Today was our last day – breakfast at the hotel, pack, check out, go for a walk and maybe a bite until our 2:00pm pickup to go to the airport for our 5:05 flight. We got to the airport about 2:40 (it’s only a few miles from our hotel, but traffic). Getting checked in, going through security, walking through the duty-free shop – there’s no other option – and then finding passport control and finally finding our gate (a very long walk) took another 30-40 minutes. We grabbed a bite to eat in a snack bar near the gate, then waited to be boarded. Through the boarding pass scan, then down the escalator to … a bus.

Wait on the hot bus until all the passengers for the flight have boarded one of the three buses. Ride about five miles at a very leisurely pace, apparently circling the entire airport. Board the plane, get settled in, get a glass of water from the attendant. Another person comes by and asks to see our boarding passes again. Another few minutes go by; I’m reading The NY Times online.

Then we get the news that they don’t know who’s actually on the plane. So we all have to gather our stuff, get back on the bus, ride all the way back to the terminal, wait until every passenger is in the gate area, and then – only then – can they check us in and let us board again. Which means ..

Wait on the hot bus until all the passengers for the flight have boarded one of the three buses. Ride about five miles at a very leisurely pace, apparently circling the entire airport. Board the plane, get settled in, get a glass of water from the attendant.

Well, not quite. They quickly brought a bus with the A/C already cooling and boarded the front cabin passengers, and drove us out the the plane. In a straight line. No circling the airport. At a much more brisk pace. Why it couldn’t work this way the first time, I don’t know. And why they didn’t know who was on the plane, I also don’t know. That was a first for me.

So anyway, it’s now an hour after our scheduled departure and they’re still boarding people etc. I have no idea what the departure slot situation is when we leave over an hour late, but it sort of doesn’t matter. As long as we take off soon.

I can picture the next announcement… “Ladies and gentlemen I’m sorry to announce that due to the delays in departure, the crews’ flight eligibility has expired. We will be returning you to the gate area while TAP Portugal locates another experienced crew to take you on your flight to New York.”

I hope not.

See you on the other side.

Today is our last full day in Lisbon and Portugal – tomorrow afternoon we head to the airport for the trip home. Our activity for the day was simple – get driven out to the country to have lunch with a local family. Although we obviously agreed to this as part of our trip planning, we both were a bit nervous about having to spend hours with some strangers.

Our hosts, Veronica and her husband, periodically invite foreign visitors into their home for some food, wine and conversation. They live in an old house originally built by Veronica’s grandfather and which they have occupied for twelve years now. It’s a charming mix of old and new, and we sat on a lovely patio under a shady tree while we enjoyed the dishes she prepared, and talked for hours.

The food was all prepared from scratch using fresh ingredients and recipes that Veronica likes to experiment with. All of it was delicious.

This sort of thing can go south in so many ways, both for the host and the guest. We were fortunate: we found them both to be intelligent, well spoken (in English!) and extremely pleasant to spend an afternoon with. We can only hope that they felt the same way. Our conversation ranged from parents to children, to home owning, to jobs and work, and even to politics.

So this was a highly successful way to spend the last day of vacation. This evening, we need to organize and start packing, and tomorrow we’ll have a little time to relax before we head home.

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After I finished writing the first part of this post, we decided to go out for a bite. On our way out, we went downstairs to the courtyard patio near the hotel restaurants, as we had received a letter under our door the day before inviting us to a “10 year anniversary party” for the hotel, We didn’t really think that it would amount to much, just a few guests hanging around. But maybe we could get a free drink out of it.

Well, we were wrong. As we got out of the elevator, we heard loud music and it became obvious that there was a party going on! Lots of people, lots of drinks, lots of hors d’oeuvres. A DJ pumping the tunes, an acrobatic dancer spinning in an elevated hoop. So we went in and grabbed some giant blue-colored G&Ts, and stood around watching the crowd.

Most of the guests were dressed for a cocktail party – long dresses for the women, sport jackets and slacks for the men (we were most definitely not). A few of the party goers were dressed more like us. I finally flagged down the restaurant maitre de and asked who all the guests were. He said they were the hotel’s best customers from over the years.

So we enjoyed the scene for a while, finished our drinks then walked out to find the bite we were planning an hour earlier.

Today we had no schedule. No driver, no guide, no tour. Our plan was to lounge around in the room, have a late breakfast and then go wander down Avenue de Liberdade to see what there was to see.

