5-19-11 Lisbon to home

We departed for home after breakfast, and arrived home safe but very tired about 24 hours later.   We flew Continental on the return flight, through Newark, NJ.  We again had a delay, again due to equipment problems on the plane were supposed to board, and arrived in SF over an hour later than scheduled.  Teri, who had a flight that was supposed to depart Newark 2 hours before ours, also had an equipment caused delay that resulted in her only arriving in SF 20 minutes ahead of us.  Another disconcerting thing about Continental in Newark: we were in the terminal for about 5 hours, and it seemed that every few minutes Continental announced a change in departure gates for flights.  I think we had to move to 3 different gates while we were there.  It makes you wonder how reliable their planes are if they have so many equipment problems.

          Here are my thoughts on the trip: 

Hotels: I was attracted to the trip by the fact that we would be staying in Paradors.  My expectations were exceeded by the very high quality of all of the hotels, and particularly by the very old and very nice Paradors in Leon and Santiago, as well as the modern 5 star hotels in the other cities. 

Food: Since we have been on 2 prior tours with Tauck, we knew that they feed tour participants very well.  The food on this tour was no exception, and it took a lot of will power to limit the amount of food one ate in order to be able to fit into our pants for the trip home.

Architecture: The architecture we saw in Barcelona was terrific, and I was overwhelmed by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.   If you haven’t been to Bilbao in person, you should put it on your bucket list of places to see before you die. 

5-18-11 Lisbon

Breakfast at the Four Seasons

          Breakfast at the Four Seasons was in a very nicely appointed room with many windows looking over the city.  I had a couple of pieces of papaya, which were ripe and sweet.  With my cappu-colate (cappuccino & hot chocolate), I had a few samples of the best of Portugese sweets: a custard filled donut hole, a couple of bites of crème brulee, and a small (2 bites) pastry made of a light dough similar to phyllo filled with custard, I think called Pasteig do nata.  I had a few other things, but they weren't as tasty as what I just described. 

          After breakfast we took a bus tour of Lisbon.  The most interesting segment of the tour was a coach museum.   One gold encrusted (18^th century?) coach cost 300 million euros to restore!  That is probably more than it will cost to restore Cal’s Memorial Stadium.  

 

300 million euro coach

Marge's photo of one of our tour members on his way out of a church

  Another interesting thing I learned on the tour was that the Templars financed much of the cost of Portugal’s explorations to places like Japan, Brazil, Africa and India.  All I had known about the Templars were the Knights Templar who wore white tunics with a red cross, and that they had built a lot of forts.   

 Lunch, on our own, was at Restaurante Pinnoquio, which had been recommended to a couple of members of our tour group for dinner the prior night.  Pinnoquio was about a block from where we ate dinner  last night.  Marge and I shared a dish of green beans cooked with olive oil and garlic, which was excellent.  We also shared a dish of grilled lamb, which was ok, but not as good as the beans.  Ann and Joe shared a dish of clams and a salad.  Teri had a grilled meat assortment of lamb, beef and pork, and had enough meat to feed at least 3 people. 

After lunch, Ann, Joe and I took the metro to the el Cortes Ingles store.  It’s like Macy’s.   I bought a pair of luggage straps for Marge and me to wrap around our suitcases; we planned to check our bags on the flight home and I wanted to be sure that they didn’t come apart before they got home.   I also needed to replace our inflatable neck pillows for the flight because both of ours got holes in them.  The prices were probably 2 or 3 times what we would have paid at REI had we gotten these items before we came on the trip.  Oh well, Portugal needs all the tourist income it can get.   I also bought some thick Spanish chocolate mix, some piquillo peppers, and Spanish manchego cheese. 

Marge and Teri went to the Gulbenkian museum, which contains the private collection of a very wealthy man.

          In the evening, we had our farewell reception and dinner at the hotel.  Dinner was as follows:

          Mushroom & duck confit risotto, grouper in a lobster consume (Marge had chicken), and a scoop of pina colada ice cream on a macaroon.

5-17-11 Porto to Lisbon

          I enjoyed Porto.  It is a good sized city with a lot of history, good restaurants, not expensive and not very touristy. 

We departed Porto for Lisbon, with a stop for lunch at a roadside restaurant, and a stop in Fatima.   At Fatima, we saw a woman who was walking to the shrine across the wide plaza (larger than St Peters in Rome) on her knees (she wore knee pads), carrying a candle about 4 feet long.

