TELGEN
VACATION REPORT
Lisbon, August, 1999
Or,
what we did on our summer vacation, part two.... When the opportunity came up
for Bill to bring the family along on another trip to the Iberian peninsula, we
grabbed it! The capital city of Portugal was another place high on our
"to-go" list, and we looked forward to a nice, long sunny weekend
near the Atlantic coast. As you might be able to discern from the center of
this photo, however, the weather was not entirely cooperative. On our first day
sightseeing, we emerged from the metro (the nicest I've seen so far, by the
way) into a complete downpour. We were utterly drenched by the time we decided
to just take a taxi to our destination, which, appropriately enough, was the
maritime museum. David was fascinated by all the boat models, particularly the
ones that were eight feet tall and therefore appropriate for his bathtub (in
his opinion). The museum is adjacent to a beautiful building, the Mosteiro dos
Jerónimos (you can see the courtyard in the photo above), which is "a
masterpiece of Manueline architecture," according to our guidebook. It
dates to the early sixteenth century, which was the time when Portuguese naval
power made it one of the world's great (and wealthy) powers. So these are the
cloisters of the monastery, which are almost as ornately carved inside as they
are on the outside. The monastery is attached to a church; as we wandered into
the balcony from the cloisters, we saw a wedding going on. No sooner had the
ceremony finished and the bride and groom exited, another nuptial party entered
for their wedding. I guess that's not too unusual, but it made for an
interesting mix of nattily dressed wedding guests and casual tourists outside
the entrance of the complex.
Luckily
for us, however, the rain didn't stick around very long—in fact, it was sunny
and warm for most of our visit. We visited the Castelo São Jorge, which is atop
one of the seven (or is it eight?) hills of Lisbon. The castle dates back
pretty far, having been used by the Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and Portuguese.
Popular myth has it that a number of secret tunnels were added during the
Middle Ages, but we didn't see any. Actually, there wasn't much to see besides
the walls of the castle, as little remains of the interior. But the walls do
wind around in a big square, with staircases and alcoves making for quite a
walk. And of course, with the castle being atop a great hill, it has beautiful
views of the city and the nearby Tagus River.
We actually walked down from the great hill into
the city after we were done, and were profoundly grateful we had taken a cab
going up. It was quite steep! In fact, although we've seen several cities with
narrow, twisty streets, I think some of the most impassible were to be found
here in Lisbon. There were a couple of places we went through by tram, and
there was barely enough room for the pedestrians as the tram went by—in fact,
there were several places where we could have reached our hand out of the tram
window and touched a building on the street.
In
this picture you can get an idea of what the views are like from atop some of
Lisbon's hillsides. This is at the Miradouro Santa Luzia, one of many viewing
platforms stationed around the city. This one had beautiful flowering vines
growing atop a canopy, making for a lovely frame to the view over the river.
(And despite Bill's claims, I did not deliberately take the picture so his face
was in shadow. The vine must have moved in the wind at the last second.)
You can see that the half-wall upon which David is
sitting is covered with tiles. These are known as azulejos (azul
"blue" + zulej "smooth"), and they are all over the city.
When they were rebuilding Lisbon after the devastating earthquake of 1755, they
covered many buildings in the city with these tiles to protect them from fire.
The result is often stunning, for the bright colors and patterns are quite
striking as they shine in the sun. We even went to a museum devoted solely to
azulejos, where we saw a picture of Lisbon, pre-earthquake, made solely of
tiles. (There was also a museum filled entirely with coaches—you know, the
horse-drawn things rich people rode in before there were cars. Evidently it's
the city's most visited museum, and although it has some pretty fancy coaches
we didn't find it as interesting as many others we saw.)
The most
spectacular scenery we saw, however, was a half-hour train ride outside Lisbon.
Cascais is a good-sized resort town with its own fortress and several
comfortable-looking beach residences. When you walk down the road along the
coast, you come upon a place they call "Boca do Inferno"—the
"mouth of Hell." An impressive name for an impressive place, where
the tides of the Atlantic have carved out a deep gorge. Here you can gaze down
inside the gorge as the tide roars in; what you can't see in this picture,
however, are the many locals who climb down the sides of the gorge to fish.
Like many other scenic spots in Europe, there were absolutely no guardrails,
warning signs, or other devices to keep people from wandering where they
shouldn't. (There was one staircase rail, merely to aid people coming to the
most popular viewing point.) So people can climb down and fish, or wander near
the edge, or endanger themselves however they want to. I actually find this
attitude kind of refreshing—evolution in action!
I just realized that my selection of pictures may
give a skewed portrait of Lisbon, so now that I have all sorts of room for
extra photos, I stuck in this picture, from the high-tech, modern Expo '98
area. This fountain was one of two that functioned as something of a water
"volcano," erupting every two or three minutes to splash water over
the tiles and sending waves of water coursing along towards your feet. It was
quite mesmerizing to watch. Lisbon also has several more recent (and
architecturally interesting) bridges or memorial statues in the area. Just
because my pictures of the older areas came out better, don't get the idea that
Lisbon isn't as modern a city as any other in Europe. It is (loved the Metro
there), and we had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Since there were many areas we
didn't get to see (like the church that had everything but its arches destroyed
by the 1755 earthquake), we might try to make it back there sometime. And, of
course, we would certainly recommend a trip there to anyone else.
Copyright © 1999 by
Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.