As soon as we walked out of the hotel we were surprised by a classic car show taking place in the boulevard, stretching a hundred yards or more in each direction from the hotel. American, European and even a couple of Japanese cars were in evidence. The earliest cars were Ford Model T’s, along with a larger number of Model A’s. More recent cars included VW Beetles and Vans from the 1970s, a 1964-1/2 Mustang, and several Lotus models that I didn’t date.

Almost all of the cars were in concours condition – paint shiny, chrome sparkling, leather in nice shape. One or two were exhibited in “aged” condition. It was amazing to see Model T’s and Model A’s looking like they just came off the showroom floor.

I was particularly intrigued by the Mustang, as this ‘64 was very similar to my 1965 Mustang – same crappy six cylinder engine and three-speed transmission. The major differences are that mine was a convertible, while this is a hardtop, and mine looked like it was ready to be junked in 1969 (1) while this one is beautiful.

After viewing all of the cars, we continued down the avenue towards the downtown area known as Baixa. This area is close to the Tagus River and forms a flat plain in between the hills. It was devastated by the 1755 earthquake and resulting tsunami, and subsequently rebuilt as a modern grid, with streets laid out in right angles to each other. It’s now a major tourist area, with small shops and restaurants, and is anchored at the river end by a very large plaza Praça do Comercio and arch, Arco da Rue Augusta. While you can visit the top of the arch for the views, we simply viewed it from the plaza and then moved on.

Many of the streets in the Baixa are pedestrian only and some of them are filled with tables for the restaurants that line the streets. We noticed that all of these are located on the east/west oriented streets, thus providing shade from the building on the south side of the street. Given that it’s 93F at 5:00pm as I write this, that is probably a good idea.

We stopped at restaurant to see if they had pizza with no garlic, and after some discussion between the manager and the chef, we were told that he’d be happy to use some sauce with no garlic. So we ordered the standard 12” that they sell everywhere here, thinking that we could always get another if we were still hungry. There was no need – the pie had so much cheese on it that we could only finish half of it.

After that, back to the room for some R&R before returning to JNcQUOI for dinner. This visit was not as satisfying as our visit a couple of days ago, proving that you can’t go home again.

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(1) Mine had been in an accident before I bought it for $400. The chassis was bent, the driver’s door was a different color than the rest of the body, the front hood release required use of a screwdriver to open, and it burned a quart of oil with every tank of gas.

Our old driver/friend Jorge picked us up at 9:30 for a day in the country away from crowded, metropolitan Lisbon. We had two objectives for the day: another palace/monastery (1), and another vinyard/winery. As it turned out, both were different than we had seen before.

The first stop was Mafra. This was built from 1717 to 1755 under orders from King John V as a suburban country home, about 18 miles from Lisbon. We should all have weekend homes this big. The total size of the building is 40,000 square meters, or approximately 430,000 square feet, or almost 10 acres. We walked about 1.2 miles during our tour of the part of the building that was the royal palace. The monastery, other sections and the courtyards were not accessible

to tourists. The heating bill would have been extraordinary, except that the building didn’t seem to have any heating system. No fireplaces, no heating ducts.

In the pictures above, notice how little of the palace the upper picture shows compared to the scale model in the lower picture.

The first stop on the tour was the infirmary which served the monastery (2). There was an entire section of the building devoted to this, with its own kitchen, chapel and medical ward. The medical ward was very advanced for the time (perhaps for our time as well), featuring cubicals for each patient and large overhead windows to bring in light.

You’ll recall my description of our somewhat disappointing visit to the Palace at Monserrate almost two weeks ago. That building, while quite nicely designed, was devoid of any furniture. This made the way we experienced the building devoid of any feeling. Mafra, on the other hand, is full of period furniture, much of which had been used in the Palace. Sally was particularly intrigued by some of the pieces which were early versions of some pieces we had in our old New Jersey home.

We went through dozens of rooms in the living quarters of the Palace. I’ll just show four rooms.

Clockwise from upper left:

• The bed where the last King of Portugal, Manuel II, spent the last night of his reign before fleeing to exile in England.
• The King’s royal bed
• A receiving room for the King
• Throne room.

The Palace had an enormous library, consisting of 30,000 volumes. It’s not clear if any of the Kings ever read them all.

We spent a good hour and a half in Mafra Palace. It was very impressive, and pretty interesting.

