The francesinha: Portuguese heart attack on a plate

Back at the beginning of June, Emilio and I decided to get away from Madrid for the weekend, and we chose Porto as our destination. Located in northern Portugal, Porto is so charming and laid back that you'd never guess that it's Portugal second largest city. It's particularly famous for its port wine - you can visit several bodegas around the city.

The famous Dom Luis Bridge over the River Douro

Porto is also famous for the francesinha, a heavenly creation that will unfortunately probably take a couple of years off your life. But it's ok; it's worth it. This typical sandwich of Porto is sort of their take on a croque-monsieur except, well, more artery-clogging (and way more delicious). It's made with several types of meat (typically different types of Portuguese hams, pork, and sausages) between two pieces of bread that are then covered with melted cheese and lastly, a tomato-beer sauce. Think that's it? That it can't get more unhealthy?

Believe me, the picture does it no justice.

Wrong. Served alongside it, drenched in the same tomato-beer sauce, are French fries. Down it with a Super Bock (one of the country's most popular beers, produced near Porto), and you're likely not to want to move for the rest of the day.

Sintra: Fairy Tale Land

This is going to be a short post. Because, well, frankly the trip to Portugal was just too long ago and I have more recent places (Hungary and Slovakia!) and things (how I survived my first year teaching preschoolers English!) to be updating about. And no one really wants to read my long-winded blog posts anyway, so short and sweet it is.

The first time I went to Sintra, I thought, oh, this will be a great day trip. Day trip my culete. Most people do spend only one day in Sintra, and shame on them. Not only is there really a lot to do there (after two days there with Maddie I left still without seeing everything that I wanted to see), but the town is so peaceful at night when all the tourists are gone. And it's in the mountains, so the view of the countryside at dusk is really beautiful. Anyway, we spent the first day in Sintra seeing things that I didn't have time to see when I was there the first time - the Sintra National Palace and the Quinta da Regaleira palace. Both were really awesome, but the latter in particular. The palace at Quinta da Regaleira is really neat, but its perhaps more famous for its insane gardens, which include lots of fountains, statues, an old tennis court, towers, and a bunch of caves and tunnels. I felt a little like I was in some sort of Portuguese Lewis Carroll land.

Quinta da Regaleira Palace

Initiation Well - one of the quirky things in the gardens - from the top.

Initiation Well from the bottom.

The next day we went to the Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle, both of which I'd been to the first time around, but I enjoyed revisiting them. The Pena Palace is located in a big park that has a lot of similar quirky things hidden about just like the Quinta da Regaleira, so we spent a good portion of our time there exploring the park alone. And enjoying the view of surrounding Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean from up in the mountains.

View of Pena Palace from the highest mountain in Sintra.

Pena Park.

Chances are, I won't go back to Sintra again any time soon, if at all. (The world's just too big - too many other places to see.) BUT, if I did, the one other thing I really would have liked to have seen was the Monserrate Palace. It apparently has a lot of Islamic-style architecture and interesting gardens (I think I remember reading somewhere that the gardens are divided into sections of exotic plants from different parts of the world). We actually would have had time to go there, except that the palace is a few miles from the center of Sintra so you really need to take a bus. However, the stupid bus stops running an hour or two before the palace closes, what kind of sense does that make? Grrr! Anyway, apparently there's also an antique toy museum in Sintra that perhaps would have been interesting. And there's a famous convent with nice gardens, but you have to have a car to get there, so that was always a no-go (but I guess you really only need to see so many gardens...).

So, to sum up: if you're ever in Lisbon, don't miss Sintra!

I left my heart in...Lisboa

San Francisco? Rio? Lisbon!

I'm not really sure why, but I love Lisbon. I think it's really Portugal in general that I love, actually. It's just a really beautiful country, the people are nice (and they speak English!), the food is awesome, and it's a great and super easy place to go to get away from Spain for a little bit. I haven't seen a ton of Portugal, but among the cities that I have been to (which are all quite different, by the way), Lisbon is my favorite. There are so few cities in the world that I've visited that I think I could actually live in, and Lisbon is one of them. But anyway, back on track. Back at

Just look at it!

the end of April/very beginning of May I had a five-day weekend, and I figured, let's go back to Lisbon. I spent three days there back in December, one of which spent in Sintra, a magical little town about half an hour away from the capital. So really we were only in Lisbon for two days, and even though there's not a ton to see in Lisbon, it wasn't enough (not to mention, the weather on the last day was pretty bad; it down poured most of the morning). This time I dragged Maddie with me (although dragged is a bit of an exaggeration, because she's been asking to go back since we left). We spent five days in Portugal - two or so in Lisbon, two in Sintra, and about half a day in Cascais, a pretty little beach town less than an hour from Lisbon. And while I'm now going to hold off returning to Lisbon for a third time for a while, I would still love to go back.

