Lisbon, Porto & Sintra

October 13 - October 25, 2024

A low-tech Google site/Photos by Dan Long & Rebecca Clark/ Design & Text by Dan Long

Portugal (Intro)

Lisbon

Porto

Sintra

Portugal’s coast is a major tourist draw. Portugal has a coastline that spans 497 miles. Portugal’s coast experiences an extended mild season and some of the highest waves in the world. Portugal’s coast is a surfing destination.

Portugal (Intro)

Portugal is about the same size as the state of Maine. The population of Portugal hovers around ten and a half million, a couple million more than New York City. Our first stop in Portugal, Lisbon, is directly across the ocean from Washington D.C. Both Lisbon and Washington D.C. are about 2,680 miles north of the equator. Portugal’s climate is described as Mediterranean even though its coast is splashed by the Atlantic not the Mediterranean.

The weather, especially along the coast, is generally balmy. It has snowed in Lisbon only three times in the past 75 years. It snows much more often in Washington D.C, often multiple times each year. In January, Lisbon’s coldest month, the average temperature is 50 °F and in August the temperature seldom exceeds 82 °F.

Today Portugal is known first and foremost for its fortified, sweet wine, port. Then the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.

Portugal officially became a kingdom in 1139 and in some ways has been remarkably stable. Portugal’s borders have barely changed since 1297.

Portugal was once a world power, a naval juggernaut, insatiable colonizer and globalization kingpin. During “The Age of Exploration” (15th and 16th centuries), Portugal produced Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco de Gama (to name a few historic explorers, and to disregard that guy named Columbus who once lived in Lisbon). I read that at its apex, Portugal’s empire included what are now 53 different countries, from Brazil to Macau.

Portugal was also a major player in the slave trade and (perhaps ironically) the first colonial power to ban slavery on its own soil.

More recently, for forty years, until 1974 and a bloodless coup, Portugal was governed by a dictator (most famously Antonio Salazar). 2024 is the 50th anniversary of The Carnation Revolution (Revolução dos Cravos), also known as the 25 April (25 de Abril). Since the coup, Portugal has been a left-leaning democracy.

Despite being overwhelmingly Roman Catholic (81% of the population), I was surprised to learn that Portugal is now rather progressive. Drugs have been decriminalized since 2001 (even hard drugs like meth and heroin). Abortion has been legal since 2007. Same-sex marriage has been permitted since 2010. The longest prison term anyone can serve is 25 years, even for homicide. Portugal is at the forefront of renewable energy and green practices. Green wine (vinho verde) is very popular 😁.

A building in Chiado with signage and a carnation referring to the 50th anniversary of 25 de Abril and the Carnation Revolution.

Trams are a very popular way to see the sights in Lisbon. As of 2023, Portugal had 26.5 million international visitors.

This trip was both similar to and different from trips we have made to Europe in the past. Like all our trips, we did not rely on package tours. We did our own research and made our own arrangements. We stayed in Airbnb apartments in Lisbon and Porto and a hotel in Sintra. Instead of renting a car, or using the metro, we relied on our feet and Uber to get about (except when we took the train to and from Porto). Uber is very affordable in Portugal. In some ways, this trip was more relaxed than many of our other trips. We didn’t try to do too much. But in other ways, this was one of our more physically demanding excursions. We rented attic apartments in old buildings without elevators. Both Lisbon and Porto are exhaustingly hilly, with steep inclines and uneven cobblestones. We have been to other hilly cities – San Francisco, Edinburgh and Prague for instance – but Lisbon seemed monumentally vertical (except for the riverfront). Somewhere I read that touring Lisbon was “calf-sculpting.” And, by the way, we are not young anymore.

Lisbon and Porto are old cities, but cities nonetheless. They feel urban. They have what I would call “compact sprawl.” Historic and contemporary buildings are shoe-horned together, interlocked and stacked. Green space is very limited. There are no skyscrapers. But the skyline is punctuated by towering cranes as construction is booming. And, at the same time, there is no shortage of abandoned and derelict structures. Some would find the modern graffiti in Lisbon and Porto off-putting. Yet, somehow this made both cities less-Disney-like and more real, even though certain areas were as congested as any theme park, thanks in part to the burgeoning cruise industry. As of 2023, Portugal had 26.5 million international visitors. Since I had brought with me a new camera, I was content to walk the less busy “back streets” and look for things to photograph. And it was good to know that at the end of each day a great meal awaited. Portugal really was a culinary delight.

Above: The Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Carmo Archaeological Museum is in Chiado. The Carmo Convent (for short) was founded in 1389. It, like much of Lisbon, was devastated by the 1755 earthquake. The convent was never rebuilt. Supposedly, Christopher Columbus’s wife is buried on site. Scattered throughout the ruins are modern sculptures, like this Bold Red Man.

Left: This wooden guy is St. John the Evangelist. He can be found at The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. On most Friday nights, John and the Bold Red Man can be found bar hopping on Pink Street.

Lisbon

They say Lisbon is older than Rome. Archaeological finds dating back to 1200 BC reveal that the Phoenicians had settlements across what is now Lisbon, meaning Lisbon has been continuously inhabited for over 3,000 years. Rome was founded around 753 BC, making Lisbon older. But much of what one sees in Lisbon is only about 250 years old. Because, on November 1, 1755, an earthquake shook Lisbon to the ground, destroying almost the entirety of the city. Seismologists estimate the earthquake had a Richter scale magnitude of 7.7 to 9.0. The earthquake sparked massive fires and generated a possibly 20-foot-high tsunami that washed up the Tagus River over the city. Lisbon is a deep-water port on the Tagus, about eight miles from the sea. Historians estimate that the death toll in the Lisbon area was between 60,000 and 275,000 people, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. How one estimates earthquake strength, rolling walls of water and body counts from 1755 is beyond me. But the damage to the physical city is well documented.

The Flight

We flew on TAP Air (Transportes Aéreos Portugueses) direct from Boston to Lisbon. It was a red-eye. We were due to arrive at 5:30 AM. TAP is a budget airline and it felt that way. The jet was very hot. Heat poured from the air vents. Becky, who can handle just about anything, became nauseous. I asked the stewardess about the heat while Becky was in the WC expecting to vomit. The stewardess said that she would ask the pilot to turn the heat down. Was the pilot an old lady or was the cockpit doubling as a sauna? Usually, planes vent AC, not heat. The pilot did turn the heat down… a little bit… I think. Between the heat and the fragrances, we were gasping for fresh air by the time we landed. At least two TAP stewardesses were wearing lots of cloying perfume. My eyes watered when they walked by trailing unearthly floral fumes. Why is that OK? It was a hot, smelly plane ride. But we didn’t crash, there were no significant delays and our luggage was not lost. Which counts for a lot. And the return flight was much better.

We rented an Airbnb apartment on Travessa do Cabral. This 16th century church (Igreja das Chagas) was at the top of our hill. The Elevador da Bica, a bright yellow funicular, was at the bottom of our hill. We would climb to the church on Rua das Chagas to catch an Uber.

The view from our Airbnb apartment's balcony on our last night in Lisbon. The white dome at the far left is part of the Ribeira Market Building (aka “Time Out Market,” a Faneuil Hall Marketplace type attraction). The large building in the middle with the clock tower is the "Finestay 8" hotel. This area is called the Cais do Sodré District. You can walk along the water or catch some rays in the Jardim (garden) Dom Luis next to the hotel. Hidden just out of sight on ground level is Lisbon’s Pink Street, a pedestrian street (Rua Nova do Carvalho) that has been painted bright pink - the cobblestones that is. This was once Lisbon’s red-light district. Now it’s Lisbon’s trendy and more "legitimate" center of night life.

Day 1 - Lisbon

We Ubered to our Airbnb in Lisbon from the Humberto Delgado Airport. We were staying in Misericórdia, on the edge of the Chiado and Bairro Alto districts. Chiado is a trendy area of cafes, restaurants, shops and theaters. Bairro Alto is more bohemian, full of quirky bars, making it a night-life hotspot. We were dropped off at a construction site on a narrow cobblestone road called Rua das Chagas, next to temporary fencing, scaffolding, trailers and cranes. We had no idea where we were or which way to go. It was 7:20 AM and still dark. Sunrise was at 7:45. We were near an old church, Igreja das Chagas (built in the 16th century and rebuilt after the earthquake). We needed to find a street named Travessa do Cabral. Our Airbnb apartment was located on the stairs of Travessa do Cabral. In Lisbon, roads turned into stairs and stairs (sometimes) had names. Our apartment was just steps away from another steep staircase named Calcada da Bica Grande. Much more famous than Calcada da Bica Grande was the Elevador da Bica, a bright yellow funicular or tram that hauled pedestrians up a nearby hill. The Elevador da Bica could be seen from our apartment complex door.

Somehow, we found our way through the construction site and dragged our suitcases thump-thump down stone steps to our apartment building. Luckily, we were traveling light, with carry-on sized luggage. The building looked like it probably dated to the 19th century. The door to our rental was located on a stone staircase, pedestrian only, no Ubers, taxis, or cars of any sort. So we were dropped off on the street above our destination. On the way down the stairs, Becky found a 2000-kwanza bill from Angola. We were rich! Fun fact: Angola is one of nine or ten countries that still speak Portuguese. Not so fun fact: 2000 kwanzas equals 2 Euros. We were met at the apartment by a young man who showed us around. Afterwards, we settled in for a rejuvenating three-hour nap. I didn’t sleep on the plane.

This was the alleyway/staircase outside our apartment's front door. This part of Travessa do Cabral was closed to vehicular traffic.

Our Airbnb apartment door was next to grafitti that read in English "Be Kind." You couldn't see our apartment or balcony from the street. It was in the attic. Higher than the rooftop you see here.

At the bottom of our hill the Elevador da Bica (see the tracks?) intersected with Travessa do Cabral.

Our fist day in Portugal, Monday, was Columbus Day in the U.S. (and Spain). Mr. Columbus lived in Lisbon for eight years and married a Portuguese woman. When the king of Portugal refused to fund his expedition, he moved to Spain. The rest is history.

It was surprisingly warm and humid in Lisbon. Our attic apartment was hot – the glass sliders sucked in the sun’s rays like a black hole. Trudging up the hills made one sweat. And there were hills everywhere. Lisbon has seven hills.