After stopping for a not very good lunch at a restaurant with a very good view by the sea, we went on to a private winery visit. The Quinta de Chocapalha winery is a family run business, with the parents and several of their children active in running the vineyard and making the wine. We’ve been to any number of wineries, including earlier on this trip, but this was a first in two regards: it was just the two of us with Alice Tavares, one of the owners, and it was the first time we managed to be there as the grapes were being brought in from the fields. We were able to watch the stems being removed as the first step before crushing.

Previous spread, top to bottom, left to right:

• Alice Tavares confers with a master winemaker holding a beaker of sulfides as the grapes are brought in and prepared to be crushed;
• Moving wine between steel tanks;
• Paulo Tavares supervising the grape transfer;
• Wine being aged in oak from 6 – 18 months;
• Wine showroom.

After watching everyone doing their jobs, Alice took us down to her house where we sat on the patio while she let us taste, and tried to sell us, some wines. The wine was nice, sitting in the shade overlooking the vineyards was relaxing, and the selling was hard. We declined to buy any. We could only carry home two bottles, and shipping was exorbitant – it started at $27/bottle for six bottles, and dropped to $17/bottle for three cases. This is for wines that sell for EUR 10 to 25 per bottle. It is available in the US, and we might try some if we can find it when we get home.

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(1) Confusingly, this building is referred to in the same Wikipedia article as sometimes a convent, and sometimes a monastery. I’m gonna stick with monastery.

(2) I assume that the royal family would be treated in their own quarters by their own physicians, although this was not mentioned on the tour.

We had a guide again on Friday for a tour of some of the sights that you must see in Lisbon – you know, the ones that are on the cover of every tour guide or city map the hotel gives you. Our guide for the four hour tour, Annabella, met us at our hotel at 9:30.

We started by walking down Avenue de Liberdade (Liberty Avenue), where the Hotel Valverde is. As I mentioned, this is a very wide street with a large grassy mall and pedestrian areas, plus lots of traffic. It’s lined with shops, restaurants, hotels and offices and is very busy. We wove our way down the avenue dodging other pedestrians and sidewalk construction, and along the way she pointed out various important buildings. An old theater, an elevator to take people up to the hills surrounding this flat part of the center city, a funicular to a different hill, a monument to some king or other.

At the end of the boulevard, about 10 minutes from where we started, there was a large plaza with a church which we simply looked at and didn’t enter. The plaza – and many other places we passed during the day – was covered with tour groups being lectured at by their guides. While we often see large tour groups (and are thankful we’re not part of them), I’ve never seen so many more or less concurrently. We saw a number of groups that were traveling the city by bicycle, which sounds like a great way to cover lots of territory. In heavy traffic.

At this point, we hopped in a taxi for the 20 minute ride to the real objective of the day, the Belém area of Lisbon. Belém is a district to the west of central Lisbon which was originally used for agriculture and shipping, as it is flat and located along the Tagus River. At various times the King had his Palace there, which of course incented other royalty to build in the area.

Today Belém is an area of monuments and museums, along with the President’s Palace.

Our first stop was the Belém Tower, built in the 16th century overlooking the Tagus River to protect against invaders from the sea. It’s an impressive structure which includes Moorish design elements and stands about 100’ high.

The second major monument in this area is Monument to the Discoveries. During the European Age of Discovery, Portugal was a great participant, establishing colonies around the world in the search for riches. It was very successful, especially given its small size. The Portuguese empire included Brazil, Angola and Mozambique in Africa, Macau in China. They had numerous other outposts in Africa and Asia. The remains of the empire were largely dismantled in the 1960s with the colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique (1), and with Macau being returned to China in 1999.

We passed, but didn’t go into, the Monisteiro dos Jeronimos, which houses several museums. First, we weren’t very interested. Second, note the line waiting to enter. The tiny people waiting to enter give you some sense of the scale of the building.

At this point we stopped for a snack. All over Portugal we’ve seen pastries called pastel de nata – small, round custard tart. Annabella told us that they were first made, and are still the best made, in a shop we were passing. So we went in, and Sally agreed that they were the best. The pastry chefs were rushing in the back to make hundreds and hundreds of pastries to meet the demand of the people who were lined up to get into the pretty large restaurant and have some.

