Portugal - December 2005
December 24th
John and Rose arrived the previous day and we moved to another apartment in a suburb of Lisbon, Belém (beh-lime). It was from Belém that Vasco da Gama set sail for India in 1497; he returned with a cargo of pepper which was enough to pay for his voyage sixty times over.
On this day we toured some of the sights of Belém including the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) and the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. The Padrão dos Descobrimentos is an angular slab of concrete erected in 1960 to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator. An impressive statue of Henry appears on the prow along with that of Luís de Camões and other Portuguese heroes.
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| The Padrão dos Descobrimentos |
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| Henry the Navigator (rightmost statue) on the Padrão dos Descobrimentos |
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| Mosaic at the Padrão dos Descobrimentos |
We also visited the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a monastery built in the sixteenth century as a testament Vasco da Gama's triumphant discovery of a sea route to the Orient, which initiated the beginning of a Portuguese golden age. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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| Jeffrey and Greta outside of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos |
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| Mosteiro dos Jerónimos |
December 26th
The day after Christmas we took the train west along the coast to the resort towns of Estoril and Cascais (kosh-kaish). With its grandiose villas, luxury hotels and Europe's biggest casino, Estoril has pretensions towards being a “Portuguese Riviera”. Still, the neighbouring Cascais, was a little bit more our style. Perhaps the best part of this trip was walking along the beach from Estoril to Cascais and back. It was on this pedestrian thoroughfare that we had a nice beach-side lunch.
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| Jeffrey and Greta on the pedestrian thoroughfare between Estoril and Cascais |
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| Boats moored in a Cascais bay |