We ate our first Lisbon lunch down the street at an outside Scandinavian/Danish cafe on Travessa do Cabral named Flat Café, which is on the slope of a hill. We drank latte and fresh squeezed OJ and ate a feta omelet and “aebleskiver” - Danish pancakes - shaped like hockey pucks, deliciously smeared with sour cream and caramel. The café’s waiter told Becky that she was beautiful and asked her if she had a picture of herself when she was younger. I’m not making this up.

We could see the Elevador da Bica tram chug its way up and down the hill just feet from our table.

After lunch we walked to the Carmo Convent ruins in Chiado. The ruins go by many names, including the Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Carmo Archaeological Museum. The convent was founded in 1389. It, like much of Lisbon, was devastated by the 1755 earthquake. Supposedly, Christopher Columbus’s wife is buried on site. A small archaeological museum in a surviving annex presented an eclectic collection that was donated by archaeologists in the 19th century. Among the artifacts on display were two South American mummies of children from Peru. The museum with the artifacts was oddly airless and humid – something that was characteristic of all Lisbon’s museums.

The outdoor ruins were pleasantly uncrowded.

A friendly black and white cat leisurely strolled amongst the tourists at the Carmo Convent and posed for photos. The cat grew an audience wherever he settled. He needed a cup for loose change.

From the Carmo Convent we Ubered to Castelo de São Jorge (St. George’s Castle). The castle one sees today is a restored version of the Moorish construction, possibly from the 2nd century BC, which largely collapsed in the 1755 earthquake. It sits on a hill high above Lisbon and affords spectacular views of the city.

Despite being one of the most popular tourist attractions in Lisbon, the line to get into the castle was relatively short – in 20 minutes we had our entry tickets. We wandered the grounds, gawked at the views and were amused by the strutting, free-roaming peacocks.

Peacocks freely roamed the St. George's Castle grounds and streets next to the castle. This peacock wanted a snack. But these young Brits only had beer, vapes and phones.

View from inside the Castelo de São Jorge.

View from the castle grounds.

Date night at the Castelo de São Jorge.

Our day was running short, and we skipped some of what the castle had to offer, like the archeological museum. We left the castle and wandered through the narrow, winding, often one-way cobblestone streets of medieval Alfama, accompanied by many other tourists. It was a bit of a mob scene. We attempted to employ an Uber to get back to our apartment, but the wait for the Uber escalated from 15 minutes to 45 minutes.

We kept walking down the hill, away from the castle, toward a larger thoroughfare. From the base of the hill on the waterfront, we tried to summon another Uber ride. This time, we were able to connect and Uber back to our apartment, arriving around 6:30. We had dinner reservations for 7:00 PM. And we were tired.

My dinner at Cantinho do Avillez. In Portugal, Cod is God. Or at at least Cod is Good.

That night we walked to and dined at Cantinho do Avillez in Chiado, owned by one of Portugal’s most famous celebrity chefs, José Avillez (a Lisbon native). Depending on your source, Avillez owns as many as 18 restaurants by different names in Portugal, mostly in Lisbon and Porto, and other restaurants in far flung locales like Dubai and Macau. Cantinho do Avillez has multiple locations outside of Lisbon. His restaurants range from Michelin-starred fine dining to pizzerias. Cantinho do Avillez supposedly fuses traditional Portuguese cooking with global cuisine. The restaurant in Chiado was divided into multiple rooms, quiet and unpretentious. I enjoyed a Portuguese inspired dish of flaked “confit” cod with bread crumbs, nestled on top of cabbage and green beans, with a runny egg on the bottom. Baked “exploding” olives were mixed throughout. It was served in its baking dish. Becky ordered Indian shrimp curry, white rice and Indian papadam (or poppadoms), with mango and apple chutney. Both were delicious. The restaurant was pleasantly low key, and felt real rather than slick.

Top: The apartment's noggin knocking bedroom.

Middle: The apartment's view blocking TV.

Bottom: Sitting on the balcony.

About the Apartment

The Airbnb rental apartment was once the building’s top-floor attic. To get there, you needed to climb four flights of stairs. The last flight of stairs was very narrow and steep, not much wider than a conventional ladder. The apartment was cozy, no bigger than an average hotel suite. But it had an expansive view over terracotta rooftops to the River Tagus, which was lively.

The apartment had a tasteful, modern décor. The apartment consisted of two rooms and a bath. There was a kitchenette with a microwave, stovetop, mini-fridge (no ice) and dishwasher. No coffee maker or French press. Just a Nespresso. No napkins or paper towels. The kitchenette was part of an open floor pan, flowing into the “living room.” The apartment had brightly painted (striped) wooden floors and ceilings, a large glass slider to a narrow balcony, and three dormer windows in the bedroom, all of which made the apartment feel sunny.

The ceiling in the bedroom pitched low toward the end of the bed, forcing one to crouch to get from one side of the room to the other. There was very limited space to unpack and the good-sized bed was unfortunately hard as a rock. The three bedroom windows looked out on neighboring buildings and everyone’s laundry (which hung from their balconies, as is the custom) - picturesque. There was a desk with a Mac and a small breakfast table near the kitchenette. Floppy cushions on a plywood platform constituted an L shaped couch and in front of the couch, there was a large screen TV up against the balcony sliders, which partially blocked the view of the river. Three arty wooden “stumps” of different heights were meant to serve as a coffee table (once one removed the adorning books and magazines).

The balcony had two tables and four chairs, twice as much furniture than what comfortably fit. Oddly, there were no hooks anywhere for jackets or wet towels. The apartment had a heat pump that afforded needed AC (even in October). The bathroom was very small, with no place for toiletries, but it had a strong rain shower and plentiful hot water. There was a shared washing machine in the hallway.

Selfie on the balcony.

All in all, the apartment was perhaps an example of form (or style) over function. But it had a great view of the city’s terracotta rooftops and Tagus River and was in a historic, relatively quiet, residential neighborhood, conveniently close to good cafés and serviceable bodegas. The positives outweighed the negatives.

This panorama was made on the apartment's balcony.

The Hood V2.mp4

A video clip of the apartment's unique neighborhood, starting at the construction site/church of Igreja das Chagas and heading down the cobblestone steps. Along the way, azulejos, graffiti, cranes and mopeds. We end with BE KIND.

Going Up.mp4

A video clip of the haunted hallway/stairway to our partment, which was usually dark. The journey/video is speeded up a bit. Becky is agile, but even she didn't bolt up the stairs.

Day 2 - Lisbon

We woke up to an overcast day. It would rain off and on, all day, heavy at times. What does one do on a rainy day in Portugal? We needed to figure that out. Becky began the morning searching for take-away coffee. As far as Becky was concerned, the apartment’s Nespresso machine just didn’t cut it. Becky hated how the expresso tasted, and the machine had too few pods for our four-day stay. So we needed an alternative. We had brought a bag of ground coffee with us on the flight, hoping for a suitable coffee maker/French press in our apartments in Lisbon and Porto. We would end up bringing the coffee beans home with us. Breakfast out? Neither Becky nor I eat much in the morning. We just want caffeine.

The search for coffee-to-go in Portugal proved harder than one might think. In Portugal, one drinks shots of espresso at a café – no need to take it away. And when Becky found take-away coffee served in paper cups, the cups did not have conventional tight-fitting lids. So, she was stuck carrying sloshing hot coffee up and down hills and, in the end, maneuvering the dripping cups up four flights of stairs to our attic. I’m sure that the Portuguese think that Americans’ fondness for Dunkin and Starbucks is weird.

After exploring the environs, Becky returned triumphantly to the apartment not only with sloppy lattes but with pastéis de nata. The famed pastel de nata (Portugal’s signature sweet) is a small egg custard tart. It has a crisp pastry crust filled with something resembling crème brûlée, optionally dusted with cinnamon. Becky procured these treats from the highly touted Manteigaria Fabrica da Nata bakery in Chiado. By the way, the plural of pastel de nata is pastéis de nata. Becky brought four bite sized pastéis de nata back from the bakery. Bite sized if you have a very large mouth.

“Hell,” by an anonymous 16th century Portuguese painter. I didn't know they had airports in the 16th century.

At the end of a leisurely morning, we donned our rain gear, climbed down from our attic and up the stairs to Rua das Chagas and Ubered to the National Museum of Ancient Art (The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga). The sprawling museum was located near the river and housed painting, sculpture, prints, jewels, silver and gold metalsmithing, ceramics and furniture from the 12th through 19th centuries. We thought we could avoid crowds at an art museum. We were right. The museum was practically empty. One of our favorite paintings was entitled “Hell,” by an anonymous 16th century Portuguese painter. Another was “The Temptations of St. Anthony” by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (15th century). The museum also had a very interesting interactive exhibit dedicated to the restoration of the Painéis de São Vicente (St. Vincent Panels). When we had enough art, we went to rest in the museum’s garden by the river and photographed statues and watched the cruise ships. It soon began to rain.

A sculpture in The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga's garden. The docks of Alcântara and a cruise ship are in the background.

We Ubered back to Rua das Chagas and bought breakfast pastries, bread, cheese, wine and Scotch at a bodega. It was pouring by dinner. We watched the cruise ships in the river as the sun set.

That night we ate at the upscale Boa-Bao in Chiado. Boa-Bao features pan-Asian cuisine. I tried a confit duck bao with Hossain sauce, cucumber and spring onion. I also ordered Pad Thai. Becky had spring rolls, an eggplant bao (Chinese eggplant with Heura) and a sea bass bao (with pickled yellow radish and chili mayonnaise). We washed these down with a lychee martini made from lychee, vodka, ginger, and lemongrass (Becky) and a drink called a “bloody guava” - guava juice, vodka and chili (Dan).

Three Things - Calçada Portuguesa, Azulejo tiles and Graffiti

During my first few days in Portugal, I was struck by three things: the cobblestones, the Azulejo tiles and the graffiti. The roads and sidewalks in Lisbon are uniquely paved. Calçada Portuguesa, or Portuguese pavement, is a traditional paving technique that uses small stones to create patterns, similar to a mosaic. The stones are a mix of white and black limestone and sometimes basalt. The irregular shaped “blocks” in the undulating sidewalks are small cubes, between two and three inches in diameter. They are set in a sand-like mixture. Sometimes the sidewalks have no pattern; sometimes they have elaborate patterns. The paving stones that make up the streets are bigger. When these stones are wet, they can be slick. Some areas have wonderfully worn and polished stones. Pavers in some areas are newer. We saw a number of work crews replacing pavers. The pavers for the work crews were delivered to the road side in sacks that must have weighed a gazillion pounds. I brought a paver home with me, filched from a sack.