In Lisbon, we arrived at our final hotel, the Ritz Four Seasons, which is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in.  The gym is on the top floor, with a small running track around the roof perimeter, and a number of exercise machines.  There is also a swimming pool, but I didn’t have time to check it out.  Our 6^th floor room had a balcony, king bed, desk, sofa and coffee table, more closet space than our current bedroom.  The bathroom was larger than our masterbath, and made extensive use of marble, or something that looked like marble.

After our arrival, Ann, Joe, Marge, Teri and I walked down Av Da Liberdade, Lisbon’s main blvd, from the top, a couple of blocks from our hotel, to the bottom.  It took about 45 minutes, and was slightly downhill and on cobblestones, so at the end, my knees were aching and we needed to stop for a drink.  We stopped at one little café upon learning that beers were only 1.5 euros each. 

Dinner was on our own, at Restaurante Andorra, which our tour guide had on his list of recommended restaurants for Lisbon.  It is on a pedestrian only street just off the end of Av Da Liberdade.  This little street has a number of small restaurants, each with their pitch men or women on the street trying to talk people walking by into dining with them; it was a turn off, but since Andorra was on our list, we went in.  Marge and I shared a dish of prawns, clams, peppers, onions and potatoes in a roasted tomato based sauce, which was brought out in a copper clad oval shaped serving dish – it was very good.  Ann had sardines, Joe had a fish (cod?) and rice dish, and Teri had a salad and a seafood bisque.  All of the dishes were good. 

Our dinner serving dish

Our dinner

5-16-11 Porto

          Breakfast was again excellent, although I could only look at most of the goodies and taste just a few because of all we have eaten so far.  I invented a new food – chocopacino, or capulat or whatever.  The restaurant had a machine that dispensed various hot drinks, so I made a cup of cappuccino and a cup of hot chocolate and then combined them for a mocha drink. 

          After breakfast a local guide showed us Porto, and finished with a boat ride on the Douro River that runs by Porto.  One thing we noticed is that many buildings feature beautiful blue tile mosaics, particularly in the train station.  We also visited Lello’s, which is one of the world’s most beautiful bookshops,  It has ceilings and walls with intricately carved wood, which is really plaster made to look like wood.

After the boat ride, lunch was on our own, so Marge and I joined Ann and Joe for lunch in an outdoor café along the river.   

Lunch in Porto along the river

 We shared a couple orders of mixed salad, an order of sautéed peppers, and several orders of fried sardines, which Ann has been looking forward to the whole trip.  They had a bottle of local wine, and we had a carafe of sangria.  While we were eating, we started talking to a young man sitting at the table next to ours.  He was dining with his parents and spoke excellent English.  It is always fun to talk to locals, and our conversation with him was no exception.

A friendly local

          We walked around Porto’s shopping district for a while before returning to the hotel to rest.

          Dinner started with a tour of the Taylor’s / Tres Seculos Port Wine Lodge & port tasting with appetizers, on the other side of the Douro River, followed by dinner at the restaurant at the wine lodge.  The tour was like many winery tours we have taken.  The restaurant has a very nice setting, on a hill looking across the river at the historic part of Porto and also with a view of several bridges.  We started with a port tasting on the patio with appetizers with shirt sleeve weather, then had dinner inside.

The first course was a soup of pureed veggies which we couldn’t figure out, but which was so good that it took a bit of will power not to finish it and lick the bowl.  My entrée was pork with a dark sauce with zucchini and sun dried tomatoes and a potato au gratin.  I only had enough to taste it since I was almost full from the soup.  Marge had hake with some sort of veggies.  Dessert was an excellent crème brulee, which I did finish.

5-15-11 Santiago to Porto, Portugal

This am, Sunday, the plaza in front of the hotel had a lot of tourists and pilgrims, probably about a thousand.   Our tour director said compared to the summer, this is nothing.  He said it is frequently full of people, almost shoulder to shoulder, which would probably be about 10,000 people.  I saw quite a few pilgrims coming in on bikes, which made me long for my bike, but not for spending weeks or even days on it.

          We departed from Santiago at 1:30 pm, which was fortunate for us since we didn’t wake up until 9:15 am.  We will cross the border into Portugal on our way to Porto for a 2 night stay.  The last 3 nights have been in different hotels, so Porto will be a nice break from the bus. 

