Day 12 & 13 - Jun 12-13, 2018 Lisbon, Portugal

After visiting Intermache, our favorite supermarket by now, for coffee and croissant as well as a freshly baked custard tart, we headed back to Lisbon to return our car and stay for two more nights before heading home to attend Eric's convocation.  The car rental in Portugal is really affordable.  Even the highway tolls were less than what we have expected.

We checked in to Lisbon's Radisson Blu Hotel and found out we've been upgraded to a suite.  Not as big as the presidential suite in India but still pretty big for European standard.  Breakfast was also included and it was fantastic.  Huge layout of foods!

We didn't enjoy Lisbon this time as much as a few days ago.  It happened these two days coincided with Portugese National holidays so we missed the chance to take the tram to Alfama.  There was an important wedding so most of the main roads in the whole neighborhood of Alfama were blocked off.  We walked up the hill instead and explored the area on foot.  We could see lots of preparation were done for later festivities at night.

We planned to visit the famous Belem area the next day but found out the whole train network was on a two days strike!  The line up for the tram was absurdly long so we gave up on the idea and strolled along the waterfront instead.

I'm quite disappointed in Lisbon's public transit.  Although you can theoretically use one ticket to traverse multiple systems like metro, bus, tram, etc., in reality, the bus/tram frequencies are so low that your transfer ticket would expire before you can get on your connections!  Plus the low frequency of bus/tram means long lines of tourists.  It's not a tourist friendly public transport system at all.  It basically forces tourists to use private tour services like the hop on/off, or the yellow/red/whatever color bus or tram tour companies plowing the streets frequently.

Alfama streets

View of Lisbon from Alfama

Arco da Rua Augusta and Praca do Comercio

Lisbon riverfront with Ponte 25 de Abril in the backgtound

Day 11 - Jun 11, 2018 Alcobaca, Batalha, Fatima, & Tomar, Portugal

We had a leisurely breakfast in the monastery this morning before heading south to visit several very important monuments along the way.  First stop is Alcobaca which Mosteiro de Alcobaca is one of earliest gothic medieval churches in Portugal.  There is a Romeo & Juliet love story involved with this monastery:  Crown prince Pedro I loved his mistress, Ines de Castro, but she was ordered killed by his father, King Afonso IV.  After he became king, King Pedro I built two magnificent tombs, one for his beloved mistress and one for him and both are lying side by side inside the church!

Next stop is nearby Batalha and its magnificent and jar-dropping Mosteiro da Batalha, literally the Monastery of the Battle.  In 1385, King John I built this church to fulfill his promise and commemorate the victory over the Castilians (Spanish) in the Battle of Aljubarrota which ensure Portugal's independence from Spain.  It's therefore one of the most important sites for Portugese independence.  The scale of this building is even grander than the pictures we saw in books!  It's huge and more beautiful and we saw surprisingly few tourists here (or Alcobaca).

We were on our way to our final stop, Tomar, when we decided to detour to nearby Fatima.  We wanted to see why many Fatima is featured on many tour groups' itinerary.  The answer came quickly.  Fatima is where the mega church, Santuário de Fátima, is located.  It's fame came from the sightings (apparitions) of Virgin Mary on 1916 by three children on three occasions.  Since then, pilgrims have come from all over the world to worship here.  The whole mega church is well organized with multiple parking lots, gigantic square (reminded us of St. Peter's Square), and filled with burning incense which you can buy by weight and size!  Lots of people were walking on their knees for penance around the square.  I was actually quite saddened by this as so many people's faith are misplaced on human rather than on Jesus.  The image of Mary dominates the whole place.  On the way in, we also saw organized shops for tourist buses and it may explain why Fatima is on many tour groups' circuits but not the other towns with better attractions.

Our last stop is Tomar, a very picturesque town by the river Nabao.  It's star attraction is Convento de Cristo, a huge castle with a monastery inside.  We walked along the old castle wall and enjoyed the fantastic views of the town below.  The place was again almost deserted.  The old town is very pretty, especially the town square with the tiled floor and its scenic church.  We finished our day with a fancy dinner on the second floor with a window seat overlooking the street below!