In addition to being decorative, Azulejos helped insulate the building, keeping it warm in winter and cool in summer.

The typical Azulejo is white and cobalt blue. But Azulejos come in all colors.

Portuguese buildings are famous for their exterior tilework called Azulejos. Azulejos have been used in Portugal since the 14th century inside homes, but more strikingly on the façade of multi-storied public and private buildings. We are talking hundreds or thousands of tiles on a single building, top to bottom, covering serious real estate.

The tiles are hand painted and glazed. They are arranged to create intricate repetitive patterns reminiscent of Moorish or Arabic art or elaborate historical and mythological scenes made from a unique grid of interconnected tiles.

They adorn buildings of all sorts, important public buildings and private residences and commercial enterprises. They now cover the façades of abandoned buildings. The tiles are everywhere. Since 2013, it’s been forbidden to demolish buildings with tile-covered façades in Lisbon.

Elaborate Azulejos. Casa do Ferreira das Tabuletas from 1864.

Like most exterior siding, the tiles need upkeep.

Graffiti is everywhere in Lisbon (and Porto). Sometimes on the cobblestones and azulejos. But mostly on tile-free walls and fences. I don’t think I have seen more graffiti in any city in any country. Some of it is bona fide street art, well executed, mural-like, covering multi-storied exteriors. These large scale works must have taken weeks to complete and the artists were probably sponsored. These works were jaw-dropping.

Some of the graffiti was more modest - ground level and smaller scale. But still well rendered. And some of the street art was simple messy tagging.

I’ve read that graffiti began appearing in Lisbon in the 1970’s as a response to the authoritarian government. I also read that efforts to reduce the impromptu graffiti in the past decades have not been successful.

Graffiti on historic buildings is an jarring juxtaposition. Graffiti in New York is expected, but in a city older than Rome? That said, even ancient Rome had graffiti.

View of the Tagus River in the rain from our balcony. Massive cruise ships came and went on a regular basis.

And a Fourth Thing: Cruise Ships (Some Facts and Figures)

From various points in the city, including our apartment’s balcony, we watched the cruise ships come and go. Lisbon was our first visit to a cruise hub. The Tagus River is long (about 600 miles) and empties into the Atlantic near Lisbon. The Tagus River estuary (its mouth/lagoon) is known as "mar da palha" (sea of straw). It's one of the largest estuaries in Western Europe, covering 131 square miles (roughly the size of Philadelphia). The river near Lisbon has a maximum depth of thirty-three feet and the width of the river's estuary varies from a mile and a half to eight and a half miles. The river is regularly dredged. This makes the river suitable for cruise ships. The port of Lisbon features four modern cruise terminals.

Lisbon has courted the cruise industry in recent years. And there has been a big payoff. According to the website cruisemapper.com, Lisbon hosted 347 cruise ship “calls” last year in 2023. These ships carried roughly 758,000 passengers and many (most?) came ashore to see the sights. In comparison, the population of Lisbon proper is about 555,000. One hundred and thirty of these cruise ship tours were roundtrip (turnaround calls), meaning they started and ended in Lisbon, creating additional airline, hotel and restaurant revenue. Industry websites say that Lisbon has seen a 33% increase in cruise traffic since 2019. Among the cruise lines serving Lisbon are Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Costa Cruises, MSC Cruises, Holland America Line, Cunard Line, Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Virgin Voyages and P&O Cruises. Not everyone welcomes the cruisers, who clog the streets and add to the congestion at most of Lisbon’s best-known attractions. And the cruise ships add to the pollution that already makes the river unswimmable. Many cities in Europe are bracing for a surge in over-tourism protests. Will Lisbon be next?

Day 3 - Lisbon

Before we left our apartment, we put in a load of laundry. The petite Bosch washer/dryer combo (a single machine that washes and dries) had a wash cycle that lasted three and a half hours when set to the standard European water economy mode. The dryer cycle tacked on another hour or more. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

No one visits Lisbon without going to Belém, a historic maritime neighborhood on the river that’s full of upscale residences, shops, a half-dozen or more museums and some of Lisbon’s biggest tourist attractions, including the 16th century Tower of Belém, the sail-shaped Discoveries Monument and the vast Gothic Jerónimos Monastery. We Ubered. The biggest attractions in Belém are also famous for long lines and long waits. We were dropped off in front of Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Jerónimos Monastery) as were a thousand other tourists. There were thirty or forty tour buses in the parking lot when we arrived and every few minutes another arrived and disgorged its passengers. It was hard to guess the wait time. An hour at least. Guide books suggest that wait times can approach three hours, which seems absurd. We didn’t even try to get in.

Behind the buses there is a glimpse of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Jerónimos Monastery), one of Lisbon's most popular sights.

From motor coaches at the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos to the horse drawn kind... at the Museu Nacional dos Coches.

The statue of Afonso de Albuquerque in front of the presidential palace in Belém.

The walkway along the Rio Tejo in Belém with a sculpture by Pedro Cabrita Reis.

The pink house behind the statue (above) is Belém Palace. Belém Palace was built in the 1500s, and is now the official residence of the President of Portugal. Guards stand at the entrance, facing the Afonso de Albuquerque Garden, a tribute to the Portuguese viceroy of India. A statue of Albuquerque stands on a pedestal in the center of the garden. Parts of India that were under Portuguese rule from 1505 to 1961. The array of parks, gardens, monuments and museums in the Belém district is staggering. Not only can a tourist explore the Belém Tower, Jerónimos Monastery and Monument of Discoveries, there’s also the Navy Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, the Calouste Gulbenkian Planetarium, the MAC/CCB Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Ethnology, the Museum of the Combatant, the Folk Art Museum, the MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology/Electricity Museum and the National Coach Museum. We chose to explore the last two museums. The Garter Belt Museum was closed.

MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia), flanking the Tagus, is actually two separate buildings. One old and one “futuristic.” This bold architectural statement was built in 2016 and houses galleries, classrooms, a bookstore and cafe. You can walk up the side of the building onto the roof. Yup.

The roof of the MAAT was designed to be used like a park. It is a place to walk, sit, picnic and take in the view of the waterfront.

This is the Central Tejo Power Station from 1912. The power station once fired steam boilers and turbines to produce electricity. It is now partially a MAAT exhibition space and partially an electricity museum (per the technology reference in the institute’s name).

Instead, we hoofed it over to the Museu Nacional dos Coches, which was just up the street. The National Coach Museum boasts a one-of-a-kind collection of lavishly decorated royal horse-drawn vehicles from all over Europe. A one-of-a-kind museum. Some of the coaches were ridiculously ornate - made to impress. The highlights were the ceremonial carriages from the 1500s to the 1800s, especially the shiny gold ones made for France’s Louis XIV and Pope Clement XI.

The coaches were on display in a modern building that resembled a parking garage. The museum was warm and humid inside, just like every other Lisbon museum. Stagnant is the best way I can describe museum air quality in Lisbon. How do they keep the mold and mildew at bay?

But guess what, there was practically no one there. Giddyap.

Art exhibition space in the original 1912 power plant.

Original machinery from the power plant, now part of the Museum of Electricity.

Dutch artist Jeannette Ehlers' giant "hair piece" in the form of a giant "fro" is a giant ball made of synthetic "Afro" hair. It is part of an exhibition called called Black Ancient Futures featuring the work of eleven African artists now living all over the world. I was disappointed to discover the hair wasn't real/grown on someone's head. It sure looked real.

We ate a light lunch at the outside museum cafe on the river. Becky had eggplant hummus. I had a ham croissant. We Ubered back to our apartment area and explored Chiado a bit more. We did not go to the Livraria Bertrand, but passed by it. The bookstore has almost 60 locations, but the one in Chiado is the oldest bookstore in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It opened in 1732. We went to three different tile shops, including one that specializes in antique tiles, but didn’t buy anything. We visited a cool shop that sold antique books, plates and labels (Livraria Sà da Costa). From the local bodega we bought cerveja (beer), a Super Bok and a Sagres. These are the two most popular beers in Portugal. One is hard pressed to find any other beer to drink.

We then crossed the street to the waterside via an impressive pedestrian bridge and made our way to the MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia), which is comprised of two buildings flanking the Tagus - a “futuristic,” bold architectural statement from 2016 and the industrial-looking Central Tejo Power Station from 1912. The power station once fired steam boilers and turbines to produce electricity. It is now partially a MAAT exhibition space and partially an electricity museum (per the technology reference in the institute’s name). The power station seemed like it was untouched for a century, the massive machinery that produced electricity still intact and seemingly pristine, polished and glistening in the window light. The electricity museum was maze-like and extensive.

The adjacent newer building could not be more different. The buildings are not attached. The roof of the modern art complex is a circular, low-slung, clutter-free expanse of gleaming white that can be accessed by a walkway. The roof is a “park” of sorts that people walk across and picnic on. It reminded me a bit of an idle spacecraft.

William Klein photographs were on exhibit at the MATT. William Klein, an American born French photographer, made gritty 35mm street photos in the 1950s -1970s.

A multi-room, multi-media exhibition called Black Ancient Futures featured the work of eleven African artists now living all over the world.

The juxtaposition of contemporary art and steam turbines was unusual. And guess what? The place was empty.

Everyone was in line at the Jerónimos Monastery. Granted, we would have loved to have seen the monastery.

The bistro Estrela da Bica, located across from the Flat Café and on the corner next to the Elevador da Bica, does not have a website, or even a sign. It was, however, one of our most memorable meals in Portugal - a trip where almost every meal was notable. In this photo of the Elevador da Bica funicular, you can see Becky reflected in the window as she stood on the street.

Dinner was at the foot of the hill on Travessa do Cabral at a hole in the wall bistro called Estrela da Bica. Estrela da Bica, located across from the Flat Café and next to the Elevador da Bica, does not have a website, or even a sign, but you can reserve a table online. The outdoor seating was packed Monday night and non-existent Tuesday night in the rain. Becky made reservations for 7:00 PM Wednesday night. Google reviews were positive, though we had not seen a menu.

It was drizzling when we arrived - so no outdoor seating. When we showed up promptly at 7:00 the doors were closed. Inside, we could see a table of diners (which turned out to be family, kitchen and wait staff). Two other couples showed up, also with 7:00 reservations. We peered in the window, befuddled. Finally, a man with a red dot on his forehead, who may have been the owner, showed up and we were motioned to a side room and given a complimentary glass of wine. While drinking our wine, we got to know the neighboring couple. They were Americans who had just arrived in Lisbon after a red-eye from JFK. She was a retired prep school administrator (head of school) and their friends had recommended this restaurant. Jet-lagged, they had walked twenty minutes to get here. They wanted to know how we ended up at this out-of-the-way restaurant. Our answer that it was just seconds from our apartment may have caused them concern.

