Day 8, Monday, Happy to you, smash, goodbye! 9-23-13

Today we tried to take it easy. We walked around Sintra town and looked at gift shops. Daniel loves balls so much, and whenever he sees someone playing with one, even if it's 500 feet away, he wants to run to it. So we bought him a little soccer ball. The problem is that it's not pumped up, but he loves it anyway. He carried it for most of the walk through Sintra, and he throws it around the apartment.

We came back to the apartment after lunch and took naps. Then we drove to Adraga beach, which is about 20 minutes away. It is a nice, medium sized beach with cliffs surrounding it. The waves were very large and the air was chilly enough that Emily put on her sweater. But Daniel ran around in his diaper. We wanted to give him time where he was in charge, since we're always dragging him around and telling him he can't run into traffic or play with that leaf because we need to go... So I played the games he wanted to play, and it made him very happy. His favorite game was when I would make a little sand tower with a cup, and then he would say “Happy to you!”, which is his version of the happy birthday song which he sang because he thought the tower looked like a birthday cake, and then he would say “smash!” and smash the tower, and then “goodbye!”. Everyone once in a while, he would lick it. We played this game at least 800 times. He was brave enough to run out into the shallow water if I was with him, but it was a little cold.

We went back to the same restaurant we went to 2 nights ago for dinner. It was really good again. The cook is a skinny old lady with no front teeth, and she speaks decent English. Her granddaughter (I'm guessing) is the only waitress/other employee. The cook lady insisted we order through her granddaughter, even though we'd spent the last 10 minutes talking with her about what she was going to cook us. And her granddaughter didn't speak English. Once again everyone in there was local, and Daniel befriended them all. I got a traditional Portuguese octopus stew, and it was delicious. Usually octopus is a little chewy, but this was nice and tender. 

 Daniel's favorite breakfast tradition. Eating our coffee foam with a spoon.

 Staring over the edge at the horses.

 The view from Sintra to the ocean.

Octupus stew

 This is how we get Daniel to control himself at restaurants.

Day 7 Sunday, Lisbon

Daniel is working on a poop tonight just before we put him to bed. It's been 2 days. We keep offering him things like “do you want to sit on the potty?” or “do you want to read a book while you poop?” and he keeps saying “no, no, no...” and sometimes he says “owie”. Then he got smart and combined them and said “nowie nowie nowie....” But the poop came out and I think he'll feel a lot better in the morning.

We took the train to Lisbon today. It was really cheap (2.65 euros), really fast (40 mins), it was direct, and it took us to the center of all the action in Lisbon. On the way we met a nice German man who we talked to for most of the train trip. We did a lot of walking around Lisbon. We walked to a big plaza against the river and for lunch had cheese stuffed mushrooms, banana and bacon pizza, and gelato for dessert. You're asking why we had Italian food in Portugal... well, Emily was tired and over-hot, so we picked something nearby. It was good and one of the waitresses fell in love with Daniel and they bonded. Then we walked up to the top of a big hill in the center of Lisbon and walked around a huge castle. Its floors and ceilings are gone, but they've developed it with gift shops, cobblestone sidewalks, bathrooms etc. So it's ruined, but not rustic. The castle is really fun because you can walk all along the tops of the walls and go up the towers. We've learned that Daniel does not have a fear of heights. The views of Lisbon were really great.

We walked down, hung out in a plaza for a little bit letting Daniel run around with his bee. He attracted quite a crowd of admiring children, and he enjoyed leading them around and having them copy what he did. We had food, finally some bacalhau com natas (cod with cream). It was pretty good.

We took the train back to Sintra, and now we're going to bed. On the train Daniel was so tired, but really happy and silly. He was meeting all of the people on the train. He can say “Olá!” and “ciao!”. Then he always lifts up his foot, points to it, and says “shoes!” (sounds like “choose!”). One guy gave him a big piece of cake. Another guy tried speaking to us in Dutch. 

 The train ride to Lisbon.

 The German guy we met took this photo for us.

 Entertaining Daniel while they cooked our bacon banana pizza.

 Or was he entertaining us?

 We thought he looked like his picture should be on a cheese wheel.

 Lisbon from the Castle.

 Castle wall staples.

 Me holding up the castle.

Daniel yelled "hola!" down each of these arrow-shooting-holes

Just woke up from a stroller nap.

 Everywhere we go, Daniel finds rocks to through. Castles have good rocks.

