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Home  >  Portugal  >  Sintra and Lisbon, Portugal
Portugal

Sintra and Lisbon, Portugal

Allison Sherman Posted onJanuary 1, 2017January 1, 2017 Comments are off 4951 Views

Despite the difficult day getting here, we’ve been having a wonderful time in Portugal. We are staying with our friends Carlos and Colleen, whom we met in Panama, visited with in Spain and we are now visiting them in Portugal. We laugh that we have never once been together in our common home country – USA. Perhaps we never will! The other crazy connection that we learned last month is that Colleen’s sister works with my sister in Salem, Oregon. It was destiny that we meet and become friends!

We’ve been really enjoying Portugal. It’s currently the favorite country for our family. It’s pretty, the weather is not too cold, it’s not overrun by tourists nor expats, it’s interesting and it’s easy to get around to see and do things. The kids will tell you that one thing they love the most is Colleen’s two cats, Gordo and Nacho. I admit it’s nice to have a furry, affectionate animal around. Claws used for climbing up your pant leg notwithstanding.

This is Gordo.
This is Nacho.

But we did manage to tear the kids away from the cats long enough to go exploring. Here are just a few of the sights from the last few days. Haley received a new camera for Christmas so a lot of the photo credits go to her.

Sintra, Portugal

Sintra is a small town outside of Lisbon. It’s so cute with gorgeous buildings, winding, narrow, cobblestone streets and a lot of interesting things to see. We loved seeing all the different forms of transportation navigating the streets. Tuk Tuks or scooters seemed the most logical choice, but watching the bus work it’s way around town was almost comical in itself. Our most common phrase of the day exploring Sintra was “Are you sure this street is a 2-way?”. Fitting two cars at the same time on some of these roads seemed like an impossible feat. Dan was admiring all the rock walls so that didn’t help matters. The second most common phrase of the day was: “Yes, Dad, we see that gorgeous rock wall/building/fence/structure!”

This is where we are – in Sintra. Google Maps thinks I know Portuguese. Silly Google.
A really cool arch in Sintra. We still have to visit that castle in the background up on the hill.

 

Quinta de Regaleira

It’s hard to describe this place in Sintra. It’s like a palace, a castle and a botanical garden all in one. All we know is that it was great for exploring. It was so pretty and so well preserved. We have enjoyed seeing ruins in Mexico and castles in Spain, but many of them are only partially standing so you really have to imagine how it used to be. At Quinta de Regaleira it was almost fully maintained, partly due to it’s a relatively recent (in the big scheme of things) construction in the 1800’s. This is an UNESCO World Heritage Site as well. It was beautiful.

One of the towers at Quinta de Regaleira
I love how it was tucked into the hillside.
One of the buildings, I think it was the chapel.
Zoe in a tower.
You could walk across this little pond which was just outside of a cave.
Haley is taking a picture of the local wildlife. Dan complains that he didn’t buy her a camera for cat pictures.

Lisbon

Getting 6 people out of the house at any reasonable hour is a feat but we managed to get up and going to Lisbon one morning. One of the things that makes this trip so wonderful is that we don’t have to do any of the FSO (“Figure Sh#t Out”) work. We don’t have to research what to do, where to stay, how to get there, where to eat, or even where to park. We just follow Colleen and Carlos and when they stop, we stop. When they tell us to look at something, we look. I think they are having to adjust for our exploratory nature, though. There was a lot of “Let’s see what’s around this corner” that perhaps they didn’t factor into the schedule. Worldschoolers are fascinated with what’s around the next corner. Well, maybe just Worldschooling Mothers. Worldschooling Teens and Worldschooling Pre-Teens and Worldschooling Dads seem to be content to go back to the warm car.

We started at the waterfront in Lisbon and made our way to the center. The day was dominated by exploring, food, and pictures of the buildings. Haley will be updating all of you on the foods of Portugal in some later blog post but I’ll tempt you now with just a few pictures to hold you over. Spoiler alert: we love the food here!

Daniel was cold so he got some hot chocolate. You can see how he feels about being cold.
You can’t pass up an opportunity for a picture on these bulls. The video of Colleen and I trying to get up on them has been deleted and all backups have been destroyed. Not even Wikileaks will find it.
We explored this cathedral in the center of Lisbon. Most of it was destroyed during a big earthquake in the 1700’s. It was so cool to see the blue sky where ceiling was supposed to be. The Portuguese probably didn’t think it was so cool at the time.
Additional pic of the cathedral.
We checked out this monument dedicated to the explorers of Portugal. We took the elevator to the top for the view.
This large tile compass was a gift to Portugal from South Africa. The map shows all the areas where Portuguese explorers ventured. They were almost as interested in what was around the next corner as I am. #OriginalWorldschoolers
Portugal is known for the scenes or geometric patterns painted on tiles.
We kept finding sweets that needed tasting. These were made with sweet potatoes and were yummy, especially with a hot drink.
The Tower of Belem on the Tagus river.
This bridge is called the twin sister of the Golden Gate. And in the distance on the right is the big statue of Jesus overlooking the city, kind of like in Brazil.
I love this old building in Lisbon. It’s a train station. It’s too pretty to be a train station. If you zoom in you can see a Starbucks inside. Too funny!
A ceramic sardine with a vaguely phallic looking manger scene in it. Yes! I’ll take one! And no, I don’t know the tall man behind me groaning and saying “Really, Honey???”. He’s definitely not my husband.

 

PS: We now have an Instagram account managed by Haley and her new camera. She posts at least one picture a day of our travels. Check it out and show us some Instalove @shermantravel

 

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