Lisbon Round 2 - The Moorish Castle

At the top of the closest peak to the Pena castle is the Moorish castle, which is more like a fortress than a castle. As you can guess from its name, this one too has a very old history. Actually, I think it is here that they have excavated remains of even earlier settling....if you can call living at the top of a mountain "settling."

This fortress is actually spread across two peaks, all enclosed by walls connecting the two. The first picture shows Phil sitting at the top of the lower of the two peaks. Behind him is the higher part of the fortress, where I climbed and Phil decided to sit it out. Finally I have a picture of the town of Sintra as seen from the fortress. This was quite a climb, but altogether worth it.

This is our last bit of touring in Portugal. Tomorrow we catch the plane to Morocco. And this afternoon I am sitting in a Starbucks, of all places, because I was unable to get my Ipad to connect to the Internet in my hotel. For the price of a Frappucino I am able to do my posts. An expensive Frappucino, mind you...at 4.15 euros, that's close to $6.

Lisbon Round 2 -Castle Day

Today we took the train to Sintra to take a look at two castles in stunning locations, both at the top of very steep, rocky peaks. The first we visited was the Pena Castle, finished in the early 1900's by the Portuguese King by adding on to an old monastery that had been abandoned. one recently archeological digging has shown that there were Moorish remains on the site even earlier, and perhaps even Neolithic artifacts. 

I'll share just a few view to give a feel for it. To get up to it we rode a bus up a narrow, winding road that was an incredible experience in its own right. 

This castle had all kinds of modern conveniences, like toilets and this interesting shower imported frm England.

This monster decorates the bottom of one of the castle windows. a welcoming guy if I ever saw one!

Lisbon Round 2- Maritime Museum 3

Finally, a couple of smaller boats that I could play around in. The first dark green one is a bit of a puzzle to me about why it was created. It looks tremendously awkward! the second one was perhaps my favorite in the museum because both the shape and the paint job on it are so stunning. Take a gander at those oars, though. That would be some row!

Lisbon Round 2 -Maritime Museum 2

There other intriguing part of the Maritime Museum was a section with actual boats, including a couple of the royal barges. Here are two different royal barges, one with all the oars shipped. It took 80 oarsmen to row this one!

Stern of the royal barge shown below.

Lisbon Round 2 - Maritime Museum

Yesterday we returned to Lisbon for our final stint here. We went to the Maritime Museum, first time for me and a repeat visit for Phil. It will be a challenge to pick my favorites, but I'll divide the picture between two posts. There are beautiful models of large sailing and motor driven ships from old ones to newer ones, lag with lovely models of the smaller working boats that were used on the rivers and shores around Portugal.

My pictures didnt load in the order I wanted, so first you will see a psinting of a local sailing boat with more little sails than we have ever seen on a boat, and the last picture is a model of that same boat. Notice the bow. Must have been thrilling but perhaps a little dangerous--definitely a racing rig!

In the middle is a model of an old sailing ship that I liked because of the air funnel they have rigged on it for the tropics. It's the canvas contraption you see sticking up from the deck.

Salema 2c

The final excitement of today's explorations was going to Cape St. Vincent, the westernmost point in southern Portugal and the turning point to enter the Mediterranean. It is still using its 106 year old Fresnel lens, which is huge. The light can be seen for approximately 32 miles. The lighthouse tower is actually open to the public on Wednesday afternoon, so we got to go up in the tower and stand next to the lens. Impressive!

Here are pictures of the lighthouse tower, the lens, and the sea cliffs that the lighthouse sits on (seen through the bars of the tower).

That's it for Salema. Tonight we enjoy our last meal here, which will include a repeat of the dessert we had last night, a tiramisu that was both different from others I've had and the best I've had. YUM! Tomorrow we got back to Lisbon for our final day there before moving on to Morocco on Saturday.

Salema 2b

Our next stop was at the site of the school that Prince Henry (known as Henry the Navigator) founded in the 15th century to teach students about navigation and expand knowledge of the world by a number of voyages that he sponsored, including Vasco da Gama. A later fortress built on the foundations of the original navigation school survives today, along with the Sagres lighthouse. It is quite a lonesome place and dramatically situated several hundred feet above the water. We saw one picture that showed waves actually coming up to the level of the lighthouse! I wouldn't want to be around taking pictures in the kind of weather that would cause that!