We were soon seated. There were maybe eight small tables, none of which matched. Next to our table were time-stained black and white family photos from the 60’s or 70’s and next to the photos, a framed depiction of the Last Supper. On another wall, there was a large grade school map of Asia. The restaurant specialized in small plates. Since the restaurant has no on-line menus, I cannot confirm or detail what we ate. But it was very good. We shared a potato, white-pizza-like tapa cut into small squares. We shared stewed cabbage and herbs drizzled with blue cheese. We shared cod on top of creamy polenta. We drank green wine, a Portuguese specialty. We shared crème brûlée and a chocolate torte and our first port. The restaurant turned out to be cash only. But we had sufficient Euros. It was a short walk home. The four flights to our attic always seemed longer after dinner.

Bairro Alto

Day 4 - Lisbon

This was our last full day in Lisbon and we had no big plans. We started the day with a walk through Bairro Alto. Our apartment was on the edge of Bairro Alto, which is often described as the Bohemian part of town. Bairro Alto is a maze of narrow, cobblestone streets with centuries-old houses. I was fascinated by the abandoned residential buildings, with vegetation growing from their stone facades. The area has lots of graffiti or to put it more positively, street art. After sundown, a diverse crowd fills the hip, quirky bars. At night, Bairro Alto is a lively, party destination. In the morning, it is sedate and relatively empty.

We meandered to Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, a small and popular park with a panoramic viewpoint of the city. A busker played fine guitar framed by the expansive urban backdrop.

The ceiling of the Igreja de São Roque. Note the repaint in the middle. A cloud of religious personalities pasted over the original trompe-l'œil.

Then we visited Igreja de São Roque (Church of St. Roch), the earliest Jesuit church in the Portuguese world, and one of the first Jesuit churches anywhere. Jesuits were expelled from Portugal (and most of Europe) in the 1700s. This church was one of the few buildings in Lisbon to survive the 1755 earthquake unscathed. The exterior of the church is nothing fancy. But the interior is quite elaborate.

The most interesting thing about Igreja de São Roque (for me) was the painted wooden ceiling of the nave dating from the 1580s. The original ceiling was trompe-l'œil, designed to give the illusion of barrel vaulting. But smack in the middle of the ceiling there was an added medallion re-paint/paint-over from the 1700s.

The re-paint was not trompe-l'œil and stands out like a bumper sticker on the Mona Lisa (or any painting).

It's an add-on, on top of and not integrated with the design of the original artwork. Sure, the re-paint in the medallion was a religious allegory befitting a church. But there was no attempt to disguise or integrate the newer artwork. How odd.

To me, it felt like 300-year-old graffiti. I may be the only one who thinks the Igreja de São Roque’s ceiling is weird.

We returned to the apartment and snacked. We then caught an Uber to Alfama, Lisbon’s “old city.” The Uber driver nearly wrecked his car near the Castelo de São Jorge by driving into a barrier.

From just below the castle, we wound our way to the massive 16th - 17th century Monastery of São Vicente de Fora (St. Vincent Outside the Walls). The monastery was off the beaten track enough to be uncrowded and peaceful. It had courtyards, waterworks, elaborate azulejos, a bell tower, and a balustrade lined rooftop. We went to the monastery for the view, which did not disappoint. Visitors can climb all the way to the monastery’s roof for a 360° view of the city. The late afternoon light coupled with the view was spectacular.

Views from the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora's roof top in Alfama.

Outdoor, street-side urinal in Alfama

Monkey with spectacles - Azulejo on wall in Alfama near the outdoor urinal

WCs

Not long after arriving in Portugal, we discovered that half of Portugal’s toilets were out-of-order and many others were pay toilets. Pay toilets ranged in price from a half Euro to one and a half Euros. Coins, exact change. We discovered that public toilets didn’t always have seats. We discovered that some single occupancy WC’s didn’t have lockable doors. And some stalls in multiple use restrooms didn’t have doors at all. Some toilets had signs forbidding you to flush toilet paper. My favorite restroom in Lisbon was at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. It was mixed gender and multi-use. Appropriately, there were no urinals. Just a row of stalls. This restroom had a floor to ceiling glass wall opposite the stalls, like a store window, affording a view to and from the outside. From outside the restroom, you could photograph people’s shoes under the stall doors. Not that I did. But I thought about it. And yes, like many European cities, Lisbon has outdoor urinals.

We Ubered home from the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. Becky bought a popular Portuguese lemony soft drink called Frize that we both liked from a bodega. We rested a bit before dinner and packed for the next day’s trip to Porto. We ate that night at Pizzeria Lisboa, one of celebrity chef José Avillez's many ventures.

This restaurant was clustered with other José Avillez restaurants and enterprises including a charcuterie, a grocery, and a cocktail bar as part of the José Avillez extravaganza in the Bairro do Avillez complex (a former convent). You walked through one restaurant to get to another. It seemed a bit too big, too slick to me – like it catered foremost to tourists and would be a good fit for Las Vegas. Yet the thin-crust pizza at Pizzeria Lisboa was tasty if not unique. I had a Bica - tomato, mozzarella, spicy salami and oregano. Becky had a Pessoa - tomato, mozzarella, onion, olives and oregano (which she found unexciting). We both had foamy cocktails – a gin, ginger, coriander and lemon cocktail and gin, basil and lemon cocktail. The herbs in both were forward and on-target.

Porto

It was a three-hour train ride from Lisbon to Porto.

Day 5 - Lisbon to Porto

We were fully packed and left the apartment by 10:45 AM. As we laboriously pulled our carry-on-sized luggage up the steps to Rua das Chagas in order to connect with an Uber, we passed an older woman (a bit older than us) on the stairs with her leg in a cast. Lisbon, with all the hills and stairs and cobblestones, must be a horrible place to live with mobility issues.

We got to the Lisbon Santa Apolonia train station quite early – and had almost an hour’s wait. We were traveling on the high-speed "Alfa Pendular" train from Lisbon to Porto. We booked first class tickets which entitled us to comfortable seats and more leg room for about ten Euros more. It was a three-hour train ride to Porto. It was an uneventful ride. The train passed by urban blight, residential and industrial landscapes, what looked to be olive orchards and vineyards, and ended with a peek at the Atlantic. Not an overly scenic ride.

We arrived at the main train station in Porto, Porto Campanhã. From there you could take a short train ride to the city proper and the São Bento Railway Station, which has famous azulejo tile murals. But since we planned to Uber to the Airbnb rental apartment anyway, we saved São Bento for later. The Uber dropped us off near our apartment. Not in front of the apartment. Technically, not on the same street as our apartment. But at an intersection near the apartment. It reminded us of our arrival in Lisbon as we dragged our luggage up the cobblestones looking for our address, 19 Rua das Taipas.

The red door on the right led up to our attic apartment. The Porto Airbnb, just like the Lisbon Airbnb, was once the building's attic. You can't see our apartment in this photo. It was above the roofline you see here.

The sloping Rua das Taipas outside our apartment's door.

The view at sunrise from our apartment's balcony.

That night we ate at the tiny, exclusive and expensive Cozinha das Flores, a year-old restaurant in the city’s historic center on the pedestrian avenue Rua das Flores. This restaurant was the latest venture of internationally renowned chef Nuno Mendes and specialized in neo-Portuguese cuisine. In May of 2024, the restaurant was recommended in a 36 Hours in Porto piece in the New York Times. Our table in the dining room faced an open kitchen with various cooks carefully plating and garnishing completed meals with eye droppers and tweezers. For starters we shared bread and butter, olive oil and anchovy spread, a bite-sized Jerusalem artichoke heart and pumpkin seed tart and a square of steamed, savory, eggy sponge cake with briny balchão prawns (pickled and chilled). For mains we had grilled john dory, with white asparagus and smoked butter/fish roe sauce and blue fish with turnip congee. We shared smoked, grilled carrots. We were informed that the fish would be prepared “rare.” Becky had a cocktail with white tomato juice as an ingredient. Yuk.

Cozinha das Flores was recommended by the New York Times in May 2024. This was a foodie restaurant, perhaps more refined than our palettes. But it was fun.

A multi-story mural by the Spanish artist "Liquen" in Porto, off Rua das Flores. In 2018, more than 60 street artists participated in an initiative called "Verão é no Porto." They were tasked with making street art that depicted traditional and modern life in Northern Portugal. The graffiti and street art in Porto matched Lisbon's.

A very modern Azulejos design by Joana Vasconcelos on the side of a burger restaurant in Porto. Yes, this design was created with glazed tiles - 8,000 hand-painted tiles.

About Porto

Porto is the second largest city in Portugal, about 190 miles north of Lisbon. Lisbon is the larger city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.8 million people (and about 500,000 people in the city limits), compared to Porto's metropolitan area population of about 1.7 million people (with about 250,000 people in the city limits).

Lisbon proper is about 39 square miles in size. Porto proper is about 16 square miles in size.

People use words like cosmopolitan to describe Lisbon. People use words like old-world-charm to describe Porto.

But the two cities have much in common, including being historic ports on rivers, steep hills, trams, sections of narrow, cobblestone streets, azulejo tile-clad buildings and street art. Porto tends to be a bit cooler and a bit wetter than Lisbon. Porto is located on a quieter river, the Douro River. The Douro attracts smaller cruise ships like Viking, ones that specialize in river cruises. But the waterfront is plenty busy.

View of Rua das Taipas at night from our apartment's balcony.

About the Apartment

Our Porto Airbnb was quite similar to our Lisbon Airbnb – twin apartments in twin cities. It was an attic apartment up four flights of stairs in a 19th century building. There were 54 steps. I counted. We could see the Douro River and old city walls (Fernandina Wall) from our windows. The apartment was cozy with two rooms. The outer room had wood floors and a cathedral ceiling with a kitchenette (that included paper towels and napkins, a Nespresso, but no French press or microwave). A comfortable couch faced the windows, but lacked a coffee table. There was a good-sized table with four wooden chairs to eat or work at. The bedroom had five windows (lots of light) and a comfortable bed. The bathroom was very small, but the shower was strong. Open windows supplied plenty of air, but there were also two heat pumps for AC if needed. The walls were adorned with what I would call student art. The apartment was located in a quiet, historic part of town, on the side of a hill. There were good cafés just across the street. But unlike Lisbon, there wasn’t a bodega close by.

