Almost bedless in Seville

It was touch and go.

Yesterday after our lovely trip to and at Sagres Jo got onto the hotel computer to book our stay in Seville. He got a hotel in a convenient location at a great price. He booked 3 nights and gave his credit card details. They emailed back that it was all confirmed for May 30 to June 2. Shoot. That is next month not this month. He didn't realize until after we got back from dinner where there was an unexpectedly good fado floor show.

Of course, he couldn't sleep so at 2am he was trying to cancel the booking but the web site wasn't doing it and the hotel wasn't doing it. He sent emails as requested and came to bed. In the morning the struggle continued. They were going to charge him the full amount and they were booked out for this weekend. So he tried to phone another hotel but by mistake rang the hotel again. By which time the nice lady had talked to her boss and they had agreed to cancel the booking without penalty.

By this time the bus was about to arrive to take us to first Albuefera and then to another bus to Faro to catch another bus to Seville. We figured that we had an hour to spare in Faro to organise accomodation in Seville or if we couldn't manage that we would stay in Faro. None of the internet booking sites take bookings for the same day, not even the "last minute" ones.

When we arrived in Faro we noticed a travel agent across the road. Jo nipped into the bus station for something or other then we trooped across to the agency. As he walked in a hand reached out to turn the sign on the door from "open"to "closed." He was in there for 15 minutes before sticking his head out the door to ask "There is a hotel for 70euro a night, is that OK?" It was a rethorical question!

After a leisurely lunch we got on the bus secure in the knowledge that a bed awaited us in Seville. Hence our happy smiles.

Cape Vincent and Sagres

Today we traveled by bus and train to the easternmost end of the Algarve. It was interesting going past the front yards in the bus (they are mostly paved or non-existant) or, on the train, the back yards (which are much more interesting because of the neatly planted vegetable gardens.)

We ended up at what must have been the worst ever place to be stationed if you were drafted into the Portuguese army, cape Vincent. Right on the very edge of a cliff at the very end of the country being blasted by winds from across the Atlantic.

There on cliffs at least 90 m high were blokes fishing!

Evora and Silves

I am having trouble getting connected to the internet. The hotels that Jo chooses don´t have high-speed connections so I am sorry to have been off the air for a couple of days. I will have to add photos to this blog later because I am working on the hotel´s computer.

We are well into the Algarve now. Yesterday we travelled most of the day on the bus to Evora. We got there fairly late in the afternoon and whipped around all the sights before dinner time so that we could move on today.

There is a Roman ruin there. It used to be the capital of the region so it has many splendid churches as well as palaces and parks.

One church has a most unusual exterior with a couple of hysterical men teetering on the roof.

In the cathedral I spotted a painting of the last supper with what looked like suckling pig on a plate in front of Jesus. Or was it a small, roasted dog?

This morning we continued by bus to the south. The countryside looks wonderful. It is green and covered with wild flowers. The storks are nesting on any high, flat platform. We went past a field with cattle egret rookery where they were sitting in a line of trees. The trees looked, from a distance, as though they were adorned with large white flowers.

Silves is where Jo´s dad was born. His grandfather owned property and a butcher shop. Granddad would fatten the cattle on his grass before selling them in the shop. In his middle years he got appendicitis. This was before antibiotics and the operation was very dangerous and mostly fatal. So before the operation, he sold all his property and distributed the funds. He survived the operation and died poor. There is a lesson there.

Silves, when we first came here 35 years ago was a backwater being quite a distance from the ocean. Now it is a thriving tourist town just off the interstate. The castle goes back to Roman times and the Moors were here for 500 years. The old town looks Moorish in that none of the streets are straight but all the houses look Portuguese. There is a very fine archeological museum.

Jo asked there about his relatives and was told that one with his family name (Viola not Martins) was the leader of the local communist party. . . . sounds like family to me.

Porto still

A beautiful day in Porto as can be seen from the photos. The locals are saying »But it is going to rain on Saturday» as though they can hardly wait. The tourists are loving it.

