Today we toured two castles and the coastline around Lisbon.    The Castles were a study in contrasts.  One was a summer castle, the other was year round.   One was build four hundred years earlier than the other … and one had a much warmer feel than the other.   In the process we learned a lot about the Portuguese royalty &   royalty in general … not something we are familiar with in America.     Here are photos of the two castles.

The Queluz Palace was used by the royal family until the end of the monarchy. It is still used for government functions and can be rented for weddings or corporate events. The interior was inspired by the French castle of Versailles and was actually designed by the same designer.

The Sintra Palace was built 400 years earlier. It is about 20 miles outside of Lisbon at about 1800 feet elevation in a micro-climate that makes it an ideal summer retreat from the heat. It was also used as an escape from the plagues that went through Europe in the middle ages. The floors & ceilings are wood which gives the warmer feeling of this palace compared to the marble and plaster and tile of the Queluz Palace.

Another shot of the dining room of the Sintra summer palace. I could see having a meal there. Could you? (That’s not a sit down table. It’s a buffet table and otherwise used for displaying objects) (Note: Most of the furniture was gone from both of these castles. When Napoleon was invading the country, the royal family left to Brazil for 14 years, until things cooled down … taking a lot of the furniture with them. Napoleon took the rest.

The Kitchen of the Sintra Palace. Here two complete cows could be roasted. Coals from the fireplaces would be placed under the super sized skewers and turned until done. The Palace and the town have recently been named a UN World Heritage Site.

Since today was a day of comparisons, here is another comparison that was new to us.   The difference between a Caravelle and a Galleon.   They both had specific jobs to do.   Here are some photos from the hand paintings on the walls of the Sintra Palace

Caravelles had 3 masts and 3 triangular sails and a crew of about 30 men. They were very maneuverable and were easy to sail. They were the main tool of the explorer and did most of the first exploration work such as down the coasts of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope and around Cape Horn and up around South America. These were not treasure ships, but were often used to protect Treasure Ships.

Galleons were the “Treasure Ships” that were loaded down with silk, spices, jewels, gold and silver from the New World that were such choice targets of pirates. These ships had square sails and were much larger and required a larger crew of over 100. They were armed with cannons but were not very maneuverable. That’s why they were usually accompanied by Caravelles and travelled in convoys.
A modern comparison would be: Caravelles were pick up trucks … Galleons were the 18 Wheelers that really carried the cargo.

Sofia, our guide, today was knowledgeable and very expressive. The guides have all been very good and really make the tours worthwhile. There is no way we could have learned all that she told us through a tour book.

Is there anything that cant be made out of cork? Probably not. With the modern methods of veneering … very thin layers of cork (a few thousandths of an inch) can be laminated onto hard or soft surfaces. So just about anything that can be made can have a layer of cork applied to it … and get a whole new fashionable look. These are in the shops in Sintra.

Cabo da Roca is the furthest west part of Europe. It also happens to be at the same lattitude as Washington DC. It is on the coast on the way back from Sintra to Lisbon

Maintenance is a problem when you have a lot of 200 to 1200 year old castles and palaces to preserve and show to the public. This photo looks like it might be on a shack in backwoods Appalachia. But it’s on the National Palace. And there are a hundred more doors and 400 more windows in need of the same kind of work. This is where austerity demanded by the bailouts has cut the renovation budget to just about zero.

Lisboners may not have the budget to repair their castles … but they know how to go to the beach! This is fairly cold water (Atlantic) at the mouth of the Tagus River. Most people are just sun bathing, with the kids and some brave should out in the water.

We lunched in Sintra. This was a dish for two with prawns and monkfish in a soup with rice on the side. Excellent. I dont know if dunking that bread in the soup would have been acceptable at a royal banquet but I didn’t see any culture police … and it sure was good!

The Belem Tower guards the city of Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus River and the Atlantic Ocean. It looks well situated but has never been used as all invasions have come by land.

