Category: Puttering through Portugal

With only minor ripples. Like, our flight from Lisbon gets held up on the taxiway at Newark because a stalled catering truck is blocking the way in. In Newark, we clear passport control in 5 minutes with our Global Entry but we needn’t have hurried. Our flight to Denver is delayed by 30 minutes because…

Photos of Lisbon gathered over the last week. There are a bunch. https://photos.app.goo.gl/7BpKUYVpmtpZtyVo6

A resounding yes!  Maybe part of the magic was simply being able to travel again and it would have been a great trip no matter where we went. But Portugal is a fascinating place. A month is not enough to really get to know a different world. But we got a taste and it was complex: savory,…

Sheep cheese. Or what was left of the creamy delight after last night’s snack. I told Ella that if she could smell it, she didn’t have to worry about stressing over the rapid antigen test we were to take later in the morning. My reasoning wasn’t comforting. As she pointed out, whether I was right…

Depends on who you ask. I might not have slept well last night…worrying. I might have sighed heavily when I couldn’t get the pick up location right for the Uber. Maybe I paced back and forth through the halls of the Fado museum. Did I raise my voice when Grubb wandered off to take pictures…

Sort of the last day. Tomorrow is the real last day but we have to get our Covid tests and then deal with the results. Both of us feel absolutely fine but then so did Kamala Harris. But back to today. Turned out to be lovely. Weather wise and otherwise. The Museum of Pharmacology, a…

A late morning rain was predicted to all but disappear by early afternoon, so to avoid getting wet we decided to drop into the Pharmacy Museum during that time. The museum is at the top of a hill located above a tiny veranda-like plaza that looks out over the steep neighborhood streets leading to the…

Wow, it’s May 1st. Remember May poles? Bright ribbons and flower garlands? Not the same thing here. Nope, it’s Labor Day. That means more things are closed. And Labor Day here is similar to Labor Day in the U.S. Celebrating workers. Except in the U.S., we’d never take it on a Sunday. We make it…

May 1, International Workers Day the world over, is Labor Day in Portugal and observed as a holiday. This reflects how the Socialist Party has dominated the political scene since 1974 when the Carnation Revolution ended Salazar’s dictatorship. So, like Easter Monday, a lot of venues were closed and, with the increasing tourist traffic loving…

What’s with the trash sculptures emerging from walls as if from another dimension? I’ve come across four of them here in Portugal. So similar in structure and style, they MUST all be created by the same artist. A little internet research turned up  artist Bordalo II (Bordalo Segundo). Bordalo II uses our discarded stuff to construct…

And off we go, a quick train ride to Belem and then cappuccinos by the Tagus River. On to the National Coach Museum just across the street.  What’s the first thought that crosses your mind when you hear stuff like Coach Museum? Uh huh, be honest. Musty stables with disintegrating covered wagons? Wells Fargo Pony…

Before we traveled, I made sure to bring an umbrella; I would have been better served if I had brought sunscreen. Today it got up to 27 degrees Celsius. Flush-faced Northern Europeans, sun hats, shorts. We lit out for the wide river promenade in Bélem. Cappuccinos at a cafe near a Portuguese-style RV park… …then…

Despite the programmed metro strike this morning, the above ground trains were operating as normal. We caught a train to Cascais, barely a 30 minute ride along the coast. Lisbon sits on the Tagus river which opens to the Atlantic. Cascais sits on the Atlantic. On the map below, the blue circle is where our…

With the weather predicted to be in the mid-seventies, we figured it would be good day to head west along the coast and scope out the resort town of Cascais. It’s an easy train ride, and we went early enough to avoid fighting for seats. (By early, I mean any time before noon. After twelve,…

Pretty Porcelain Pottery. But that’s just plain silly. And i didn’t even have my daily goblet of sangria. Oh, maybe THAT’S the problem. Today’s Target: Jardim Bordallo Pinheiro Route: Bus 706 to Cais do Sodre, change to Metro green line to Campo Grande. I was staring out the window on the bus, not really paying…