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 3rd 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.
Wow, these are stunning!
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