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.