Today we did the boat trip down the Duoro so that Fiona could take a hundred photos of the bridges. They are certainly stunning. One was built by Eiffel´s company. Another has trains going across the top and cars and people across the bottom of an arch. The photo also shows the boats that used to be used to transport the port wine from further up the river where it is grown to the port caves. (They are decorative only nowdays.)

After that we visited a port company and saw the humungous barrels that some port is stored in. All very complicated but they say the reason port is sweet is because they only ferment it for one to three days so the grape sugar is left. I never tasted a grape as sweet as the white port they gave us to sample. Jo has almost decided that the bottle given to him to celebrate the birth of his first son should be drunk soon-ish.

Visited the cathedral which is splendidly baroque. After photographing Jo walking up to it, I turned around and snapped the market below it.

We also went to the most beautiful bookshop in the world. Unfortunately they didn´t allow photos inside and were not selling any postcards, sorry Cherie. And we won't get to see Sally and family (perhaps a good thing as Kimi is sick.)

Porto

We caught an early bus from Coimbra to Porto this morning to arrive here before lunch. After checking into the hotel we stayed at years ago (still looks good and the view from the 17th floor is great) we went off in the Yellow Bus to explore the city.

This bridge is made of poured concrete (how do they do that?)

It is a great city built on lots of hills around a river on the edge of the ocean. There are heaps of lovely old buildings in the old area and interesting new buildings in the suburbs. I was thrilled to see an installation by Janet Echelman as we drove by. She is a finalist in the Powerhouse Museum´s Love Lace award that I have been helping with for the past couple of years. One of her pieces is going to be installed outside the Sydney town hall in September. It will look amazing.

As we were driven around the heavenly aroma of grilling sardines convinced us that we needed lunch. They were as good as they smelled and the vinho verdo was so fresh it almost jumped out of the glass. We really didn´t mind that we had to wait one and a half hours for the bus to come around again.

We overshot our stop and had to catch a tram back to where we started from. They haven´t changed a bit since I caught them in Brisbane in the 50´s and 60`s.

Tonight we ticked another of Jim´s culinary desires: tripe. The locals are called »triperos» because the sent all the good meat off with some soldiers centuries ago and were left with the offal to eat.

Tomar and Coimbra

We visited Tomar and the St John monastry there yesterday. We were staying in a quaint Residental which was supposed to have internet but I couldn't get any signal. And where I am today in Coimbra it is so slow that I will add photos tomorrow.

The monastry and palace is splendid. It is on top of a hill with a wall all round. It's Roman origins were only hinted at by an uprooted tile floor. And the Moors weren't mentioned at all although they were there for hundreds of years. All has been sunk under the weight of Manueline and early Renaissance additions.

It was lovely wandering through the cloisters and chapels after the bus loads of tourists left. (One bus, from Spain, had wi-fi. How do they do that?) We tried to go to midnight mass but the church was closed at 10am, the advertised starting time.

After the glory of the Hospitaliers we went to the Musee de Phosphoros. I thought it might be a chemistry museum. But phosphoros are matches. This museum has 40,000 match boxes from all over the world. No two the same. A collectors paradise. And there were parcels in the office that looked like they were full of matchboxes that didn't fit into the museum.

Today we missed breakfast to catch the early train to Coimbra. Missing one meal will not hurt us. We have enjoyed wandering around the old university admiring the grand old buildings and the modern ones which fit in very nicely with the old. Jim had another library thrill at the Baroque Library which is truely magnificant. No photos allowed though.

As it is Easter Sunday most shops and restaurants are closed. And despite assiduous searching we have not seen any chocolate Easter eggs anywhere. No hot cross buns either. The sacrifices of travel . . . .

This church has a false front. The stone carvings of the old one have been sadly dissolved by the rain so they cleverly put another in front.

The royal appartments just off the graduation hall (everybody gets a doctorate from Coimbra) have a carpet that looks persian but is in fact embroidered with long cross stitch. It is typical of Portugal.

Jim filled

A relaxing day today. We booked hotel rooms in advance over the internet and took the ferry across the river to Calcihas. There they have the smallest lighthouse we have seen so far overlooking a huge ship sailing upstream. There were three other cruise ships in port. Around the corner was an ex navy warship. It was built in 1834 which seems rather late for such a man o' war.