Daniel and his bee. We pull this out when we want to tire him out.

Day 6, Saturday, Three lanes of cars on a one way street.

Today we saw our area in the daylight. Its very nice. There are cafes everywhere. Above us are two big hills/mountains, one with the old Moorish castle (ruined) and the other with the Pena Palace. Below us is a view of small towns, forests, and then the ocean.

This morning we went for breakfast at the cafe under our apartment. The pastries were definitely higher quality than in northern Portugal. I didn't think the pastries in northern Portugal were low quality, but I might have if I had tasted these first. It must be the competition, because walking 2 blocks down the street we live on, you'll pass 4-5 cafes. We went for a walk towards the train station because Emily remembered there was a good view from there (which there was), but on the way we found a pedestrian street with a bunch of vendors selling things. In some ways it was kind of like a bunch of mini garage sales, because it was old junk. But Portuguese junk is fascinating to look at. You would see old plastic toys next to ancient skeleton keys next to wind-up watches next to an old brass telescope.

We bought Daniel a metal VW bug which was pretty beat up but still intact. He loved it, driving it around the cobblestone street and showing everyone who walked by. Of course there was the inevitable fit when we took it away after he tried to drive it off the railing over a 200 ft cliff after a few warnings. What saved us from the fit was watching a train leave the train station.

We drove to Quinta da Regaleira, which is on the far side of Sintra. We could have walked, it's less than 3 kilometers, but we wanted Emily's feet to last the day. Looking for parking, we took a side street which should have been designated one way. After encountering a couple of cars, we wondered if we were going the wrong way on a one-way street, except we knew we'd seen signs facing our direction giving our direction legitimacy. And there were signs facing the other way. When we encountered a car, we backed up (or they did) until we found a slightly bigger-than-normal bulge in the road, pulled our mirrors in, and careful inched past each other. To make matters worse, people who wanted to visit Quinta da Regaleira were also parking on this road (but I shouldn't judge, because I ended up doing it too). We found a nice bulge and parked in it. Emily had to crawl out the driver's door because the car was pressed 1 inch away from a rock wall. What's funny is that this is not the first ridiculously narrow road I've driven down in Portugal. There have been quite a few. And all I can say is that people in Portugal have to be less averse to paint scratches on their cars than people in the USA.

Quinta da Regaleira is a mansion, a chapel, and some other buildings, and then a huge garden of odd, mysterious things. Imagine lots of big trees, moss and lichen everywhere, and random paths and tunnels leading off to unknown places. The whole estate is on a steep hill, and you start at the bottom. As you go up, everything gets more rustic, organic, natural, etc. So at the bottom are beautifully, intricately carved marble buildings and statues, and towards the top there are lots of “natural” stone arches (they look natural, but they are man-made), caves with ponds, and the paths are smaller and more winding.

I could describe a lot of cool surprises we found, but my favorite was the inverted tower or also called the initiation well. It's a deep hole with a spiral stair case around the perimeter of the hole. The stairs are enclosed by arches, so it looks like the Tower of Pisa except inside out and upside down. At the bottom of the “well” is a tile mosaic of a compass. That's neat enough, but from the bottom of the well there are walking tunnels which lead to various parts of the estate. One comes out at another well (the “unfinished well”, which is actually finished, but made to look unfinished), another comes out behind a pond with a waterfall, another comes out inside a beautiful building set in the side of the hill, and I can't remember where the fourth tunnel comes out.

I was carrying Daniel with a baby carrier backpack thing, and he was asleep the whole time until we got out of an underground labyrinth. We were about to leave, but he was having so much fun we let him lead us into the mansion, which we were going to skip because how could it top the monastery at Alcobaça? Well let me tell you, it was amazing in there. Huge detailed mosaics on the floor, fireplaces with such fine carvings that you could stare at them for hours, and a library room with mirrors that made it feel like you were standing on a floor elevated very high in the air (we didn't realize it was an illusion until we were about to leave the room).

We drove home, got lost in the one-way streets. Emily was super tired, and so was Daniel so I went off wandering the streets looking for food. I found a place off the main street which was filled with locals, and ordered two items which were shots in the dark since I didn't know what the Portuguese words meant and the guy I was talking to didn't know how to describe them. Luckily, Emily loved what she got (some kind of thin steak with a delicious sauce of pickled cauliflower, carrots... I don't know, it sounds strange, and it was, but it was really good) and french fries. Mine was another form of bacalhau (cod), completely different from the last bacalhau I got, and I enjoyed it. Daniel was really tired tonight, but he was so good and happy.

