Portugal

Hello all!

Maria and I are back from two weeks in Portugal, where
we spent time in the capital of Lisbon as well as the cities of Sintra,
Porto, Coimbra, Luso, and Tavira. Barry flew in to Lisbon where we
met up and had a great time together painting the town. A nice
map of Portugal is here to get a better perspective of where we
were.

The three of us took a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra, a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, one day to see the Palácio da Pena, Castelo
dos Mouros, and Palácio Nacional de Sintra. There were two
highlights of the day, the first was lunch at a small restaurant
named Lugar dos Sabores which we found by accident after a
long trek off the beaten path looking for a now non-existent
restaurant recommended in one of our guide books. Here is a
picture from our lunch:


Everything was great about this meal, from the fresh bread and
olive oil to dip it in to the main courses of apples stuffed with
seasoned minced meat and oven baked pork loin with some
Portugese spices to the dos cafes pingados to round off the meal.
The second highlight was the Palácio Nacional de Sintra, a mixture
of neo-gothic, neo-manueline, neo-islamic, and neo-renaissance
styles. The Palace is very colourful and looks like something you
would find at Disney. Here are a few pictures taken there:



Another day we took one of the modern trams to Belém, an old
quarter of Lisbon to take in some sights such as the Mosteiro
dos Jerónimos (Jerónimos Monastery), and the Torre de Belém
(Tower of Belém). Here is a picture of Maria and Barry in the
cloisters of the Monastery:




The monastery is an example of Manueline architecture and
was built as a monument to Vasco da Gama's successful
voyage to India and was funded by a tax on eastern spices.

Nearby is the Tower of Belém which used to be in the
middle of the River Tagus until the course of the river was
diverted by an earthquake in 1777 and was the departure
point for the explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries.



We had a nice picnic in the park next to the Tower and relaxed
in the shade of the palm trees. At the end of the day we stopped
in for some of the famous, secret recipe custard tartlets called
Pastéis de Belém:





Here is a shot of tray of the tarts, stacked two high which they
pack into cardboard tubes six at a time. They went through one
of those trays in less than a minute as the Portugese and foreigners
alike over indulge on the tasty treats.


I plan to upload more photos from our trip to my smugmug
website for everyone's viewing pleasure but hope this gives a good
taster of our trip for now.

-Brent and Maria