          After entering Portugal, most of our drive was along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. 

          Portugal is not as prosperous as Spain has been, and is not as modern, which I recall being the case when we were here many years ago, but I recall that the people were very friendly, and that being a modern country isn’t always what attracts us as travelers.

Porto - fisherman's net outdoor sculpture

          Our hotel in Porto is a Sheraton, because it is the only 5 star hotel in Porto. 

          Dinner was at the hotel.  I had a lobster cream soup for appetizer, kobe beef for entrée, and 3 scoops of different gelatos.  The soup was excellent, with several chunks of lobster and a rich broth with cream and lobster puree, the beef was a real disappointment because it was not tender nor tasty, and the gelato was just ok. 

5-14-11 Leon to Santiago de Campostella

Breakfast again was a fabulous spread.  I took a couple of bites of melon, pear, fried egg, sausage, puff pastry, chocolate tart, yogurt, special K, churro, and hot chocolate.

          We departed for Santiago de Campostella at 9 am.  On the way out of town, we saw a number of people carrying backpacks and walking sticks on the way to Santiago.  Going to Santiago has been a popular pilgrimage for over 1000 years, to visit St James’ remains in Santiago, which is Spanish for St James.  I think the religious purpose is to receive absolution.  There are many different starting points and routes, but they all end in Santiago. The most popular route is the French route, starting in Paris, which is 2 months by foot.  If a pilgrim starts from the French border it takes about 30 days by foot, shorter by bike, and much shorter by bus.  All along the way there are signs and paths for pilgrims.  Many people do it for reasons other than religious – often to mark a turning point in their life so they can contemplate what is next for them, like retirement or loss of a job.  The routes are called the caminos de Campostellla.

          Just outside of Leon, we saw 5 stork nests, each with storks in them, in a church tower right next to the road.    

Stork nests

          Shortly after starting, we stopped in the town of Astorga.  One of Gaudi’s earlier designs is a bishop’s mansion in the town.  It resembles a church, with turrets and stained glass windows, but has touches of interior design that are unusual.  My favorite feature of the town was chocolate.  There are several shops that make their own chocolate.  I found one that was open, and picked out a chocolate covered biscuit.  The cashier was a cute young woman, so I took her photo (with her permission) for certain of my friends who will appreciate seeing her. 

          I relaxed a bit in a coffee shop and had a cup of thick hot chocolate.  It was the consistency of hot chocolate pudding, but had a much more intense chocolate flavor than pudding. 

          Lunch was in a family owned restaurant in a small town along the way.  I had a green salad and a small portion of beef stew, both of which were good. 

          Our weather was clear and in the mid 60s.   The drive was through green countryside, with many trees and fields. 

          According to our tour guide, northern Spain hasn’t been impacted by the economy as much as southern Spain which was more reliant on construction and development, which has essentially stopped. 

         Our stay for tonight is Santiago Santiago de Campostella.  The entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  On the square with our hotel and the cathedral are also a 35,000 student university and the town hall.  Some times, probably when the King is in residence, the buildings on the square house the King, the Bishop, Mayor and University president.

          Our hotel for tonight, Parador – Hostal de los Reyes Catolicos, was built in the early 1500s as a hospital and as a hotel for catholic kings and queens when they visit the cathedral next door.  The King of Spain still stays here when he visits. It is on the main square in the historic center of the city. 

Our hotel is on the left, the famous cathedral is on the right

Wedding party in the lobby of the hotel

 We are in the Province of Galicia, where they speak a different language.  Spain has 5 languages – everyone speaks Castillian Spanish, and some also speak a different language in different provinces.  Galicians are of Celtic origin.  One vestige of that is in their music which includes bagpipes.   There is a bagpiper playing all during the day in a passageway next to the hotel, unfortunately right near our room.  I’m glad he stopped playing in the evening and didn’t start again until around 10 am.

          Dinner was in the hotel.  We had a choice of the formal dining room, with waiters in tuxedos, or a less formal restaurant, or pub.  We chose the pub because according to travel writer Rick Steves, the atmosphere in the formal dining room is stuffy and the food doesn’t make up for it.  We shared a mixed salad, mussels, a few small scallops, and a very good dish of lobster and paella.  Dessert was a disappointing sorbet with cherries and too strong liquor