The purpose of going to Calcihas was to have calderada, a fish stew made of all the left over fish, potatoes in a lovely, light tomato-ish soup. Ours had skate and eel and was delicious. We managed to eat two great pots of it which is why Jim was full.

Later we ate sparsely at the theatre restaurant which features fado singers as well as "folk" dancers with an oompa band. Not enough singing too many fiddly feet.

Mafra

We caught the local bus to Mafra and saw more windmills – even miniature ones embellishing gardens.

The cathedral and palace are wonderful. They were built in 1717 under orders from the king (who was celebrating the birth of an heir after 7 barren years. He had lots of money from Brazil to spend so commissioned a German to design it and imported Italian craftsmen to do it. So many came that they got it done in 16 years. This has resulted in a very coherent design and décor.

The building also housed a monastery with hundreds of monks and a huge, beautiful library. Among the thousands of books are the scores especially written for the six organs in the cathedral and for the 92 bells in the belfry. (This king wanted the biggest and best in the world.)

The rooms are spacious and full of light. For the most part the decoration is very tasteful. I suspect that not all of it is original as the royals didn’t live there very often or for very long. This sofa from the stag room is an exception to the good taste. Yes, it is a boar's head in the middle.

There were a couple of cabinets of priestly garb. Now I know how they manage to get their satin stitch so even and reproducible. They work it over paper cut outs.

And how is this for a smocked shirt! It was worn under the robe.

On the way back on the train I spotted this double crochet bag. It is made with strips of knit fabric.

And this week’s favourite thing: my Eco sneakers and the cotton socks I bought at El Cortes Ingles yesterday. The combination of blue and pink marble in the cathedral echoed the colours of the sky, sea, tiled roofs and houses out in the village.

Gulbenkian day

The ducks weren't fooled by a peice of paper but that was all Jim had. And we weren't fooled by the "art" on offer in the museum of modern art at the Gulbenkian but we were, as ever, delighted by the permanent collection.

It turned out to be a lovely clear day in Lisbon. We wasted several hours of it in El Cortes Ingles which is a large department store. They have the biggest shoe department that I have come across. Many were temptingly sensible in contrast to other shoe stores here that seem to specialize in ankle crackers. How anybody could consider wearing anything but flat shoes on these cobbled streets is beyond me.

We had dinner with our cousins Zezinha and Belinha. So nice to see them again.

Black and blue

A big excursion north today. We were ready early because yesterday they came early and we weren’t ready. Today they were on time.

First we stopped in Fatima, a place for mass hysteria. Of interest were the wax legs, arms, kidneys, hearts, ears, children, etc that you can buy for a very nominal fee. If you set them alight in the special chapel you can expect to be miraculously cured in the affected part of your body. [Fi was going to get a body part for Hamish but decided that it wouldn't survive the trip home as they are all hollow. Perhaps like Fatima?]

With relief we continued to Batalha were there is one of the very few gothic cathedrals in Portugal. It was built on a battlefield away from any town so is marvellously preserved! We weren't allowed enough time there to enjoy it's unadorned simplicity inside and wonder at its external embellishments. The Manueline impulse dates from the 11th century it seems. I especially liked the dragon.Then it was on to Alcobaca for lunch and a quick belt around the Cistercian monastry which is huge, especially the new kitchen (ie built in 1700's.) Those monks knew how to build grand spaces.

After a brief stop at Nazare to admire the view (and hear the quaint story) we continued to Obidos. This is a hilltop village that has been lived in since the middle ages. As queens lived there a wall was built around it and the castle. It is now taken over by tourists and festivals.

Why black and blue? Years ago when Jim, Fi and the two big boys visited us in Washington, Jim was encouraging the boys to look about them by instituting a "punch, squirrel" routine. That is, if you saw a squirrel you quickly punched your fellow.

Today, he decided it was a "punch, windmill." Most of the hillsides we drove past were adorned with elegant electricity generating windmills and/or old style windmills frequently in ruins but sometimes modernised and occupied.