This time Luelle has put together two cruises and some land excursions … it’ll be a long time away from Hero and the Girls (chickens) and the fish, and the GrandBabies …  But we have a good team back home, so no worries.

The first cruise is with Uniworld on Portugal’s Duro River and we have three days in Lisbon before we board the ship.   After the Duro cruise we have 2 days to get ourselves to Seville, Spain to embark on a tour of the western Mediteranean with Azamara.   We haven’t decided how we’ll get to Seville,  maybe train, maybe rent a car, but I’ll write about each segment as we go.

The bridge connects the sides of the Tagus River and was patterned after the Golden Gate Bridge. The statue was patterned after the famous overlooking Rio de Janiero.

I was interested in seeing Portugal.   The history of course, and the fact that we’ve not been here before.   And our grand babies are 3/8ths Portugese.  But I wanted to see for myself the Portugese people and the economy that has been in the news for having received 3 European Union bailouts and is in a strict austerity payback mode.

Fortunately, Pilar, our tour guide and Uniworld Host is a wealth of information and holds nothing back.   She has lived here all her life and has lived thru all the turbulence.   Actually, you have to look deep or have someone point out the Austerity.   There are still nice cars on the streets and lots of well dressed people walking around and shopping malls with all the same stores we have in the US.

These streets are well over 1000 years old in the old town of Lisbon. There are open air markets, fish that was caught this morning, etc. Cars wont fit. No building codes either.

Digging deeper, we find that unemployment has gone from 4 to 18%.  To pay back the bail outs, Sales tax has been raised to 33% and Income tax to 52%.   These measures are causing businesses to close or leave … which compounds the inability to pay back the bail out loans.

So the situation here in Portugal is worse than in Ireland, but not as bad as Greece.  (The big 3 of the EU bail-outs)    Many young professionals have left the country to find work in the former Portugese speaking colonies,  Algeria,  Mozambique,  Brazil.   It’s been in the news, but its interesting to see it – boots on the ground.

Here are some of the things we learned on the first tour this morning and some of the sights.

Lisbon is 2.5 million population counting the suburbs.   It has a 3000 year history starting with colonization by the Greeks folllowed by the Romans, Muslims, Moors & Barbarians. About 400 years ago Spain unified the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and wanted Portugal to be part of Spain.   Portugal said No and it’s been testy between the two ever since.

Henry the Navigator was the architect of the Portugese expansion.  Portugal and Spain asked the Pope to mediate the division of the New World … since there was no UN at the time.    A line was drawn that gave Portugal Brazil and parts east, including Africa, and Spain the territory west of Brazil,   the rest of South, Central and North America.

This cable car #28 is famous, for among other things … getting pick pocketed. Pilar said that sometimes there are more pick pockets on the trolley than tourists.

The colonies of Brazil, Algeria and Mozambique kept providing wealth to Portugal for several hundred years.   But then Algeria and Mozambique wanted independence … So  the “Colonial War” was fought from 1961 to 1973.     Portugal was doomef from the beginning since Algeria is 10 times the size of Portugal. Salazar, the dictator at the time, refused to let the colonies go and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost.   The heavy debt left over from that war plus the loss of many of the best and the brightest and  the colonial income was the beginning of the current financial crisis.

With Wealth no longer coming in from the colonies, Portugal was not prepared for the competitive World of the late 20^th & 21^st century.    Pilar said the current debt crisis started with the war and then had two additional causes:

The Tiara Hotel where we stayed. As modern and 5 star as any. No austerity visible here.

1. Foolish spending by the government.   (buying submarines when they have very little navy)
2. Mandated spending by the EU to do things to keep consistent with EU countries.

Tomorrow we’ll see some countryside around Lisbon and see another perspective.

This is a photo of Mars. It was in a display on the wall in Dulles Airport as we were leaving. (Since you and I paid for it, the expedition and the photo and the airport) … I thought I would share it here. I think I may use it for desktop wallpaper ???