Here are pictures of Prince Henry looking out to sea, the lighthouse, and a beach to the west of the point.

Salema 2a

Today we explored the western parts of the peninsula at the southern end of Portugal. We began by finding one of those isolated beaches, this was facing west onto the Atlantic Ocean. There is still a 20 plus wind blowing today, from the north, so this beach was very breezy and the surf substantial. It's a very rocky beach and reminded me of the ocean and rocks just off Pacific Grove, where we spent last Christmas. Here are pictures of the beach as we first saw it from on high, and then a cople pictures from the beach. Please excuse the darkish blob in some of the pictures-I didn't realize I had something on my lens until I downloaded them, and can't edit it out on the iPad. You get the scene anyway.

Salema Day 1c

The final part of our day we went back to sea in a two hour tour on a traditional Portuguese boat. This one is 90 years old, heavy wood construction and lovingly cared for by its crew. We went out of the town of Lagos, putting up our three sails just outside the harbor. We sailed east along the coast a bit, then anchored and were motored in to view a number of grottoes that have been carved out of the sandstone along the shore. A fun afternoon, with quite a strong wind--20 knots or so by the time we returned. We sailors are always happy to get on board a boat.

Here are a couple pictures of the boat and a couple of the sandstone grottoes.

Salema Day 1b

This area also has lots of nice hikes along the cliffs, and people especially like to find secluded beaches which they can have to themselves and sometimes indulge in sunbathing (and bathing) without clothing. At this point it's a little cold for sunbathing, unless you are totally out of the wind, which has been whipping about at above 15 knots for the last couple days. It's also too cold for swimming, because the Atlantic water here stays pretty cool. But people still seek out the beaches and the views from the cliffs. I took a short hike up over the hill to the east of Salema, and discovered that yo u will be doing lots of zig zags into the crevice valleys that separate the hills. Still beautiful. Here are a couple shots of the next beach to the east of us, separated from us at all but the lowest tides by a bunch of rocks. The first picture is interesting rocks at the basee of a cliff. My second picture shows the path that I walked. If you look closely you can see the path winding back and forth down the hill. The last shot shows the next pretty beach to the east of us.

Salema Day 1

This morning we began our day with breakfast in the village and a beach walk to explore our surroundings. After watching the local fishermen's practical and somewhat different way of retrieving their boats from the water, we exlored the sandstone cliffs stretching east and west from the village. There are warnings to stay well clear of them as they may collapse, and lots of evidence that they do just that, the basis of several of my nicest pictures. I'm sharing an overall shot of the beach, a fish boat being hauled out by a tractor, and two shots of fallen rock formations.

The Algarve - 1

We have now successfully negotiated the metro and bus systems in three Portuguese cities, the train system connecting them, and today completed our second long distance bus trip. We are getting the system down! Today's new challenge was to pick up the car I had arranged online to rent through Europcar, and drive it from the largish town of Fado to the small village of Salema on the southern coast of Portugal (an area known as the Algarve). It took 45 minutes to process the paperwork for a reservation that was "expedited for quick processing." Finally we took off in our sky blue Renault 

Twingo. Handles nicely but no guts going up hills on the freeway. Thank goodness for the area map I had downloaded onto my Cities to Go app. The Portugal map the agency gave us had too little detail to be useful, so Phil guided me in using the map app.

This is also the one place I did not have a reservation. I wanted to try staying in one of the many small rooms that people with houses here rent out. Our Rick Steves guide book had a couple listed, but I got no answer to my phone calls. But just as he said, if you stand in the main square, someone will approach you and ask if you want a room. And so it happened. We have ended up in a small room up a narrow, twisting street, with a charming territorial and sea view from our private balcony. Amazingly there is parking for the car and also Internet. All for the bargain price of 100 euros (roughly $135) for 3 nights. We will enjoy it!

Here are pictures of the car, the view from our room, and the street we walk up to get to the room.