The living room and the bedroom. Great views, tons of light, student art.

Above: Late afternoon view from the apartment's living room.

From the apartment’s small balcony and big windows we had a great view over rooftops to the Douro River, bridges and boats. The abandoned Palacio De Sao Joao Nova (abandoned since 1992) was directly below us, and behind it, closer to the river, the Igreja de Sao Jan Nova Church. The city across the river is named Vila Nova de Gaia or Gaia for short. Big cranes are everywhere in Porto, just like in Lisbon.

Porto View v3.mp4

A video clip of the view from the apartment's balcony.

The Fernandina Wall as seen from the bedroom window.

From our windows we could see a section of the Fernandina Wall. When Porto outgrew its original Roman wall/fortifications, Porto built a new wall, now called the Fernandina Wall. The construction of the new wall began in 1336 and was finished around 1370. The new wall was about 1.6 miles long. It originally had five gates and towers. In the 18th century, Porto’s urban growth once again surpassed its walls, leading to their demolition in most areas of town. Some portions of the wall remain, preserved for cultural and historical purposes. They are often well integrated with cityscape.

The back of the abandoned Palacio De Sao Joao Nova was directly below our apartment.

This is what the front of the Palacio De Sao Joao Nova looks like. Very different from the back.

Day 6 - Porto

Pátio das Nações (Hall of Nations)

Salão Árabe (Arabian Hall)

It was rainy to start and end the day. We ate muffins and bread and cheese from a bodega and drank Starbucks coffee. Yes, Starbucks. We did laundry again. The Porto apartment had the same Bosch washer/dryer unit as the Lisbon apartment.

We walked to the Palacio da Bolsa, known in English as the Stock Exchange Palace. The palace was built in the 19th century by the city’s commercial/merchant association. Construction started in 1842 and continued for almost 70 years. The building had six main architects and is a mishmash of styles. The palace was a place for business and entertaining “trade partners.” No one lived in the palace. According to its website, more than 300,000 tourists visit each year making it one of Porto’s most popular attractions. Just inside one finds the glass-domed Pátio das Nações (Hall of Nations). Deeper inside there are quite a few lavishly decorated and very different rooms, including a ballroom known as the Salão Árabe (Arabian Hall), with elaborate gilded Moorish designs. One can get inside the Stock Exchange Palace only via guided tour. We arrived around 12:30 and waited in line for a half hour to buy tour tickets. The earliest available tour was 2:20. So we had some time to kill exploring the Ribeira (Portuguese for riverbank). Porto’s Ribeira district, with its colorful houses, narrow alleyways, and cafes, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. It was mobbed.

Praca da Ribeira has a multitude of umbrella-covered outdoor cafés lining the bank of the river. I took this photo from a boat on the river. The white building is the Episcopal Palace of Porto which was built (in part) in the 12th or 13th century.

After our palace tour we headed past the Statue of Prince Henry the Navigator, which stands guard next door, and back to Ribeira’s main square called Praca da Ribeira. Praca da Ribeira has a multitude of umbrella-covered outdoor cafés lining the bank of the river. A vendor was roasting chestnuts creating plumes of smoke.

It was beginning to drizzle. Becky was hungry. We checked out many of the posted menus and noted what people were eating. The food looked very heavy. A Porto specialty is the "Francesinha Sandwich.” A Francesinha has layers of roasted pork sausage, ham, and cheese between thick slabs of toasted white bread, all smothered in melted cheese and a rich, spicy beer sauce. You eat it (I think) with a knife and fork. Sometimes a fried egg is added on the top of the cheese sauce for good measure. This was the lunch that everyone seemed to be eating. Becky, a pescatarian, was not impressed.

There's something vaguely salacious about this photo of a Francesinha Sandwich.

Dom Luis I Bridge – one of six bridges spanning the Douro River. It is a double-decker. We crossed on the lower section seen here.

This photo of the Dom Luis I Bridge (top tier) was taken from a window in the Stock Exchange Palace. Pedestrians can use both the top and lower levels of the bridge.

We crossed the famous wrought-iron Dom Luis I Bridge – one of six bridges spanning the Douro River. The Dom Luis I Bridge is a 564-foot metal arch bridge, 150 feet above the water, connecting Porto’s Ribeira to Vila Nova de Gaia. This much photographed Porto landmark was designed in the 1880’s by Teofilo Seyrig, a protégé of Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame. Eiffel himself designed one of Porto's six bridges (Ponte Maria Pia). The Dom Luis I Bridge is a double-decker. The top deck was for the train (and pedestrians). The lower deck was for cars (and pedestrians). We crossed on the lower deck.

Vila Nova de Gaia is the city opposite Porto on the southern bank of the Douro River. Geographically, it’s a much bigger city. Moored along the river on the Gaia side were distinctive-looking boats – called rabelos. These boats were once used to transport wine and port. Now they are used for boat tours. Gaia is home to the port “lodges.” I don’t fully understand why they are called lodges. They are public facing warehouses or cellars that offer tastings and tours. I’ve read that there are 18 different port lodges in Gaia. Port is a fortified wine. It can only be produced in the Douro Valley in Portugal. Typically, port comes in three flavors: Ruby, Tawny and White. But within those categories are “vintage,” “reserve,” “rose,” and “LBV - late-bottled vintage.” We wanted a snack and thought a tasting would be fun. But the area was mobbed with tourists. The cafés were very busy and the food still looked heavy. And it was raining harder. So we walked home and along the way stopped and bought a bottle of 10-year-old Andresen white port to bring home for Thanksgiving.

The waiter plated at the table, holding a pan from the kitchen. He joked and touched my shoulder regularly as if we were old friends. For dessert, we had cheesecake. The cheesecake came drizzled with three letters: USA. The cheesecake did not live up to the rest of the meal. But the waitstaff sure knew how to work a room.

For dinner we headed to a very small Italian place named Incontro Caffè Bistrot, which was almost across the street from our apartment on Rua das Taipas. But the restaurant was booked for the night. So we meandered back down the hill to the river front to a beloved TripAdvisor restaurant called Taberna dos Fernandes. Becky had pinned the location on Google maps. The restaurant was in an alleyway behind the river. It opened at 7:00 PM and did not take reservations. At 6:45 a line had already formed. We were worried we wouldn’t get in. Taberna dos Fernandes seated about 20 people. When the doors opened, the restaurant filled immediately and we made the cut.

Taberna dos Fernandes specialized in Portuguese food. It had simple décor and super friendly staff. Our table had paper placemats and paper napkins. This was not a white linen restaurant (like the night before). Coins from different countries from around the world were wedged, presumably by patrons, between the stones that made up the interior wall. My impression was that the clientele was a mix of tourists from all over the world and perhaps even a few locals. Portions were ample and the prices were… well, cheap. Octopus, called "polvo" in Portuguese, is very popular throughout Portugal. The most famous octopus dish is Polvo a Lagareiro, which is octopus served with small potatoes and onions. That’s what I ordered. Becky ordered octopus too. She ordered Filete de Polvo, octopus that was lightly breaded and pan-fried (with rice). Becky and I both had Porto Tonics – a Porto classic. Porto tonics are a variation of gin and tonics. Instead of gin, white port is used. Instead of lime, a lemon wedge is added. The food was tasty, the service was attentive and efficient.

This little six-table café on Rua das Taipas called Morada (right side of the corner) is how we started the morning.

In the morning we walked around the neighborhood. Porto, like Lisbon, seemed very quiet until 10 or 11 AM.

We passed by the English Club of Porto on Rua das Virtudes. We could see the back of the English Club from our apartment. The English Club was once a 14th-century manor house. Since 1925 it has been the English Club of Porto. What they do at the English Club, I do not know. Its claim to fame may be that a 49-foot-tall section of the Fernandina Wall is part of the building.

Day 7 - Porto

In the morning we ate breakfast across the street from our apartment on Rua das Taipas at a unassuming but very popular six-table café called Morada Brunch.

We liked the café so much, we would eat there the next day too. I had a pancake sandwich: two pancakes drizzled with honey, with a layer of Portuguese bacon and cheddar in between, and a fried egg on top. Becky had pancakes too, sans bacon, with layers of sour cream and fruit.

Like in Lisbon, the number of derelict buildings in Porto was curious as was the prodigious amount of graffiti. Noah Daly wrote in an UP Magazine article (Walking Through Portugal: A Street Art Stroll Through the History of Lisbon & Porto) “About one in five buildings in Porto are condemned. Some are boarded up tight, with plywood and barbed wiring, while others are hollow shells, slowly crumbling inwards. Many homes are visibly unoccupied in neighborhoods adjacent to tourist centers.”

An artist chained to his (or her) canvas at the Serralves Foundation. Serralves has something for everyone. The Serralves Foundation claims to be the second most visited art museum in Portugal.

Our sightseeing today was planned to distance ourselves from the crowds we encountered along the Ribeira and an attempt to see some greenery. Both Lisbon and Porto lack green space. There is not much room in either city for trees.

We Ubered to the Serralves Foundation (Fundacao Serralves), a contemporary art museum, surrounded by an outdoor sculpture garden and park, featuring a separate “House of Cinema,” as well as a separate art deco villa and formal garden. If you had more time, you could walk to the farm or along the forest “treetop” boardwalk which were also part of Serralves.

Our drive to Serralves was a weird Uber experience. The driver whispered in broken English that he had taken wrong turns. He was new to Uber driving. There would be a delay, but it probably wouldn’t cost more. He then told us to watch out for thieves and pickpockets. Criminals were everywhere. He whispered. I began to wonder if he was really taking us to the Serralves Foundation.

The contemporary art museum featured “Improbable Anagrams: Works from The Serralves Collection.” We saw lots of penises and pubic hair. Perhaps more interesting was an installation of the Belgium artist Francis Alÿs’ work (called Ricochet) that included videos (on multiple screens running simultaneously) of children from around the world playing. The videos had loud competing soundtracks. Kid cacophony.

The grounds and gardens needed a bit of upkeep – maybe it was the time of year. The outdoor environmental sculptures were interesting and included a giant gardening spade (Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen) and a tree festooned with solar-powered accordion-type devices that groaned and squeaked. Perhaps the most interesting piece was Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, featuring 800-odd stainless-steel spheres floating in a pond.

