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…
Behind that nondescript wall
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…
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