Cork Trees

Here in Evora, we are in the middle of cork oak tree country. The megaliths we visited today happen to be in the middle of a cork tree farm, so I finally got to see cork trees up close. These are long lived trees, fortunately, because you first have to wait about 50 years before you harvest any cork in order not to injure the tree. After that you can harvest cork every nine years. You can also harvest only up to where the branches start to spread from the trunk. To keep track of their harvesting, the trunk of the tree is numbered in the year it is harvested, with the last digit of that year. Since they do it every nine years, the single digit works for them to track the harvest year--how convenient of the tree to cooperate in that way!

The first harvest produces the worst quality cork because the virgin bark is the roughest. After that it grows back smoother and subsequent harvests can be used to make finer quality cork. With the advent of plastic corks, the income from these trees was reduced, so they are developing new processing methods in order to use cork for new applications, many of which will likely surprise you as it has us.

I have a picture of a fairly recently harvested cork tree (the "1" tells us it was harvested in 2011), a closeup of the trunk and bark, a view of a field of cork trees (not very distinguished looking--a bit scrappy). Finally I have a picture of a shop in Evora that shows some of the new products being produced from cork, many that you would never imagine. The hats and caps to the right of that picture, the postcards on the stand to the left, the purses hanging up and the wine bottles in the basket at the bottom left are all made of cork! I sent my first cork postcard to my dad yesterday.

Zambujeiro Dolmen pictures

Here are pictures of the tall stones that formed the sides of the burial chamber, the low entry passage to the chamber, and the burial chamber itself. One part of the damage done by the first explorer was that he chose to dynamite the cover of the chamber to get inside. As a result the rocks are now exposed to erosion and vandals. Subsequently a roof was put over the site to protect it, but it is too narrow and is channeling water into the site, which is further eroding it.

Neolithic Megaliths--2000 years older than Stonehenge

This morning we were taken on a tour by a young Portuguese archeologist working hard to let both tourists and politicians know the value of three megalithic monuments near Evora. Very personable and passionate about these ancient works, Mario is exercising his entrepreneurial skills to build a tourist related business in the difficult Portuguese economy, and trying to help government officials see the economic value in preserving them.

Our first two visits were to megaliths from a related site--the Almendres, which is about 7000 years old (2000 years polder than Stonehenge) from the beginning of the Neolithic period when humans were first beginning to live in stationary sites and form communities. The site has lost some of its stones, but originally contained several hundred stones symmetrically arranged around an axis facing due east. It is speculated that the individual stones represented clans or families that occupied the area. There are symbols carved out on some of the stones (difficult to make out in the midday sun when we were there), and cupped indentations on at least one stone, function not known (but the Maori in New Zealand make similar cup indentations in stones and place umbilical cords in them after birth). The second site contains a single tall oval stone, placed in a position that before the trees that now cover the land were there, would have allowed you to line it up with the rising sun on the summer solstice.

The last site was a large funereal Dolmen (mound covering a grave site) called Zambujeiro that comes from the end of the Neolithic period, about 5000 years ago. This last site was badly damaged by its first explorer in the 60's (a professor with no archeological training and a mission to obtain evidence to support fascist racist ideas) and may be close to collapse. Thirty skeletons have been recovered, all belonging to the same clan, over at least six generations. The most important member of the clan was buried in the center and when the next generation died, the old skeleton was moved to the side of the crypt to make room in the center for the latest.

The big issue for these and the many other sites in the area is that they are on privately owned land (the Dolmen is on university land), not owned or protected by the government. The government does not recognize the value of preserving this heritage. The roads leading to them are badly rutted dirt roads. Vandalism and people camping out or holding parties at the sites are a problem. A real shame, and a fascinating morning.

I include a photo of the Almendres site looking up the hill, one of a stone with cups carved in the top, and a third one of the tall solstice marker. In my next post I will include pictures from the funerary site.

Evora - 3 - Roman Past

Evora's Roman past keeps surfacing when repairs are done underneath current buildings, and sometimes it is quite visible even now. At the center of town on top of the hill, right next to the cathedral (which itself was built on top of a mosque from the Moorish occupation and that in turn built on top of a Christian Visigoth church) are the remains of a Roman temple. Locally it is called the Temple of Diana but it is now believed likely to have been dedicated to a Roman emperor. It certainly makes a dramatic statement.

In the Evora museum are a few artifacts uncovered in this area from Roman times. I include a picture of an expressive hand from a statue, and most incredibly, a delicate glass bowl that somehow survived almost 2000 years!