as thanks for sparing Portugal from entering World War II, using Rio de Janeiro's 'Christ the Redeemer' statue as inspiration. It looked very impressive from the boat, but my legs had had enough.

On my last day I took the tram in the opposite direction, just to see where it went. There was a market in the grounds of a cathedral, with all the usual buskers and souvenirs but plenty of ordinary market goods and lots of locals buying.

Finally a little story on things to be careful of when using accommodation in foreign lands booked via the web. Over the years I have been fairly lucky with my choices of apartment booked via the internet. Since our first trip in 2003 I have booked apartment stays varying from four days to a week in London, Menton, Buenos Aires, Paris, Granada and several other places. In every case the apartment was much cheaper than hotels in the same locality, more convenient for my needs with cooking and washing facilities, and generally a much better choice than a hotel.

But each, in their own way, had a story attached. Lisbon was no exception.

The location was excellent, the apartment was modern internally, clean, well laid out and the bed was comfortable. For €50 per night it was magic. It was a pity that the neighbours above were descended from elephants and the neighbours opposite appeared to be deaf, needing maximum volume on their sound systems. Thankfully both went quiet after midnight.

I eventually, with trial and error, worked out how to use the ultra-modern black glass hotplate with no apparent controls, the complicated TV/Set-top box with 200 channels and the ultra modern coffee-maker. The gratis wine and cheese from the owner were very much appreciated but some operating instructions would have helped more. 

The washing machine became a major challenge. I could not find any instructions. I searched the internet and worked out how to set the dials and buttons for washing clothes from the operating manual of an earlier model on the web. But nothing worked. Eventually I discovered that the circuit breaker was turned off at the switchboard. I should have realised at that moment there was a reason for that.

I loaded my clothes and detergent and switched it on. Lights flashed and it appeared to be working. I intended going out to let it do the washing while I was away, but I changed my mind and decided to do some work on the computer. It is very lucky I did. I was typing when I heard a strange sound. When I turned around the kitchen floor was flooding with grey water. I immediately stopped the machine. When I investigated I found that the waste hose for the washing machine was not connected to anything at all, it was just lying loose in the cupboard under the sink.

I cleaned up the flood and the kitchen floor. Thankfully, my host had provided a mop and bucket. I was able to continue washing by placing the waste hose in the mop bucket, emptying it after each rinse. I was surprised to see how much and how often water poured out of that front loader. The spin cycle developed a loud noise at top speed, so I paused it every time the noise appeared and slowly finished the wash. It was supposed to be a washer/dryer but I could not get the drying setting to work, so I hung my shirts and vests in the bathroom and hung underclothes and socks wherever I could. They all dried after a couple of days.

I've dropped a hint to the owner that it may be wise to get a plumber to connect the waste outlet. I switched off the circuit breaker again for safety. Now I knew why the previous tenant had done the same.

Every apartment has a story...

Despite that it was an excellent apartment in the best location of a lovely city. 

Cheers, Alan