Oh, and we asked Ligia where to find a laundromat, but she offered to let us use her washing machine. So nice. Daniel likes her too. He showed her his stash of leaves he had in his backpack (“ba ba”).

Tomorrow... I think we're taking the train to Lisbon. 

 

Quinta da Regaleira

Quinta da Regaleira

This is the "unfinished well".

A cork tree.

Inside inverted tower, initiation well.

 At the exit of one of the tunnels form the inverted tower.

 Crying because he dropped the flashlight and it wouldn't turn on anymore.

He must miss Sam.

"raaaawr!" -Daniel

 Inside the Quinta da Regaleira mansion

The floating library floor illusion room.

On the roof of the mansion.

Daniel enjoying the grass. Or being stubborn and disobedient. With a photo, you can never be sure.

Day 5 Beep beep.

Daniel loves to say “Bye!” to everyone, and he's taking to the new Portuguese “Ciao” very quickly. People here love it. We're in Sintra now.

We left the cabin in Ponte de Lima without saying goodbye to Maria. I felt bad about that, but we didn't know exactly where she lived, I lost her phone number, and there was nothing for it. I left a note though.

We stopped at the Monastery of Alcobaça on the way to Sintra. It was built after the Moors were driven from Portugal around 1100 AD became an extremely wealthy and powerful monastery. Some of the features inside are very famous in photos, even if you don't know where the photos were taken. That was the case for me at least. The monastery is massive, and full of beautiful cream colored arches everywhere. It reminded me of the architecture of Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings movies. There was a beautiful cathedral, two courtyards, some more chapels, a dormitory, and a kitchen. The kitchen was very clever. The stove was huge... you could cook too Jeeps in it. And several auxiliary stove-fire pits all were ducted into the same chimney system. There was a series of sinks with a common mini-canal built into the wall to supply them with fresh water, and a was flowing into a pool in the far side of the kitchen were they could keep fresh fish. There were rooms lined with huge statues of long-forgotten (by most people at least) important people, some very ornate coffins (beautiful, not gaudy), and the dormitories were also much more beautiful than their name would imply. You could find a little doorway leading to a spiral staircase, think it goes nowhere, and then find an entirely new section of the monastery to explore.

Daniel pooped twice today!! And thusly, he was much happier. I have some nice photos of him pushing next to a beautiful fountain. The problem in the monastery was the echos, because Daniel just wanted to shout and hear his voice echo.

We stayed at the monastery a lot longer than I predicted and then drove the rest of the way to Sintra, arriving at about 8:30. It took us a while to find the place, mostly because the GPS coordinates were off. If we would have just used the address like normal people, we would have found it quickly. There is no parking nearby, so I double parked some people and hauled up all of our stuff to the 3^rd floor. Then I drove off to find parking, got lost, and then parked in a parking lot hidden in 3 degrees of back alley (the back alley of a back alley of a back alley). There was a staircase that lead me to right around the corner from where our room is. I hope I can find the car in the morning.

Our place is a small apartment on the third floor right of a building a couple of blocks from the center of Sintra. It's in the attic, so the ceiling comes down on the sides. It's very nice, and it's bigger than our last place. Ligia is our host. She lives in an apartment under us, and it is nice of her to provide us with wifi so can post these blogs. She gave us a huge pile of pamphlets for things to do, and we're still debating what to do tomorrow. Not something big... maybe Quinta da Regaleira. There is a cafe next to our building which makes really good toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, and it's really nice inside. They gave Daniel a kids book to read after he was getting bored reading Vogue. 

 

 The grapes as we left them at our cabin in Ponte de Lima.

At the front of the monastery in Alcobaca.

 Inside the church at the monastery.

 He looked small in the cathedral, but if you asked him, he was BIG.

 The casket of a famous queen.

 In the royal coffin room.

 This is average for the monastery.

 The less-kept courtyard of the two courtyards.

 The kitchen's huge cooking area. That's a chimney above me.

 The sinks. Behind those lion heads is a little canal built into the wall to supply water to the row of 5 sinks like this.

 The pond, fed from a stream, for keeping live fish.

 Daniel holding a piece of the monastery.

 2nd poop of the day, yeah!!