Today was supposed to be without purpose, laid back and relaxing. No hike to any hilltop fortress, no wandering cold empty palatial hallways, no room-by-room exploration of museum antiquities, nope, just roving the crooked streets of Lisbon taking advantage of sunny seventy-degree weather. Then Ella mentioned something about porcelain sculptures near the Museo de Lisbon…
Category: Puttering through Portugal
What IS behind that old blue door
at Rua da Esperança 16? We wondered leerily as the cab dropped us off at our new address in Lisbon a few days ago. A door that could use some love, a couple of guys feeling no pain leaning against the wall of the bathroom-sized bar next door. We buzz #2 as instructed. A woman…
Through a space warp, to Disneyland?
We easily catch the 714 bus to the Rossio station where all trains lead to Sintra. We step off the train 45 minutes later, into the crisp mountain air of Sintra, a whopping 375 ft above sea level. But there’s hills, and greenery and vistas so it feels like a mountain. And like the tourist…
Royal habitats
Sintra, famous for its picturesque hilltop palace, was a short train ride north. Since it’s a major tourist destination, and since the memories of the roped-off interiors of the Pizzi Palace merge with countless roped-off dining rooms and drawing rooms and bedrooms of the Schoenbrunn Palace, etc., we chose not to go inside and tour…
Hell, history, coffee
Museu de arts Antigua (or this is Ella’s idea of hell) Long hallways with room after room, alcove after alcove of murky paintings depicting adoration, sainthood and torture to those who don’t believe. Grubb will joke about my dislike of this, what I would call, oppressive art. He loves this stuff. The quantity of these…
And then I glanced over my shoulder…
The day started out with a rain that mostly disappeared by the time we maundered up Rua da Esperanza on our way to MNAA (Museu Nacional de Arte Antica). This is the first museum on our trip that didn’t require a mask (nevertheless, we’re still sticking to the old guidelines). We didn’t linger by the…
Lisbon revisited
An easy Uber to the Coimbra train station this morning. Other than buses running their routes, not much traffic. We go through the routine of masking up for mass transit. Then it’s on to the train where I’ve got a window seat. We pass hill after hill thick with a profusion of greenery. Bottle brush…
Right seat, wrong car
Travel day. Coimbra to Lisbon. We hopped aboard the train on the car marked with a big 1°, meaning First class. Being seniors, it cost us a whopping 2€ each for the upgrade. How does one pass that up? Right away we got involved in a bit of a human shell game where we both…
Photos: A Taste of Coimbra 3
We are heading back to Lisbon tomorrow so just a few last photos of Coimbra. By the way, there are a few different pronunciations of Coimbra. we hear both coom-bra and qweem’bra and sometimes qm-bra. and often, the m is sort of swallowed. https://photos.app.goo.gl/vDmQqq2uAq2hrTYX7
Spoiler – The Museu da Agua isn’t about water
Another saunter through the Botanical gardens this morning. The picturesque way to get to the riverfront where we planned to find the Museu da Agua. Not easy to find this little building, probably originally nothing more than a pump house. It was tucked away in the corner of a park that was closed for renovations. …
Everywhere you look, there’s soccer
We took a walk around the neighborhood and happened upon a soccer game in progress. Maybe a city league or a University league. They looked pretty darned good to my untrained eye. And then we saw a guy get injured. Teammates rushed to help. Help drag him unceremoniously off the field that is. And leave…
Park, ruins, soccer!
No signs of rain today, so a late morning scoot under the Roman aqueduct… …before entering the botanical gardens and ambling down a path through the bamboo forest and out onto the riverfront walk. We stopped at a cafe that had a tables on a deck built off the river bank above the Mondego. I…
Photos: A Taste of Coimbra 2
https://photos.app.goo.gl/fiLTsUhDNzGDZ9Ls9
From gorillas to convents
Amazing. With a prediction of 95% chance of rain today, we awoke to crisp blue skies. I need to learn how to interpret the weather report on this side of the Atlantic. No rain today. Not one drop. The news that New Mexico is on fire puts a damper on the moment. A sobering reminder…
Nature’s Gothic bamboo arch
The dramatic storm front that threatened to drench us yesterday was, like most things Baroque, needlessly exaggerated. A sprinkling here and there, but, for the most part of the day the lowering clouds swept overhead, disappearing by evening when we took a walk up to the top of the Coimbra campus for the dazzling view….