The pink art deco villa called Casa de Serralves featured the work of the gay Portuguese artists, João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira. The exhibition combined a broad selection of works by the two artists, including new works specially conceived for the villa. There was a rack of almost 100 altered and decorated leather jackets that one could try on. There was a towering lighthouse made of sand. There was a room of gym equipment made from chewing gum.

The pink art deco villa called Casa de Serralves features more exhibitions and has a lovely garden. It was once a private estate.

The Serralves Foundation's treetop boardwalk - short but fun. When we were done looking at art, we walked through the treetops along a wooden platform.

The Casa de Serralves's formal garden.

Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, featuring 800-odd stainless-steel spheres the size of a soccer ball floating in a pond.

Two works made by Portuguese artists, João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira. They work as a team. The lighthouse is made of mostly sand (or so one is led to believe). The "tree stumps" are made from old jeans. The artists also used chewing gum to create large scale works. Each room in the villa displayed work made by the artists, including the bathrooms and basement.

That night we had dinner at a trendy restaurant named MISTU on Rua do Comércio. We were trying to alternate fine-dining with restaurants and cafes that offered a more casual experience. MISTU had marble-topped tables and cloth napkins and spelled its name with capital letters. MISTU fit the fine-dining bill (literally), and had a hip, industrial design – tall windows and two open levels. When you entered the door, you were greeted by a large black and white photo of a topless woman.

I ordered oriental duck salad, with green apples and pomegranates and a NY strip steak, with polenta, cauliflower and roasted vegetables. Becky ordered grilled sea bass, with mushroom tortellini and asparagus. She drank the signature cocktail named MISTU (vodka, lime, Cointreau and passion fruit) and I had a Pisco Sour.

Day 8 - Porto

We ate at Morada Brunch Café for breakfast again. We both ordered scrambled eggs on toast. Not with toast, but on toast. What we got was a hefty plate of delightfully seasoned scrambled eggs on a slab of toast. After breakfast we walked to the upper city.

Graffiti plus an exterior wall plastic flower arrangement as seen during our morning walk.

Top: Mistu's lower level as seen from the second level.

Bottom: We sat on the second level.

As part of our morning wanderings, we went to Porto’s São Bento train station, considered a jewel in the crown of Portuguese architecture and famous for its 20,000+ azulejo tiles. The tiles, from the early 1900’s, create panoramic scenes from Portugal’s past.

It’s still a working train station, and also a major tourist attraction. Which equals a mob scene.

On the way back to our apartment we bought a nip of Beirão and more pastéis de nata on Rua da Flores. Beirão is a Portuguese liqueur that's made from a “secret recipe of herbs and spices” (of course), and is said to be the most popular alcoholic spirit in Portugal. I thought it might be unique like The Czech Republic’s Becherovka, but it was not. It’s too sweet, not herbal enough. The other famous Portuguese liqueur is called Ginjinha. It is a sour cherry brandy. I did not try it.

In the 2023 Yorgos Lanthimos’ film “Poor Things,” Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter character is introduced to the pastel de nata while in Portugal. She begins eating them feverishly and is warned by Mark Ruffalo’s rakish Duncan Wedderburn character, who wants to whet her appetite for more sex, not pastry: “One’s enough. Any more is too much.” Bella Baxter does not listen, consumes too many at once (because one pastel de nata is never enough) and upchucks custard.

Before the day was out we did another load of laundry – our fourth during the trip. Portugal was much warmer and more humid than anticipated and I did not pack appropriately. I brought mostly heavy-weight shirts and no shorts. I did bring four T-shirts to layer under my long sleeve shirts. I brought no other short sleeve shirts. I wore each of those four T-shirts three times, and never under another shirt. I only wore long sleeve shirts when we went out to eat.

We booked a Six Bridges River Cruise for the afternoon. Instead of booking a spot on a forty-person cruise that left from Vila Nova de Gaia, which was within walking distance, we booked a spot on a small eight-person boat that left from a marina much further away. Our cruise included a port tasting. We gave ourselves 45 minutes to get to the marina via Uber. Good thing too. The first Uber brought us someplace far from the river. Becky swore the Uber driver was mistaken (but how?). The Uber driver did not speak a lick of English (or Portuguese). So we called a new Uber, now farther from the marina then when we started. We made it to the marina just minutes before our boat was due to depart.

Our boat had a captain, a tour guide “host” and room for eight passengers. At first we sat on the bow with a talkative Australian and then moved to the flybridge. The tour lasted two hours. During the cruise, the skies changed from blue to stormy. It was fun to see the cities of Porto and Gaia from the river – layers of buildings, seemingly stacked on each other.

We tried white, ruby, tawny and late-bottled vintage port.

On the way back to the marina you could see giant waves from the open sea crashing into a sea wall.

Right: Part of the Fernandine Wall above the Dom Luis I Bridge.

Modern roads were built suspended above the river because there was no place else to build them.

An abandoned building next to the river. Prime real estate one would think.

Our two hour boat tour saw a mix of weather from blue skies to storm clouds. But no rain.

A shell of a building precariously perched on the cliffside. To get to the building, you would have to walk through a tunnel and down stone steps.

A version of the Rabelo boat used for centuries to transport people and goods along the Douro River.

Houses stacked (some abandoned); a man has a smoke overlooking the water.

The Monastery of Serra do Pilar sits on top of the hill on the Gaia side of the Douro River.

The St. John’s Bridge (Ponte de São João) was built in 1991. The Infante Dom Henrique Bridge was built in 2011. There is a 7th bridge being built now.

Above St. John’s Bridge is a private school by the name of Salesians of Porto. It is surrounded by tall fences, as if it were a prison. But the fences are there only to keep the playground balls from rolling into the river.

This school was originally the Royal College of Our Lady of Grace for Orphaned Children.

That afternoon Becky went to a local ceramics shop, 110 Cores Oficina Ceramica across the street from our apartment on Rua das Taipas, to buy a small 4-inch white head that caught her fancy. The head, made by Rita Goncalves, reminded her of Ancient Sumerian figures. It would be our only souvenir (other than a bottle of port, a block of limestone and 2,000 kwanzas).

That night we ate at Incontro Caffè Bistrot for dinner. This is the Italian restaurant that was booked solid a few nights earlier. This time, we made a reservation 48 hours in advance. Incontro Caffè Bistrot sat only 14 people including two at a counter. It had an open kitchen, chef, prep cook and waitress. We shared a burrata salad. Becky ordered pesto e noci and I ordered carbonara with peppery guanciale. We drank white wine, a spritz and ate classic tiramisu for dessert. Paper napkins, great food. How can these very, very small cafe’s be so good, and still so affordable and survive?

Sintra

There is no train that runs directly from Porto to Sintra. But there is a train that runs from Lisbon to Sintra. We saved some time by taking the train from Porto to Lisbon and then taking an Uber from Lisbon to Sintra instead of the train.

Day 9 to Sintra

We set the alarm for 7 AM. We were on the street by 8:20 AM. We Ubered to the train station outside of Porto’s center (skipping the São Bento train station). Our journey to Sintra would necessitate a return to Lisbon. The train from Porto to Lisbon left at 9:30 AM. We rode “first class” on the train again, a cheap and largely symbolic upgrade. A single car, or maybe two, constituted first class. Our car was full of tourists with lots of big bags and businessmen wearing ties and fingering phones and laptops. Curiously, train employees checked our passports after we were seated. Not our tickets, just our passports. The train took a bit longer than three and a half hours to reach Lisbon’s Oriente Station.

From the Oriente Station we took an Uber to Sintra. In Sintra we had booked a room for three nights at the Sintra Marmoris Palace Hotel. Sintra didn’t have a lot of hotels to choose from, especially if you wanted to be near the Old City. The Marmoris Palace Hotel was our "luxury" accommodation. The hotel was behind a tall iron gate at the end of a short lane. To get in, you had to press a buzzer and announce yourself. Very different than climbing four flights of stairs in the dark.

I used my iPhone to make this blurry photo while walking back to the hotel after dark. It was a long exposure and the phone was a bit shaky - a poor man's water color filter. The lights on the hill top are from the Morrish Castle, which is lit purple at night.

About Sintra

Sintra is a smaller and greener city than both Lisbon and Porto. Though it may not be a city at all. As best I can tell, Sintra is the name of a “town” or “village” and also the name of a larger “municipality” made up of multiple villages, hamlets and parishes, including the village/town of Sintra. Located on the edge of Sintra-Cascais Natural Park (one of Portugal’s 13 national parks) and part of what is sometimes called the Portuguese Riviera, Sintra’s municipal population is around 380,000. The Old City, or historic center of Vila de Sintra, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995.

Sintra is located about 17 miles northwest of Lisbon. It is a popular day trip for those touring Lisbon. The train from Lisbon takes about 40 minutes. Vila de Sintra is in the Sintra Mountains - like Lisbon and Porto, walking from point A to point B in Sintra can be a workout.

Sintra was once the summer retreat for Lisbon’s royals and wealthy. It is where they built palaces and estates and entertained their well-connected friends. The historic part of Sintra is famous for its 19th-century Romantic architecture, royal palaces, historic estates and villas, gardens, parks and hiking. Sintra is also one of Portugal’s most affluent zip codes and the home of many expatriates dating back more than 100 years.

Over Tourism

For the past year I have been reading about anti-tourist protests across Europe. The protests have happened in a variety of classic destinations, including Barcelona, Venice, and Amsterdam. According to an article published by Harvard, data reveals that in the first quarter of 2024, international travel to Europe was 7.2 percent higher than it was before the pandemic, with a total of 120 million international visitors. After decades of encouraging and supporting the growth of tourism and the concurrent revenue stream, the residents of some cities were saying enough is enough. Their cities were now clogged with tourists. Tourists added to the city’s pollution woes (garbage, smog, foul harbors). Tourists stressed the city’s infrastructure, making public transportation congested, streets gridlocked and emergency services unreliable. And tourists were reshaping the housing market as units were increasingly being turned into short-term rentals catering to vacationers. We did not experience any of these protests personally. But in Sintra we saw the signs. Literally, we saw the signs. Signs read “Sintra does not equal Disney - Make Sintra Tourism Sustainable” and “Queremos sintra viva e habitada nao ao turismo de massas (We want Sintra to be alive and inhabited, not mass tourism) and “Sintra: A Traffic Jam in Paradise.” The group behind these signs, QSintra, has a manifesto: “To all who live in Sintra and to all who like to visit it, Sintra is in danger. It is urgent to defend Sintra and the Serra [mountain range], their heritage and their identity.” QSintra said in a statement, “We want Sintra and the people of Sintra to be able to live with tourism, but a type of tourism that respects and improves the lives of those who live here and does not, on the contrary, harm their daily lives and make them flee from what remains of their own life in the neighbourhoods... Mechanisms must be created to discourage mass tourism, flash tourist visits, and the flow of people that congest monuments, access roads and public spaces.”