On the first day that Maddie and I were in Lisbon, we took the tram to the neighborhood Belem to see the Jeronimos Monastery, which is mostly famous for its beautiful cloisters, and the Torre de Belem. Belem is a bit of a ways from the center of Lisbon - probably about a half hour ride on

Madds & me, Torre de Belem

the tram, what with all the stops it makes, and on the way back another American decided to strike up conversation with us. This guy had been living in Russia for something like ten years now, and clearly it was getting to him. One of the first things he said to us was, "Lisbon is so awful. This city is shit. I don't know why people come here." Luckily Maddie will talk to anyone, because I really wasn't too enthusiastic too dignify his comments with a response. I guess his life story was, from Detroit (that's perhaps saying something right there about his views on nice cities), living in Russia for a while, doing some sort of PhD research there, was visiting Lisbon because his wife or girlfriend or whoever the girl was with him had some sort of conference she had to attend there. The only places in Europe that he likes are Poland and Croatia. And Andalucia in Spain. Come on, dude, get over yourself. I'm not necessarily a big fan of the cliche European cities that Americans always visit; Paris is just ok, and I'm in no rush to visit Rome or really anywhere in Italy. (I admit, London is pretty damn awesome though.) But there are lots of beautiful cities in western Europe, Lisbon included.

Torre de Belem

Cloisters of the Jeronimos Monastery.

Anyway, after that bizarre conversation, Maddie and I spent the next two days in Sintra. I'm going to write a separate post about Sintra - but rest assured, it was awesome. So after our sad departure from Sintra, we got back to Lisbon and did some walking around Lisbon at night. Finally by this point Maddie was able to stay awake past 9 pm (really, though, she got accustomed to the time difference pretty quickly, especially considering how much sightseeing I made her do on her first few days here). We did a little exploring around the Bairro Alto, or the Upper District, one of the hilliest neighborhoods of Lisbon, had some awesome Portuguese food in a tiny family owned restaurant recommended to us by the people in the hostel in Sintra, and listened to some of the many street musicians that are so common in Portugal (and Spain). I wanted to upload a video of said street performers, but blogger for some reason won't let me, so I'll have to try it in a separate post.

The next day we originally planned to go to Evora, a town known for its Roman ruins, a Roman temple in particular. However, this day was a holiday and apparently many of Portugal's tourist sights close down on holidays. Stupid. So instead of taking a two-hour bus ride both there and back and running the risk of not being able to go inside anything in Evora, we took the train to Cascais, a pretty little beach/fishing town not too far away. Obviously at the beginning of May we weren't exactly looking to go swimming, but we walked around the small town, saw a boatload of boats, and took a long walk along the coast to the Boca do Inferno (Hell's Mouth), which is a deep chasm in the cliffs along the ocean.

Cliffs near Cascais

Boca do Inferno

I'm betting that during tourist season, Cascais is not the place to be (well, unless you're looking for a place overrun by tourists), but at the beginning of May it wasn't too busy, and the scenery was still beautiful. And despite there not being a whole lot to do or see there, it's another nice little getaway from the hustle and bustle of big city life. We ended the day with this great seafood stew that was really like nothing I'd ever had before, mainly because it was thickened (a lot) with breadcrumbs. It was bizarre, but in a good way. Maddie still has an ongoing obsession with said stew - one that I don't see ending any time soon, and rightfully so.

Our last day in Lisbon was a rainy one. Actually it was worse than a rainy day - it was one of those days that goes back and forth between heavy rain and no rain at all. You try to be grateful for the

Igreja do Carmo, or what remains of it after the 1755 earthquake.

no-rain parts of the day, but you can't help but get frustrated by having to take out and open your umbrella, close your umbrella once the rain stops, carry it around because it's too wet to put away, finally put it away because it's finally dry enough, and then BOOM it starts raining again. It's a vicious, watery cycle. Aaaanyway, we tried to spend the day at places inside, but there actually aren't a whole lot of sights that are completely inside. First we went to Igreja do Carmo, which was a church that was turned into an archaeological museum after an earthquake destroyed a lot of it in the 1700s. Sadly, the part of the museum that's inside is small, and the rest is the structure of the church, sans roof. But well worth the visit either way.