Our final stop with Annabella was the National Coach Museum. This is virtually the only thing I remember from our trip here 35 years ago. At the time, the museum was in the old garage of an old palace, and I recall it being cramped and dark. The carriages were parked next to each other like SUVs in a Walmart parking lot. Perhaps ten years ago the museum moved to a brand new, purpose-built building near the waterfront.

The new building is a great venue to see all of the dozens of royal carriages that are on display, from as early as 1619. And while I found it somewhat interesting and took a lot of pictures, spending an hour here was more than either of us wanted.

After resting up from our exhausting day – three hours in the midday sun – we went to a very classy restaurant that evening right next door to our hotel for a very good meal. The restaurant has the very hip name JNcQUOI (2).

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(1) If you’ve been following, you’ll recall the images from the colonial wars that I shared.

(2) It’s a play on the French jes nes se quoi, meaning “something (such as an appealing quality) that cannot be adequately described or expressed”. The restaurant is located at Av. da Liberdade 182 184, 1250-146 Lisboa, Portugal.

We checked out of our hotel this morning to begin a long drive down to Lisbon. I have to say, I enjoyed Porto. It’s a real city, with real people. Yet it’s not too crowded. And while it’s small enough to walk around the center city, it is very hilly.

Anyway, enough of Porto. On to Lisbon, the largest city and capital of Portugal. Our driver, Pedro (1), picked us up at 10:00 (2) with all of our luggage, and we headed to our first stop, the Vista Alegre Porcelain Museum.

Vista Alegre is a very old manufacturer which has converted its old factory to a museum with many of the pieces they’ve manufactured over the years, and with information about the porcelain manufacturing process. This sounds pretty hackneyed and corny, but was actually very enjoyable. The collection of pieces is extensive and extends back to the company’s early days, and up to the current day. It shows how the company has broadened its product line to meet the market.

At the end of the museum, there is (of course) a gift shop. We usually just walk through gift shops at museums, but this one had a large selection of very nice pieces. As we hadn’t spent a Euro-cent on anything to bring home, Sally chose four small plates that can be useful when she serves.

From there we drove to Aveiro. This is a former fishing town that has a couple of canals running through it. Enough canals that it’s self-billed as the “Venice of Portugal”. Trust me, it’s nothing like Venice, but has its own charm. It’s a little village that spans the canals which seems to be mostly guest houses and vacation apartments. And a lot of tourists. There are boat rides on the canals, and restaurants on the quays around the canals. We ate at one, and it was quite pleasant sitting in the shade with a beer and our sandwiches, watching people walk by, and the tourist boats cruising down the canal every so often.

After lunch it was off to Lisbon. It took us over two hours to get there from Aveiro. Our hotel, the Hotel Valverde Lisboa, is owned by the same company as the Valverde Palace we stayed at in Sintra, our first two nights in Portugal so long ago. The two couldn’t be more different. The Sintra hotel is an old royal palace and still needs significant renovation to meet modern standards. The Lisbon Valverde is made up of a few town houses on the biggest boulevard in central Lisbon, Avenue de Liberdade. The portions we’ve seen – the public areas, restaurant, pool and of course our room – have all been fixed up very nicely. Where the vibe in the Sintra Valverde was 16th century palace, this one is Danish modern – clean and sleek.

This street has all of the most expensive brands (Louis Vitton, Dior, Patek Philippe, Roche Bubois, etc). It’s also ridiculously crowded. Traffic is basically one or two lanes each way with a wide park-like mall separating them, and is stop and go into the evening. The pedestrian traffic is not much better. To top it off, there’s construction blocking the sidewalk right outside of the hotel entrance.

Once inside, you’re confronted with a completely refurbished interior with Danish modern furniture in the small public rooms and, at least, our room. Our room is in the back of a townhouse adjacent to the main hotel building, and is reached by a series of narrow hallways, It’s all quite nice, but a little unusual.

Our room itself is a sitting room and a small bedroom. We have lots of closet space, which is nice because we will be here for five nights and can unpack completely. And the sitting room has very comfortable chairs and a sofa. So we can relax here in comfort.

Sally was exhausted from the day, so I walked down towards the downtown area – closer to the river Tagus – and found a side street with a dozen or more restaurants. Dinner was fine, as was the half bottle of wine I had with it.

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(1) I’m not actually sure his name was Pedro; that’s who our itinerary says was picking us up, but I didn’t catch his name when he introduced himself.

(2) We had pushed this back from the planned time of 9:30.