Over Tourism and Sintra

About the Hotel

The Sintra Marmoris Palace Hotel was once a 19th-century manor house. According to one website, it was built in 1890 by a marble magnate – someone who made their fortune in the marble biz. The mansion was refurbished in 2017 and made into a hotel, one of three owned by Marmoris in Sintra. The “Palace” was actually two buildings with nine rooms and a swimming pool and extensive grounds. The hotel’s official website’s English translation reads “Sintra Marmòris Palace is the soul of a property…” Another website read that the Palace had “a golf course provided onsite. At the Marmoris Palace Sintra you can enjoy windsurfing, snorkeling, and diving.” Most none of this is quite true (for instance, the hotel does not have a golf course and it is not on the sea – but such amenities might be nearby). This was a very quirky hotel with very little detailed web presence. It was beautiful as well as bizarre. From a design standpoint embracing functionality, it gets high marks for… weird. Which made it unique.

Between the adjacent modern-low rise building and mansion there was an elaborate courtyard with palm trees, cacti and pool-like water features. As we walked to the mansion little gecko-like lizards scurried under foot. A peacock bobbed its head. The hotel had a large reception room, a large breakfast room, a lobby – public rooms galore and marble everywhere – floors, walls etc. Our guest room on the first floor also had elaborate marble floors.

The room’s décor was all blue-velvet (drapes, upholstery and bedspread) and mirrors, even mirrored furniture – literally, all the furniture except the bed was mirrored. A large screen TV was built into a wall mirror. The mirror turned into a TV when you pushed the right button on a remote. A wall of stained-glass windows lit the room. The bed was curiously pushed away from the wall and windows and almost centered in the room under a large glass chandelier, like a dining table. Bedside table lamp cords were precariously stretched from the bed to the wall. The cords were elevated so you had to hop over them.

Double French doors led to an attached glass solarium converted to a bathroom. The solarium’s exterior windows had curtains so you could discreetly poop, but the interior French doors were full-length glass. If one were modest enough to require privacy while sitting on the toilet, one could ask their roommate to close the heavy wooden doors outside the glass doors. Yes, on the bedroom side of the bathroom there were large oak doors. But one could not close the wooden doors before or after the glass doors were closed, unless one was standing OUTSIDE the bathroom. Because both sets of doors swung out in the same direction. This is hard to illustrate with words. But effectively, one could block the view of the toilet if one was in the bedroom. But one could not block the view of the toilet if one was in the bathroom. Go figure. We have been married for close to 100 years. So we dealt with it.

But from a design standpoint, why didn’t the glass doors have curtains? Why did the glass doors exist at all? Wouldn’t a single set of solid doors make more sense for a WC?

And then, why was the bed in the middle of the room?

But the biggest WHY was the bathtub. There was no shower. Just an ornate marble bathtub with a hose/spray wand. And the tub was not in the bathroom. The tub was next to the bed. Why? When one took a bath/shower, the funky shower wand sprayed water everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling, on the bed. A big WHY.

Next to our guest room in the hall there was a public bathroom with a toilet and bidet and a sweet shower. It was a lovely bathroom. We thought about using that bathroom instead of the tub in our room. But the public bathroom had no lock on the door. Why wouldn’t a public bathroom have a door that locked? Why?

And there was no place to put our suitcases. Why? I began to call our hotel the Why Palace. Becky said the hotel was full of microaggressions.

A number of things about the hotel were quite nice if not extraordinary. The mansion was located in a quiet neighborhood on top of a hill. Every morning, after a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, an ample hot breakfast was served restaurant style. The hotel had an impressive covered pool area, full of light. Extensive walkways wound through the hotel’s fenced grounds which were dotted with hidden sculptures and exotic plants. There were trees and cacti of all sorts. Chickens and peacocks roamed about freely. An enclosure contained parrots. A row of chairs on the lawn behind the mansion looked over the pool’s rooftop to the adjacent hilltop. Red-roofed villas climbed the hill. In one direction, you could see the twin smokestacks of the National Palace. Crowning the highest hill you could see the outline of the Moorish Castle, which was lit purple at night. Every night, between 6 and 7 PM, wine, cheese, bread and cured meat were served on the lawn as the sun set.

The two white cones on top of the castle are actually 108-foot-tall smoke stacks. At the base of the smoke stacks are two massive kitchens that could prepare food for several hundred people. The kitchens are at least 600 years old.

After checking into our hotel we walked to town to find lunch and ate at a café called Garageden, next the library, overlooking a park.

We sat outside. I had a good burger with limp fries and a Super Bock. Becky had a goat cheese salad. The cheese in her salad was very odd, firm and rubbery. Becky didn’t like it. But I enjoyed my burger and cold beer. A taste of home.

We then hiked to the National Palace (Palacio Nacional), recognizable from a distance because it has two teepee-like towering 108-foot white cones unlike anything I have ever seen, that are actually kitchen chimneys (the kitchens are at the base and the smoke from the fires drifted up and out the top).

The palace has layers of history and sprawling additions and the oldest parts date back to the Moorish times (10th century), but most of what one sees now is from the 15th century. Still, that’s old. It's been called the most intact medieval castle in the world.

Two rooms in particular had memorable artwork: the Swan Room and the Magpie Room. Both rooms had ceilings decorated with the aforementioned birds. The palace was used by Portuguese royals for 500 years, until 1910.

The streets and cafes surrounding the palace were crowded with tourists, but the palace was not.

Above: a map of the palace which shows the maze of rooms.

Right: The wooden ceiling of the palace's Magpie Room. It includes 136 magpies with the word Por Bem. According to legend, the king was caught kissing a lady-in-waiting by his wife. The court women began to gossip, and the king defended himself by saying the kiss was "Por bem" which means "without bad meaning" or "for honor." To stop the gossip, he had the room painted with a magpie for each woman at court - 136.

View of Sintra's Old City which was built on the hill below the Morrish Castle. This photo was made from inside the National Palace.

The National Palace is also famous for its Azulejos.

Tiles with Armillary Sphere (left tiles), the emblem of King Manuel I. They were commissioned by the king in 1508–1509 from a ceramicist in Seville. The tiles are over 500 years old.

Did I mention that there is a very popular tile museum back in Lisbon? Azulejos are taken very seriously.

The wooden ceiling of the Swan Room/Swan Hall.

On the walk home we stopped at one of the less busy cafés and had Porto tonics. We bought wine, cheese, fruit, nuts, pastries and quiche at a local market for a picnic we didn’t have. We arrived back at the Marmoris Palace Hotel while the evening’s wine & cheese reception on the lawn was still happening - something we had forgotten about. So we sat at a table behind the hotel and snacked on a cheese board with a cow cheese (from the Azores), a sheep cheese and a goat cheese, cured ham, salami, bread and crackers. We drank a glass of wine. This was as good as the picnic we had planned. We watched the sun set with Moorish Castle in the distance. Becky then took a bath and washed her hair, minimally soaking her side of the bed.

Our hotel's evening wine and charcuterie board. Everyone/every room got there own, with bread and crackers. This board had been nibbled on before I thought to photograph it. Much of the cheese is missing.

Day 10 Sintra

We set the alarm for 7 AM for the second day in a row. I took my bath/shower, washed my hair and a bedside lamp. Breakfast did not start until 8 AM. The Marmoris Palace Hotel’s breakfast room was quite formal – table cloths, cloth napkins, etc. We quickly consumed lattes and OJ, pastries, fruit and thin cheese omelets. Becky wanted to be in a Uber headed for the Peña Palace by 8:30 AM. The Uber ride to the palace gate could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on traffic. We were supposed to be at the gates by 9:30, ahead of the first timed admission of the day, which was at 10 AM. Peña Palace is the most famous landmark and most visited site in Sintra and can be quite mobbed. Our Uber ride was quick. The Uber ride up the mountain on steep, narrow, twisting, walled roads was memorable. Harrowing. A blast. Upon arrival shortly after 9 AM there were plenty of people ahead of us. It seemed like most people were part of multiple tour groups. I thought it would be fun to have a short pole and flag as if I was leading a tour group too. It was a beautiful sunny day.

The Peña Palace, 1,700 feet above sea level, offers panoramic views all the way to the Atlantic. The palace was constructed on the site of a medieval monastery, which was abandoned after the 1755 earthquake reduced it to ruins. Within the 19th century palace are the church, cloister, and refectory of the monastery, richly decorated with azulejos. The palace’s modern façade was commissioned in the 19th century by King Ferdinand II and Queen Maria II and finished in 1838. It was used as a summer palace. The palace was created entirely from stone, with Moorish arches, towers, and a large central tower that reaches an impressive height. It incorporates Egyptian, Gothic and Renaissance elements. Inside, you can find a variety of luxurious rooms. It was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The palace is surrounded by a beautiful woodland park that includes paved trails, ponds, follies and exotic trees (like giant sequoias) and shrubs. When we had finished our visit to the palace, sandwiched between tour groups, we walked through the grounds and looked at the plants and odd buildings, which included unfamiliar woodland lilies and a deep-shade forest greenhouse. If one has the inclination and time, one can take a trail from the Peña Palace to the ruins of the Moorish Castle on an adjacent hill.

When we reached the road and the Peña Palace park’s entrance/exit, we called an Uber. We did not hike to the Moorish Castle. The Uber app. indicated a 18 minute wait, then a 24 minute wait, then a 30 minute wait, then a 45 minute wait. So we canceled the Uber and took a shuttle down the mountain to town. The shuttle would not take us to our hotel. But it got us more than half-way back. From the Old City center we hiked to a café called Villa Craft, which was the closest thing to a brewery we saw in Portugal. It sold craft beer and flatbreads in a very confined space.

Above: Becky. Right: Dan

Peacock on the Premises.mp4

Video clip of the peacock on the premises.

After our late lunch we hiked the rest of the way back to the hotel. We were greeted by a peacock who had snuck his way into the hotel foyer.

We asked the concierge about excursions to the sea and to the Palace of Monserrate. We decided that both would require more planning than we had energy for and more time than we had left in the day.

At 4:30 we ventured to sit on the grounds but all the chairs were in the bright sun. It was a balmy 76 degrees. It felt like summer. The pool was open, but empty.