View of Lisbon from the fortress/castle.

Next we moved on to the cathedral of Lisbon, which actually wasn't majorly impressive. But it was inside, so that counts for something. Our last sight was the castle on one of Lisbon's biggest hills, overlooking the entire city. Not inside at all, but it had stopped raining by this point in the afternoon. We ended the day with a bit more walking around and enjoying the pretty Portuguese architecture, complete with a nice relaxing break from the hectic sightseeing for yummy Portuguese pastries. I've probably said it before, but Portugal has awesome pastries.

And thus ended our trip to Portugal. Boo. But then it was time to show Maddie what Spain is like, so yay for that! Great trip(s) overall, and I think she had a good time as well.

Portugal

As I said, last weekend we had Thursday and Friday off, so I went with some friends to Lisbon for three days. We stayed in Lisbon for two days and took a day trip to a town called Sintra on the other day. I really loved both cities, although the weather in Lisbon was pretty crummy most of the trip (the sky finally cleared up in the afternoon on our last day). Nevertheless, there were a lot of things

Elevador da Gloria, near our hostel

about Lisbon that I loved, some things that are similar to the cities I've been to in northern Portugal, and some things that are different. I love Portuguese architecture (though I couldn't tell you anything about it) and all of the red-brown colored roofs of the buildings, and I especially love the sidewalks made of stone that form mosaics in many streets and squares. I love the old-fashioned trams that still run in the city, and there are also still a few funiculars, which are basically trams the go a short distance up really steep hills (Lisbon is very hilly). One of these funiculars was actually on the street right next to our hostel, but we never rode it, mostly because we

Pastel de nata

had no need to, but also because it costs like two euros! I'll walk up the hill for free, thank you. Anyway, lastly, there is also still one "elevador" or elevator/lift that serves a similar purpose: it is an outdoor elevator that brings you from the lower part of the city straight up to the top of a hill to a higher neighborhood. Apparently there used to be two elevators like this, but only the Elevador de Santa Justa is still in use today (mainly for tourism, as the other trams are also). Another thing that I love about Portugal is the pastries...there are so many different kinds (unlike Spain) and they're all amazing looking and tasting. A few things I didn't like so much about Lisbon is the weather. The first two day we were there it was very foggy and cloudy. On the last day it rained in the morning and then finally the sun came out in the late afternoon. It could have been worse, but I know I would have liked the city a lot more had we had good weather the whole time. Next, I didn't like how there were Spaniards everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love the Spanish (for the most part), but the whole point of our trip to Portugal was to get away from Spain, Spanish, and Spaniards. I'm pretty sure we heard more Spanish than Portuguese this trip. Another downside to Lisbon is that you can really see the poor state of the economy; in much of central Lisbon there are many, many abandoned buildings, residential and commercial, and the place isn't quite as packed with stores and restaurants as one might expect. (Spain, on the other hand, certainly shows signs of economic problems, but pretty much the entirety of the population thinks nothing of going out for dinner or drinks or shopping all of the time still.)

Sintra, the town we took a day trip to on our second day in Portugal, was amazing. The town is very touristy, but it's just so beautiful and fairy-tale like that you don't mind all the tourists around you. The town is mainly famous for all of its palaces, the Pena Palace above all. There is also the remains of a Moorish castle that is

Pena Palace in Sintra

pretty famous as well. We only had time to visit the Pena Palace (and the surrounding Pena Park) and the Castle of the Moors. Since both are on top of a mountain (which is terrifying to go up in a bus), there are some great views of the center of Sintra and the surrounding Portuguese country side. I loved Sintra, but I realize now that you could easily spend two days there in order to see everything you want to see, so hopefully I'll have a chance to go back in the future. (Actually, I'd like to go back to Lisbon also, because there were some things there we didn't get a chance to see from the inside, such as the Belem Tower and the Jeronimos Monastery, because of weather and time).

All in all, it was a fun trip, but I wish we'd had more time in both Lisbon and Sintra. At least the next time I'll go, I'll know exactly what to do and where to go!