Ola to our Portugal adventure (with a dash of Spain added)!
We'll travel on land and eastward on the Douro River--starting in Lisbon (Lisboa to the locals).
We love having you along with us as we explore the culture, architecture, history, and of course, the food of these countries. We have been blogging for 22 years and this blog represents our 22nd blog entry--not bad considering 2 years of stay-at-home adventures. If you're new here, know that you'll get all the advantages of travel plus some attitude--with none of the hassles. And we are always happy to get your comments, especially if you have visited any of these places.
Here is the official Tauck itinerary. But, as usual, we have added a number of special side trips and activities! We'll note those as we go along.
Monday and Tuesday, August 7-8, 2023
We flew to Lisbon via D.C. The temps were at 100 the last few days, but are predicted to be in the 80s this week (whew!). And the Pope was here over the weekend, but he left town before our arrival. The actual tour does not start until tomorrow night (we always get in a day ahead just to be safe), so we had some free time to wander around.
Our hotel is located in central Lisbon, right across the street from the Parque Eduardo VII. Apparently, this was where the Pope had a large gathering, as workers were still taking down the temporary stands and crowd barricades.
One of the first things we noticed on our walk was that the sidewalks (and some streets) are mostly made of paving stones. These are not the large rounded cobbles that we might see at home (or the jagged and somewhat scary pavers in New Orleans), but rather each is a stone cube about 3" on a side. There must be 10s of millions of them! We'll be careful but don't feel like we're taking our lives in our hands with each step!
And in the park are two pathways that are about 20 yards wide and run the entire length, and the stones are set in designs of lighter and darker ones! Think of the man-hours this must have taken to construct!
We were mostly out to stretch our legs after the looooong travel day, but of course, we did have one destination in mind: Crush Donuts. It was fairly close by (how fortunate!), but we did have to experience some of Lisbon's hills along the way.
Beautiful and very sweet (the donuts and the taster!).
Then we headed back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. We wanted authentic local seafood, and the concierge recommended 5 Oceanos. This required a cab ride, and along the way our driver pointed out many of the tiled walls. Tile is really big in Portugal. Some of the walls were just very pretty colorful patterns, others represented scenes from the town's 800 years of history. Alas, we could not get any pix as we were zooming by.
5 Oceanos was right on the edge of the Tagus.
There is a large statue of Christ (similar to Christ the Redeemer in Rio) on the other side, and a bridge, linking that peninsula, which was built with US materials by the same company that built the Golden Gate Bridge! Note the similarities, though this one also has a deck for trains!
The restaurant did not disappoint. Note: our tour packet included this important nugget: restaurants in Portugal will often bring you a basket of bread and a plate of olives....just like they do at home. But here they charge you for it! So it is perfectly fine to say "nao abrigado" (no thanks) if you don't want it.
We started with a plate of fried whitebait. You eat the entire fish, head and all!
Then Wendy had Dourada escalada, dorado. Delectable, with a coating of salt....so very fresh.
Wayne had the Catapana de Bacalhau com Arnejoas......cod and clams stew! Filled with potatoes, peppers, onions and little tiny clams! So delicious, but there was easily enough there for 3 people!
Then, we walked down the pier and had some outstanding ice cream...pistachio for her chocolate for him....
then back to the hotel to try to catch up on our sleep before the tour officially starts tomorrow.
Interesting factoid: Portuguese is much different than Spanish, but to our ears sounds similar to Polish! A Google check shows that we are not the first to notice this. However, the "similarity" is only in some of the sounds, as the two languages have entirely different origins and etymologies.
Ate mais tarde (see you later)!
love,
w&w
No comments:
Post a Comment