Geoff and Rita's Trip to Portugal

 After finishing my tour at the Gulbenkian Museum I walked to the metro station and took the underground train close to our apartment to meet up with Rita and we spent the afternoon walking around our neighborhood before heading for an early dinner. We are staying in the Chiado district in Lisbon which is on one of its hills.  We walked up to a viewpoint and looked across at the Sao Jorge Castle which sits on the highest point in Lisbon.     We then walked down several hundred steps that led to one of Lisbon's main streets, Rua Augusta and came upon Santa Justa Elevator, the 150 foot tall, neo Gothic, iron tower built in 1902 that connects the lower and upper parts of Lisbon.   Further along and heading towards the Tagus River we walk under the impressive Arco da Augusta (Augusta Arch), built in 1873,  onto Praca do Comercio, a huge riverfront square that used to be where the palace was located before it was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. ...

 Rita had a couple of hotel site inspections to do today and so I had picked out a museum I wanted to go see.  According to my travel guides, Lisbon has 40 museums and if you can only see one, then you should go see the Gulbenkian Museum.  Luckily it was on the way to Rita's first hotel stop so she ordered an Uber and dropped me off at the entrance at 10:00am.  The Museum spans 5,000 years of European, Egyptian, Islamic and Asian art in 9 separate rooms.  Calouste Gulbenkian (1869-1955) was an Armenian oil tycoon who gave Portugal his art collection for the hospitable asylum granted him in Lisbon during World War 11 (where he lived from 1942 until his death).  He spent 10 percent of his fortune on purchasing art objects and built the building to show them off, then left it as a gift to posterity.  His billion dollar estate is still a vital arts foundation promoting culture in Portugal. The Canopic Jar of Lunefer was recovered from a tomb in Hawara, Egy...

 Woke up and it was sunny and warm so we decided to take a 40 minute train ride to the beach resort town 14 miles west of Lisbon called Cascais (kahsh-KAYSH).  This was where we were supposed to stay after Lagos but cancelled due to the inclement weather.  Before the rise of the Algarve, Cascais was the place for the rich and beautiful.  Starting in 1900, the Portuguese Queen, Maria Pia, made Cascais her summer vacation getaway and Portugal's' high society followed.  A train line was built from Lisbon and between the two world wars, the area was developed as a kind of Portuguese French Riviera.  Today, it is still where the money is and you can see it with your own eyes as you look at the  beautiful mansion's, high end apartments and 5-star plus hotels that occupy a lot of the real estate here. So it still has that elegant vibe but the main attractions are its lovely beaches.  Cascais has a seawall promenade that passes several beaches and goes to...

 Got up at 07:30 as we wanted to be on our way to Lisbon by 09:00.  It is a 3 hour drive and we needed to have our rental car back at Lisbon airport by 13:00.  It was an easy drive and managed to drop the car off at the Hertz car rental return in plenty of time, took a taxi from the airport to our apartment and met our landlord who gave us an inspection of the place and a few restaurant suggestions.  The apartment looks just at it was advertised, clean , very well stocked and lots of room, so we are very happy.  We unpacked, had a coffee and then decided to explore our neighborhood while the sun was still shining.  After walking around our neighborhood we came back, showered and headed for dinner to a place that was recommended by our landlord and we had spotted on our travels.   Ilegally parked in front of our building and put our luggage in our trusty Kia hatchback and got ready to depart for our 3 hour drive to Lisbon. This is our apartment bui...

 We have an early start tomorrow as we want to get to Lisbon, drop off the car at the airport, take a taxi to our accommodation and then take a stroll around our neighborhood.  So we spent most of the morning packing and cleaning up so that we could just put our toiletries into our bags and head out the door.  We had one last area we wanted to walk around and so we headed out in the early afternoon to check it out.  We had made a reservation at Pizzaiolo again as we really enjoyed the pizza but wanted to try their other Italian dishes.  Rita and I split an appetizer of bruchetta and for our main courses I had lasagna and Rita had spaghetti bolognaise.  With a name like Pizzaiolo, we should have guessed that their specialty was pizza.  The food was ok but did not match the quality or the flavor of the pizza we had a few days before.  But at least the local red wine was delicious.    We headed down to the river via a different route and ca...

 Yesterday we took it easy and lazed around the apartment doing laundry, reading and caught up with emails before getting out in the afternoon and headed down to the waterfront to soak up the sun and people watch.  It was a very relaxing day.  Today we are heading out to Aveiro, which we read about in our travel book and it sounded like an interesting place to visit.  It's 76km south of Porto so it was a short drive to get there.  Aveiro is a popular tourist destination famed for its canals, art nouveau architecture and colorfully painted moliceiros boats.  The city lies at the edge of the Ria de Aveiro, a saltwater lagoon that was historically famed for its seaweed, salt and bountiful fish.  We toured the town for several hours and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as there was a huge flea market going on in the center of old town.  We had to get back to Porto as we had a reservation at Mind the Glass, a bistro specializing in Portuguese hot pots...