This was my favourite beach of the trip, I came here three times. It's about a forty minute train ride from our hotel and it's about a two minute walk from the train station to this:
This was my first day in Portugal and I made the mistake of not sunblocking my ankles so I got a pretty bad burn that ends right at the cuff of my pants. I looked pretty silly after that and it hurt a lot too!
This is the Oriente train station, a major transit hub and just a couple of minutes walk from our hotel:
Our hotel was also close to a waterfront area full of parks and fountains built in 1998 when Lisbon hosted the Worlds Fair.
On one of the days when Jess had time to spend with me, we decided to take the train to Cascais and then rent bikes and ride up the coast to Guincho beach, a remote sandy beach popular with surfers.
This is a castle at the beginning of our route. It's a museum now but it's actually not as old as it looks - apparently it was built in the early 1900s by a tobacco millionaire.
This was a stop along the way: Boca do Inferno.
This beach is close to our final destination - you can actually see Guincho beach in the distance. You can also see Sintra, a beautiful little town on top of a mountain that we visited last time we came to Portugal - it's in the dark green forested area at the back, up in the clouds. We had actually considered spending the day in Sintra instead but because of the fog and low hanging clouds obscuring the view, we decided on this instead.
Here we have Guincho Beach at last (10 fairly hilly kilometres to get here on uncomfortable rental bikes).
One of Jess's fellow conference speakers is an avid photographer and she invited Jess to get up early one morning and join her in photographing one of Lisbon's bridges. He got some pretty good shots!
On one of my solo days, I decided to visit the Sao Jorge Castle which is on a hill in central Lisbon. I thought I would spend a couple of hours here and then head back to my favourite beach (Estoril) but I ended up loving it so much that I spent most of the day here. It's been rebuilt a bunch of times but was originally a Moorish castle built on the remains of a pre-Roman settlement. There's a museum on site with all kinds of archaeological finds on display. It was a long climb up hills to get there but well worth it. Look at the views from the battlements!
I ended up spending at least an hour on that little corner seat in this quite alcove. I pulled out my knitting and a snack and just sat and enjoyed the space, it was serene and lovely.
I ate lunch on the patio of the museum restaurant and enjoyed watching all the peacocks wandering around (and occasionally helping themselves to tourists' food).
On our last full day in Portugal, we went on a city tour led by the conference organizer for all of the speakers.
In some ways it reminds me of San Francisco with all the hills and cable cars. Also, one of the city's bridges was built by the same designers who built the Golden Gate bridge. It's basically a twin bridge to San Francisco's.
This is a view of Sao Jorge Castle, the one I spent the day at earlier in the week.
This is the rooftop garden of a restaurant we stopped at for lunch.
Jess brought along the paintings we'd painted last fall in San Francisco of the Golden Gate Bridge so we could pose with the twin bridge here in Lisbon!
This is the Jeronimos Monastery - it's been standing here since 1601, even surviving Lisbon's massive earthquake in 1755.
The monastery was built with wealth from naval explorers and the spice trade right beside the harbour the ships left form. Kings were buried here, as was Vasco da Gama. Sailors would come and pray here for a safe voyage. If you look up at the ceiling here, there are medallions taken from Portuguese caravels.
When you're in this part of Lisbon (known as Belem), you have to have a pasteis de belem, a custard pastry. There's a restaurant that has the secret recipe that makes thousands of them every day, apparently by hand and following a centuries old recipe.
Not only does Lisbon have the same bridge as San Francisco but they have a giant statue of Jesus overlooking the city, just like Rio de Janeiro.
We went on a river cruise as part of the city tour and saw many of the city's monuments from the water, as well as it's busy port area.
When we arrived home, we brought gifts for the kids and one of the things we brought was a tin of octopus. We thought Connor and Hudson might have fun sampling it!
They both were willing to try but I wouldn't say they were big fans.