The view of Sintra and the glowing Moorish Castle from a hill near our hotel.

We walked to town that night and ate at a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant called Taj Palace (because one palace is never enough). This was not a fancy place. I believe that Indian food is the same everywhere. Portuguese Indian food is the same as Icelandic Indian food. As far as I am concerned, it’s comfort food. We had standard fare that was perfectly palatable: naan, lamb korma and vegetable korma. Becky ordered green wine. I wanted a cocktail. The restaurant had a bar but listed only three or four cocktails on their menu. I ordered a martini. I wanted something familiar – a strong, dry martini. I got a brown drink in a port glass. It was a port martini. Port was substituted for vermouth. It tasted like port. Yuck. It’s a thing (who knew?). On the way back, we photographed the purple glow of the Moorish Castle.

Day 11 - Sintra

We set the alarm for 7 AM for the third day in a row. I took a quick bath/shower, sending water everywhere. Who would want to start a day this way? Breakfast was more leisurely this morning. We opted for scrambled eggs. By 9:30 we were Ubering to the Quinta da Regaleira, a 1912 mansion and lush, hilly, whimsical woodland garden full of exotic flora and follies designed by an Italian opera-set designer.

What is a folly? In architecture, a folly is a building or structure that is primarily decorative and not intended for functional use. Follies are often whimsical structures or faux ruins and are built to blend in with and enhance the natural landscape.

The palace is also known as "The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire," which is based on the nickname of its best-known former owner, António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. Quinta da Regaleira is an oddity in many ways. Some websites suggest that the estate is much older than the turn of the 20th century. For instance, I have seen it described as a 16th century castle. However, most sources say that the palace and grounds were constructed between 1904 and 1910 by Monteiro the Millionaire.

The property consists of a five-floor “palace” or mansion (complete with spires and gargoyles) and chapel, and a meandering park that features terraced woodland gardens, man-made ponds and grottoes, fountains, sculptures and follies, including towers, and even a well and system of underground caverns.

The follies are elaborate – and kid-friendly. The follies allegedly hold symbols related to alchemy, the Tarot, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Quinta da Regaleira was a private residence until 1987 and then it was purchased by a Japanese corporation and sat vacant for ten years. It was purchased by the municipality of Sintra and opened to the public in 1997/1998.

We were at the Quinta da Regaleira gates when they opened at 10 AM and like most of the early birds, we made a beeline for the estate’s most famous attraction: a pair of inverted towers (or wells) beneath its gardens.

They are often referred to as the “Initiation Wells.” These inverted towers have spiral staircases leading down into the ground. You exit the well via a system of caves. Despite the name, historians think that the wells were never used to source water. The main well reminded me of Saint Patrick’s Well (Pozzo di San Patrizio) in Orvieto, Italy, which was built in 1537 and is twice as deep. It was a working well and perhaps the model for this well.

Areas of Quinta da Regaleira were under construction/undergoing repairs when we visited. Seemingly, parts of the mansion were closed. A large truck on the side of the road pumped something in or out of the estate for hours, causing quite a traffic backup. This is a "Where's Waldo" photo - Can you find Becky?

Quinta da Regaleira has a plethora of follies. Its architect, the Italian Luigi Manini, was also a stage designer who created theatrical set pieces. Becky is hiding in one of the photos above. Like "Where's Waldo."

The follies are meant to be climbed and explored. If I had my way, selfies would be prohibited at most attractions. They disrupt the flow of traffic and are largely unnecessary. But I am admittedly a grumpy old man.

This folly is called The Portal of the Guardians. Inside you will find one of the caves that leads to and from the Initiation Wells.

A detail from The Portal of the Guardians. Supposedly the estate is filled with mythological symbols and references to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” But I wouldn't know a reference to the Divine Comedy if it bit me.

The park is roughly 10 acres. It is a labyrinth of paths and woodland gardens, frequently punctuated by towers. It was supposedly designed to convey "esoteric and occult concepts" and embody a full range of "mystical" ideas. At least, that is how it is marketed today.

At the very bottom of the "main" well is a circular tile floor depicting the Cross of the Knights Templar. The well never held water.

The main well has a spiral staircase and nine levels or platforms that supposedly represent Dante's Nine Circles of Hell. I am not sure what counts as a platform.

The Initiation Well was lots of fun. The mythology of the estate purports that the Knights Templar used these wells during an initiation process. A theory is that the candidate being initiated would need to walk down to the bottom of one well and navigate the dark subterranean area that is linked to the opposite well. If the person could find their way back up into the light, they would earn a place in the brotherhood. I’m not sure what happened if they did not find their way out.

The main well is 88-feet deep. At the bottom of the well are two main tunnels. The first of these leads to an exit underneath the folly named Portal of the Guardians, the other splits into three separate tunnels.

The Unfinished Well. One of these sub-tunnels leads to a second, smaller well called the “Unfinished Well.” All the tunnels are unmarked (and dark).

One of the tunnels at the bottom of the main well leads to a folly/grotto named The Lake of the Waterfall. When we arrived at The Lake of the Waterfall we were politely told to turn around by a production crew. There were camera and sound people, a director and actors. What they were filming, we don’t know. From a different vantage point, away from the action, we watched the “talent” walk across the green water on stepping stones.

Palácio de Monserrate

From Quinta da Regaleira, we called our next Uber to take us to The Park and Palace of Monserrate (Palácio de Monserrate). The ride featured another twisting, winding, hilly narrow road with walls on either side. The Park and Palace of Monserrate is the furthest attraction from the town center.

The oldest structure on the property, a chapel, purportedly dates to 1093. It fell into ruin and was rebuilt in 1540. A villa was built on the land in the 17th century. But it no longer remains as everything was destroyed by the earthquake of 1755.

The interior of the Palace of Monserrate. The last owner's extensive art collection was auctioned off by heirs. But one still gets a sense of the villa's grandeur.

Curiously, the park's land was owned or leased by a succession of Englishmen starting in the late 1700s. In 1789 an Englishman built a house over the ruins of the ancient chapel.

Becky posing next to a giant araucaria (Norfolk Pine) from Australia or New Zealand.

A yucca from Mexico.

The landscape work began in the late 1700s. Though the property was still in ruins when Lord Byron visited in 1809, it inspired the poet, who mentioned the beauty of Monserrate in “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.”

Francis Cook, a wealthy English merchant and art collector, purchased the property in 1863 and rebuilt the house, creating an eclectic fairy-tale palace, uniquely blending Indian, Gothic, Moorish, and Islamic influences. The Palace became the summer residence of the Cook family. It was the center of British culture in Sintra for the first half of the 20th century.

The surrounding woodlands are a spectacular horticultural showcase with trees, shrubs and exotic plants sourced from every corner of the world. It is said that the microclimatic zones of the land made it possible to plant over 3000 exotic species, some of which are now quite large. The plants are organized according to geographical areas. There are regional Portuguese strawberry and holly bushes and cork oaks; araucaria (Norfolk Pine) and palm trees and tree ferns from Australia and New Zealand; and agaves and yuccas from Mexico. There are camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos as well representing Japan. We walked through an understory of bromeliads. We walked under a Bunya Pine grove with nets to protect our heads from falling 22-pound pinecones. We posed next to yuccas and giant Norfolk Island Pines.

A folly. Yes, Monserrate also had a folly or two. The park had bromeliads growing in this area.

A a giant pohutukawa tree from New Zealand next to the villa.

From Monserrate we Ubered back to the Old City and a well-known café called Café Saudade where we tried the famous regional specialty, a very tasty almond-egg pastry called Travesseiros de Sintra. We then walked back to the hotel from the café, stopping to buy snacks for the flight home.

At the hotel, we packed and bathed, preparing for our next day’s departure. After enjoying our last wine and cheese plate behind the Marmoris Palace Hotel, we hiked back to town and to a restaurant called Incomum (a chef Luis Santos restaurant). Incomum has over 6,000 reviews combined on Google and Tripadvisor. Its name translates to unusual or uncommon.

Our last meal in Portugal was at a fancy restaurant, or at least a highly recommended restaurant. It was not expensive. Two glasses of house wine cost 7 Euro’s total (or less than $4 apiece). For the most part, our dinners were cheap compared to what they would cost in the U.S. Even the "expensive" ones.

For starters, Becky had a salada mesclum c/fruta and I had carpaccio de vitela (yes, raw beef before an air-flight). Then vieiras com risotto maracuja (scallops and passion fruit risotto) and lombinho de porco preto (Iberian pork tenderloin and clam polenta and greens). We shared a fondant chocolate with strawberry sorbet for dessert. A perfect meal for our last night.

The famous Travesseiros de Sintra from Cafe' Saudade.

Vieiras com risotto maracuja (scallops and passion fruit risotto) from Incomum.

Waiting for the Uber to take us to the airport.

Day 12 – flight home

We set the alarm for 7 AM. The car to the airport arrived ten minutes late, while we expected it to be early. We left the hotel at 8:00 and got to the airport at 9:10. Our plane was supped to board at 10:45. The traffic was very heavy in areas, especially around the airport. We were told that with light traffic, the ride would take a half hour. And with heavy traffic, it could take an hour and a half. We had also heard that the Lisbon airport was a horror show. Slow and chaotic. Our experience at the Lisbon airport was less dramatic. Yes, the airport was very, very crowded with inadequate space for walking and sitting and disproportionate space allocated to retail. Checking bags was easy – the lines were relatively short (15 or 20 minutes). Security screening was easy – the lines were relatively short (15 or 20 minutes). Passport control was easy – the lines were relatively short (15 or 20 minutes). But 15 minutes after we arrived at our gate and sat down, we were instructed to form a line for a second passport inspection. We stood in this line for another half hour or 40 minutes. The flight departed a little after noon (or 7 AM east coast time). The flight back to the US was considerably longer than the flight over – closer to seven hours. But the AC, not the heat, was on this time – like a normal flight. We arrived in Boston at about 2 PM east coast time. It then took 45 minutes to get through customs at Logan – too many arrivals, too few agents. By 3 PM we were outside the airport on the curb at our Logan Express bus stop. The Logan Express bus is supposed to run every half hour. The bus finally arrived at 4 PM. The Mass Pike traffic was a nightmare. We arrived in Framingham at 5:00 PM. We arrived home in Mansfield sometime before 7:00 PM, after dark. When you do the math, it took us 16 hours to get from Sintra, Portugal to Mansfield, CT.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse