PORTUGAL stole my heart!

View of Lisbon from the deck of the MV Explorer - before the ship was cleared through Customs and Immigration.
This prime location was NOT a working container port, like so many we have been in. 

From the first early-morning sight of rainy Lisbon to the last hour of strolling before “On Ship Time”  Lisbon and Cascais PORTUGAL stole my heart!

Sighting the MV Explorer from a city overlook. 

Deteriorating and shabby, elegant, faded and crumbling, beautiful, and complex – Lisbon is a city of a bygone era, like a beautiful old vintage gown. 

Architectural surfaces are ornamented with tiles, molding, colors, and patterns. Brilliant decorative tiles cover  (and fall off of) entire buildings in the city center. 

A small cut stone is used everywhere to pave sidewalks, courtyards, stairs, and roadways.  On the ‘regular’ walkways it is done in solid colors and in the shopping plazas and courtyards there are large dark-and-light patterns of stone. 

On walls along the stairs, on retaining walls, on columns in public parks, graffiti is everywhere – the most visually attractive graffiti I have ever seen.

The streets, stairs, and walkways of Lisbon wind and twist up the hills from the harbor where Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama set sail. The large bay of the Tagus River afforded a grand natural port for traders and explorers of this sea-faring imperial power.

Monument plaza on the bay side with the shopping district on the hill side of this arch. 

OMG perhaps I have enjoyed too much of the Portuguese cream pastries...!

From various overlooks and the entire grounds of St. George’s Castle at the top of the hills there are views of the choppy green-blue water of the bay and the clusters of buildings and homes on the surrounding hillsides.

                                                                                 

Pena National Park

Thick mist and gentle rains make Royal Palace in Pena National Park magical and mystical.  The Palace, which stands atop the mountains above Sintra town, was the summer residence of the Portuguese royal family. It  was reconstructed after the  great Lisbon earthquake in 1755 brought down the monastery and sanctuary that had been there since 1493.

This is a “cozy castle” with many small rooms, heavily ornate decorations and  heavy wooden furniture from India.  It’s easy to imagine spending summers at this retreat.

Cascais

I fell in love with Cascais, an ocean-side city about ½ hour west of Lisbon.  I immediately began scheming about renting a place there for a month next year and inviting everyone to come visit for a while….  During the summer months it must surely be a beach “madhouse” but check out the photos of September…..

Julie Nanavati at a rooftop cafe in Cascais.