Day 10 - Jun 10, 2018 Duoro Valley & Braga, Portugal

After a leisurely morning with a home cooked (by me) breakfast, we said goodbye to Porto and drove east into the Duoro river valley to see how scenic is the region.  People organize all sorts of river cruise to this region as wine tours.  The weather started to break as the day progressed.  There were numerous small towns dotting the small highways along both banks of the river but it wasn't as scenic as I expected.

We continued to drive north passing through Guimaraes when we saw the impressive medieval Castelo de Guimaraes which is built in the 10th century to defend against the Moors.

We reached our most northern point in Portugal at Braga in the afternoon and visited the UNESCO listed pilgrims church Bom Jesus do Monte.  We didn't know how big and grand the site layout was until we started walking.  We could have parked the car at the foot of the hill and walked up to the church along the beautifully laid out stairs (116m high).  There are even two nice hotels on top of the hills for pilgrims (?) or tourists.  The ground was clean and kept spotless.  This present church was rebuilt in 1800s and the funicular onsite was the first one built in the whole Iberian Peninsula! 

We then checked in to our most unique accommodation of the trip: a stay in the monastery Mosteiro de São Martinho de Tibães.  In the middle of this well known monastery, they renovated it to include about 10 guestrooms which are very modernly designed and decorated.  I felt we had the whole quiet monastery all to ourselves.  As a bonus, we got free admission and audioguides to the monastery.  There were not too many tourists around so we had a leisurely walk.  As it's no longer an active monastery, we could walk about the sanctuary freely and even sit on the choir chairs!  Just near the end of our tour, a big tour bus showed up and hordes of tourists rushed in, one hour before closing!  Such is life for organized tours!  So glad we decided to go it alone.

Day 9 - Jun 9, 2018 Porto, Portugal

We started our northern loop of Portugal today and drove to Porto which is 3 hours away.  Unfortunately, we hit the worst weather of the trip today and it rained almost continuously!  Thankfully, the rain stopped during the first few hours after we got there giving us the chance to take some beautiful pictures of this famous city.  Although Porto is the second biggest city in Portugal after Lisbon, we like it better than Lisbon for its more down to earth feel.  Although there are TONS of tourists around, there are less touts here to hassle you.  Many small grocery stores with lots of produce and fruits have very reasonable prices.  Being Porto, there are MANY liquor stores here selling port and other local wines.  This is the epicenter of Portugal's wine industry.  The valleys around Rio Duoro, which flows through Porto, is the most famous wine region in Portugal, and Porto is where the port wine got its name from.

We shot the most famous pictures of Porto from the opposite side of the river facing the old town.  The buildings are so colorful and pretty with the brown terra cotta roof framing the front.  It's so funny that our son Eric has been using a picture of Porto as his screensaver background all this time without knowing its origin.  When he saw the pictures we sent him, he said these look very familiar!  After we checked, it turned out that we took our pictures at the same spot as his screensaver, without the seagull!  What a coincidence!

Even though the weather continued to be miserable for the rest of the afternoon, we still enjoyed wandering around the old town and riverfront.  One of the fun things we did is to walk across the river on the old steel bridge where their Metro trains run across.  The view is superb.  However, we noticed something that we witnessed throughout our whole trip: lots of old dilapidated buildings that seem abandoned, even in Lisbon.  With the real estate prices high (I assume), why would people not buy them to refurbish them at a profit?  And revitalize the areas in the process?

The restaurant recommended by our hosts turned out to be excellent.  It's patronized all by local people (we stayed in an apartment 2km from downtown).  The food is authentic and inexpensive, restoring my faith in eating out after the debacle in Lisbon last night.  I had monkfish rice and Yi had oven roasted veal.  So much foods that we could have shared one plate!  We also bought our bottles of aged port wine to bring home from a neighborhood store after we tried some wonderful aged port wine.

The train terminal is located in a building done with beautiful Portugese tile art.  There are also various churches that are decorated in tiles, sometimes the whole building itself!