In which a sister is lost

The football match last night was a great success. We (Benfica) won.

This morning we were collected early for a trip to Sintra. We were just a mini bus full which is more comfortable than clambering in and out of a large bus and some of the roads we drove were too small and snakey for a regular bus.

At Sintra we were not given time to go into the old summer palace whose kitchens I remember fondly. We were whisked off to the palace built in Victorian times by the husband of the queen who couldn’t speak Portuguese and created a Neo Gothic, Neo Manueline, Neo Romantic palace on the top of a hill which must have been the inspiration for the Disneyland palace. Inside (no photos allowed) it was a collection of small, interconnecting rooms full of overdecorated furniture. They had dining room chairs exactly the same as Mum’s! All too very OTT for me.

That was where we lost Fi. She knew where she was, of course. But we lingered on a parapet where she couldn’t see us so she assumed that we had started down the hill to the car park. Naturally the menfolk fussed and fiddled and made everybody late.

We then went to the most westerly point on continental Europe: Cap de Roche. The legend is that a mother bear was told to go north with the retreating ice of the last ice age. She refused and the gods turned her and her cubs into rocks. The headland was covered with flowers: pig face, lavender, short thistles, portulacea like ones, very pretty. And it had the first lighthouse of about 6 that we saw on the way down the coast to Cascais and Estoril.

The blow hole at Hell’s mouth was impressive although it wasn’t blowing today.

Dinner was topped off by this beautiful orange.

In which a pickpocket is foiled

I heard the sound of a zip being unzipped and whirled around to confront a pair of startled 30-ish men. They denied everything. Then one said that the zip was open. Which confirmed their guilt. Jo was ready to take them on but there were no cops about (I have seen very few around) so we walked off. My camera was in that zipped compartment but my wallet is secreted in a zipped compartment at the bag’s back that is against my back. Surely I would feel a hand in there.

This happened as we were walking up to the Castle of St George. Once inside the turnstile I figured we were safe on the assumption that thieves wouldn’t spent their own money to buy an entrance ticket. [Still naïve.]

The castle dates from medieval times and is founded on prehistoric remains. It is a proper castle with high walls, deep slits, crenulations, cisterns and very steep staircases up the stone walls. It is easy to imagine blokes in chain mail and maidens in wimples.

On the way down the hill from the castle we dropped into the Cathedral where the Cardinal was conducting the Palm Sunday service. It had started at 11am and was still going strong at 11:45 when we were there. The choir sang beautifully. The church was decorated with palm fronds and people were carrying bunches of herbs – rosemary, bay leaves, etc presumably for next week’s Pascal lamb.

Then we went to Gernoimos at Belem which is a monastery in the Manueline style. It looks like a wedding cake that is melting in the sun. The place was packed with tourists enjoying the warmth on their spring break.

Jo has taken Jim and Fi to a football match on the Metro. He may stay to watch the game or come back to the hotel for a snooze.

Naming bugs

Out for a stroll this morning while Jo collected Jim and Fi from the airport, I stumbled across an exhibition at the Natural History Museum called Insects in Order. I was given a bug in Perspex and shown where to start to classify it by following trails on the floor of a large room. By looking at the bug I was guided to an information board that gave its Order, Genus and specific name. What fun. The other 4 year olds and I had a lovely time.

I found the botanic gardens which are set on the side of the cliff to Bairro Alto (which is a high burb of Lisbon rather than a sub urb.) As usual with gardens, “You should have been here last week.” It looks as though it could absorb a huge amount of money but in the meantime is a cool oasis in the centre of town. Just what does it say about your love if you carve it on a prickly pear?

The Bairro Alto is looking much more prosperous than it was the last time I walked there, about 5 years ago. Then it looked seedy and run down. Now new, slick shops have moved in and the old grand mansions have a new coat of paint. Lots of tourists around too.

We took Jim and Fi to our traditional “first meal in Lisbon” restaurant called Frog. They enjoyed the bacalhao. After a walk around town and an afternoon snooze we had dinner with Jose and his Sophia.