Dinner in Lisboa (traditional bean soup course here) during the evening of Fado & traditional dancing.
Lunch in the coastal town of Caiscais - my first attempt at tackling a whole sea bass. Very tasty, grilled and delicious! Along the dock three blocks away the latest catch was being unloaded, so I know this was fresh!
The palm studded, balmy coast of Caiscais, Portugal.
Jeff catches Teresa taking pictures of one of the many 16th c. tile patterns in the royal palace at Sintra. Notice the lower portion looks three-dimensional! Very creative for that time period.
The same palace from further uphill in Sintra. The conical tours are actually huge funnel chimneys over the kitchen. Common at the time, but only a few in Europe remain intact.
Sintra is about 45min north of Lisboa, up in the foothills of the mountains...
It's built into a steep hillside, with a medieval fort characteristically planted on the highest point. Sintra's buildings are very old but beautifully maintained (on the whole) with ancient and new tile art, paintings, interesting doors and ironwork.
A typical street set of tiled street signs.
Abandoned, but still eye-catching.
A recent addition to a home...
Good food, colorful ceramics = small town Portugal.
I could have done an entire photo-book of doors and door handles of Spain & Portugal. But it probably has already been done.
Get your ironworks done here.
And tour the toy museum while you wait... Jeff checked it out, but it wasn't clear if they were open, or if their toy collection would live up to the Idea Man's standards of creativity.
Lisboa by day...
The elaborate lift up one of the steepest streets, engineered by one of Eiffel's students.
A glimpse of the old royal palace in Lisboa, now government offices and restaurants.
Lisboa by night. The whole street is made of these stone patterns.
Mmmm, stewed lamb and roasted pork.
We left Lisboa on Tuesday morning and subsequently we're toured through the lovely and rolling farmlands of southern Portugal and Spain. It's fairly difficult to capture this by camera since we were speeding along the highway most of the time, but there are a few shots that captured the unique landscape. It's all quite hilly and the farms alternate between large pastures of cork trees (recognizable by dark green leaved and numbered trunks) or darker and taller oaks, with herds of sheep, goats, cattle or horses grazing beneath. Then there are rows and rows of olive or citrus trees, and smaller fields plowed for grain. Many of the smaller highways are lined with beautiful trees and flowering shrubs once we were well out of the city, giving a boulevard type look.
The cork plantations are interesting. Cork is really the outer bark of the cork tree. The first harvest can be done 20 years from the first planting, and then again every 8-10 years. The number of harvests is carved into the trunk; even from the road you can see the numbers, often greater than 5, indicating these trees are well over a hundred years old.
The pig herds indicate oaks, even if you couldn't see the oak-shaped leaved. Here in the south, the pigs are fed on acorns as much as possible. It gives the meat a particular dark look and rich taste, which once cured, characterizes Iberian Jamon (hams). These are hung by the dozens in butcher shops, carried home whole, wrapped, on the shoulder, and placed in a special stand on cafe or home for thin slicing.
Like our northern border crossing, the Portugal-Spain crossing takes place just over the Portuguese mountains. This time, however, there is no guard at all, just a friendly sign. The mountains here and later on in the day, are both rocky and well treed, with more deciduous trees yielding swaths of gold here and there. There's no red or orange, interestingly, and the patches of dry astute with short evergreens and olives gave the slopes a distinctly Mediterranean look. The way the livestock is kept with all the orchards is also interesting, reflecting the careful use of of land in these small valleys and hillsides. One moment it looks like the US Northeast, the next turn not at all. After all, when was the last time you saw a herd of large pigs pasturing at the local or hard or farmers hand harvesting olives with big sheets placed under trees?
Then into Seville... In a separate post. Then Cordoba on Thursday.
The famous mosque-cathedral, built on the ruins of a Visigoth church, built on the ruins of a Roman temple: all layers visible for appreciation in one part or another of this fascinating, beautiful place.
Built to wow with symmetry, light and incense.
The gardens retain their Moorish look.
Cypress and palms, and sun: Southern Spain.
A tasty lunch in Cordoba before getting on the bus back to Madrid.
