Sintra

Traveling in the quieter times of the year really has its perks.  Mainly, solitude.

Flying in and out of Lisbon was a good place to jump off to Sintra, the mountainous seaside region on Lisbon's doorstep.  Centuries of royalties made their summer homes here in the cooler high elevation, and it's a place filled with drama and regal beauty.

We rented a car in Lisbon, shoved off down the coastal road, stopping any time we found a particularly beautiful stretch of coastline.

And what dramatic coastline it was!  The waves are just thrashing constantly- this is the Westernmost point in continental Europe and the seas are fierce, chipping away at the rock cliffs with every thunderous crash.  Even on the one day where it was warm enough to consider a swim, it just wasn't a swimming kind of place.    

We decided to give hiking a try.  The trails are a mess- zig zagging and dead-ending with nary a carin or signpost to be found.  Map-reading and good judgement was essential.  I don't think I could have done it alone.

Hiking down to Praja Ursa and having the beach to yourself...it's kind of magic.  It was incredibly steep, and the trail on the far end of the beach had apparently been washed out by a storm, so we were left running from the tide to scramble back up the same cliffside we had just bravely hopped down.  Worth it?  Oh yes.

While the food scene was just awful and had me skipping meals, we found a local family-run place where the lady of the house did some fantastic dishes, but only if you begged them her to hold the chips and perhaps find a few veggies in the back of the fridge.  They were generous and gregarious and pragmatic and just made the trip more fun.

The skies were dramatic and ever-changing as the first of the winter storms blew in, and surfers flocked to the beaches to try their hand at massive waves.  

Meanwhile, I felt the burn by climbing a very steep staircase up a cliff-side to get a peep at some fossilized footprints of dinosaurs.  

With much rain in the forecast, we abandoned our boots and headed to the town of Sintra: a lovely mountainside village filled with palaces and storied mansions, filled with touches more Arabic than European.

Even in the cold, miserable wet, Sintra was cheerful and charming, especially if you can find a friendly cafe to settle in for a very long lunch to dry off.  

palacio-nacional

Pena Palace

Climbing up into the tall trees around Pena Palace and the sprawling park surrounding the mountaintop, the smell of eucalyptus heavy in the damp air.  Sintra was a nice contrast of nature and sumptuous luxury for the privileged few, with a cultivated exotic rainforest of exotic plants and lovely Lusitano horses prancing around.

The precariously perched Moorish fortress overlooks the town, with its romantic past obscured by the heavy mountain mists.  At times, it looked like the Great Wall, with a dragon spine pushing up to the sky and slithering here and there on the hillside.

To see how the other half lived, head to the Capuchos Convent, where the only luxury allowed to the monks was an insulation of cork to control some humidity.

The slightly sprawling, mysterious, moss-covered convent seemed organically part of the hillside, carved from stone and connected by caves, with lovely twisted old cork trees scattered around, and the tall treetops dancing maniacally in the wind coming off the ocean damp.

Squeezing and ducking through the tiny doorways into bedroom cells that made my first Manhattan studio apartment seem spacious.  You don't have to be a contortionists to live here, but it does help.

Although, I was amused to see they had some nice Bay Ridge style lighting effects to jazz up the 16th century drab hallways.

It's a place of ghosts.  The mist rolls in and you are surrounded by them.

Lisbon

Ah, jeeze, where has the time gone?

It seems like 5 minutes ago, I was on a plane, but if you've ever flown Ryanair, you know the feeling.  It seeps into your pores and takes hours of scrubbing to get out.  The return flight on EasyJet (SleazyJet, QuesyJet) seemed downright luxurious in comparison.

While the cut-rate air travel is a bit more expensive in the UK then it was in Paris, it's still fairly easy to do.  You know?  The one place I hadn't hit in Western Europe so far has been Portugal, so away we go....

Portugal is still kind of an enigma to me.  It's one of the cheapest places in Europe to travel around, so it gets bonus points right there.  The Moorish invasion left its mark: old-town cities are crammed around hillside forts, with steep, winding, stair-cased street, reminding me more of the Souks of Marrakesh rather than the plazas and piazzas of Spain and Italy.  

Still, it felt very European.

The street art was just fantastic.  I love places that encourage the practice of letting local artist splash a bit of color on the blank spaces.  

Lisbon was beautiful and old, with steep streets winding up and down hillsides, and a valley of plazas with fountains and statues that spit you out to the Sea.  

The weather was a real mixed bag- the day after we left, there were violent downpours that resulted in cars floating away down the main thoroughfare.  It was warmer than Angle-land, slightly longer in daylight hours, and, in late November, quite a bit greener as well.

Accommodation was fantastically cheap- for the price we paid to stay in a run-down pub, we had a huge apartment with designer touches and a courtyard, right in Barrio Alto, the ancient hilltop village, now filled with fun kitsch shops and hip bars with Fado music spilling out onto the pavement.   With a steep climb and a vintage tram to keep you company on the climb up, I fell in love with the city.



I found Portuguese incomprehensible, but Lisbonites were happy to accommodate and help with just a smile and an "Obrigato!"  Oh, and hard drugs are tolerated here, and a couple times enormous handfuls of hash got flashed before me, with weather-worn men smiling and looking for customers anywhere tourist were gathered.

The food was fairly dismal: uninspired and uninspiring, heavy with oil and fried and breadcrumb-crusted.  Despite so much fresh seafood, no one seemed to be doing too much with it.  Yet, there was wine!  More than just Port, they had lovely reds and fresh whites, and a hearty cherry brandy called Ginja.  Thankfully, I found my food salvation:

The Ribeira Market, right on the waterfront.  What was a failing ancient fruit and vege market was bought by TimeOut editors, spruced up and installed with 300 seats, and then populated with some of the best chefs in Portugal.

Seriously.  I went back 3 times in a frantic attempt to try one dish from each booth, plus grabbed a sandwich for the flight home.  Henrique Sa Pessoa, I salute you.  Everything I had there was fantastic.    I couldn't get enough- truffled egg and asparagus, steak sandwiches, perfectly lovely sardines.

The idea of it was just astounding- all the cutlery and plates are the same, so everything gets bused centrally, and the quality of the food made me consider learning Portugese and finding a nice flat close by.  This was a huge hit- even though it only opened in May, you could tell that it was what the neighborhood needed, and trendy groups of Lisbonites seemed permanently fixed to the chairs.  Pizza, sushi, pastry, gelato, tins of sardines, and loads of authentic local cuisine, all very reasonably priced.

In the center of the market, there were bars serving cocktails and wine and beer and Ginja, which we sampled every kind they had.  Warmed and ready to face the weather, we were.

A wearisome and wet walk up to Castelo Sao Jorge, the Moorish fortress that overlooks the city, helped whet the appetite for the next visit to Ribeira.

Sadly, the steep admission to the Castelo wasn't worth it- it was a shell of a fort with very little to actually see or do aside from skirt the castle walls and get the rapidly-disappearing view of the city.

I did make it out to the sublime Tile Museum, but mostly, just walking around was a real treat.  

It's a city oblivious to its charm, with so many nooks and crannies filled with surprises and vistas, and a slightly run-down air gave it a shabby but comfortable feel, with lots of unique shops and bars popping up where the chains usually end up, and locals crowded around a wine barrel to drink and gossip.

It was a truly enjoyable three days:  while it may not have the world-class museums or attractions or swagger of other cities, it seemed lived-in and loved, although maybe not always the good kind of love.

Shoe leather thinner, memory card full.  That sums up my time in Lisbon.