Sintra
and Cascais Tour
Today we embarked on the first of two tours we
booked with Viator. Both of these tours
are small group tours run by Inside Lisbon.
After breakfast we took a taxi to the Hard Rock Café in the historic
section of Lisbon – our meeting point for this tour. We were grouped with three other couples (one
from New Jersey, one from Italy, and the third from Austria). All spoke very good English as did our guide
Jorge. It was a cloudy day and we were
all praying for good weather as we departed Lisbon in our van. Our first stop was Sintra, a city located on
the central western Portuguese coast, just a short drive from Lisbon. Nestled in the rolling hills and peaks of the
Sentra mountain range at the northern-most edge of the Sintra-Cascais Natural
Park, Sintra is a mix of natural and man-made beauty: fantasy castles set amid tropical
gardens, lush green valleys, and craggy hilltops with views of the Atlantic and
Lisbon (on a clear day). It was the
summer escape of many of the Portuguese kings and queens. In its earliest history, Celts worshipped
their moon god here, the Moors built a precipitous castle, and 18th-century
Portuguese royals walked around its dreamy gardens. Hans Christian Anderson found inspiration here, describing Sintra as the
"most beautiful place in Portugal" and Lord Byron
during his time here christened it his "glorious Eden".
However, perhaps the most distinguished homage is paid by Portugal's national
poet, Luís de Camões, in his epic poem Os Lusíadas.
Our first stop was at the Pena Palace, perhaps one
of the most iconic and best-known images of this country. Known as the Versailles of Portugal, it is one of
the world’s best examples of Romantic architecture from the 19th
century and one of the official Seven Wonders of Portugal. Perched high on a hilltop above Sintra and it
can be seen from as far away as Lisbon.
It was built in the 19th century by Prince Ferdinand, a
cousin of both “Mad” King Ludwig and Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s
husband). Constructed some thirty years
before the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, it is not only the best but was
also the first of its kind. Prince
Ferdinand hired a German architect to build a fantasy palace mixing elements of
German and Portuguese style – he ended up with an eclectic mixture of Gothic
towers, Renaissance domes, Moorish minarets, Manueline carvings, Disney
playfulness, and a tile toilet for his wife.
The Palace dates back to the Middle Ages when it took the
form of a chapel perched high on the hill overlooking Sintra. It was adopted as something of a pilgrimage
site destination and sanctuary by Portuguese rulers in the fifteenth century,
first by King John II and later by King Manuel I, who had a monastery
constructed on the site, though it was destroyed in the devastating earthquake
of 1755.
Following the 1910 Republican Revolution, the Palace was
opened to the public as a national museum and not surprisingly, quickly became
one of the country’s most visited monuments. It is the beguiling combination of
its history, architectural heritage, the sand and pastel colors of the exterior
and its majestic position, emerging from the lush greenery and towering over
the town and hills of Sintra, that make the palace such as must-see
destination. The gardens that were created
are exquisite, with beautiful flowers, ponds and streams, many different trees
from palm trees to majestic western red cedar trees, and an abundance of large
rocks that over the years had been covered with moss.
We drove up to the first entrance, about a mile below the
palace, and began our walk up through the gardens to the palace. In spite of the dreary weather, the walk was
wonderful. We came to a pond full of koi
ad two beautiful black swans. We admired
the western red cedar trees with their unusual shapes with branches that looked
more like benches than tree limbs. We
had almost reached the top when Jorge said we only had one more steep climb
ahead of us, but that the effort would be well worth it in the end. We huffed and puffed ourselves up about 30
steep, uneven stone steps, and when we reached the top, there were benches made
of stone and one (the Queen’s Throne made of wood) where we had a fantastic
view of the palace (in spite of the mist and fog that shrouded the top of the
mountain). It was easy to see where this
was the favorite spot of one of the queens who would walk there every morning
to take in the view.
When we finally reached the top, it had begun to
rain. We viewed the inside rooms (small
but elegantly appointed), but we were unable to view the ruins of the Moorish
castle below as the fog was too thick.
We left the Palace and headed down the mountain to the center of
Sintra. In the 2 hours that we were at
the Palace, the crowds had descended upon Sintra and traffic was
bumper-to-bumper. Rather than stop in
Sintra for lunch we elected to go to a small restaurant located very near Cabo
da Roca, our next stop on the tour. The
restaurant specialized in seafood and I
had a pasta with shrimp (it was really loaded with shrimp) and Bill had a
codfish dish that had the codfish mixed with cornbread and spinach. Both dishes were very good.
We next drove to Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point
of land in Europe. Although the rain had
stopped, the wind was really blowing.
This point is known as “where the
land ends and the sea begins.” We
stayed long enough to take some pictures of the beautiful coast and then headed
back to the warmth of the van.
Our last stop was Cascais, a coastal town that used
to be a small fishing town and the summer resort for the royalty in the 17th
and 18th centuries and today is a popular beach-side resort for the
Portuguese people. During his reign
(1816-1885), King Fernando II proclaimed Cascais as his preferred destination
for his summer retreat. This led others
in the royalty and high society to travel to Cascais each summer. We had about an hour (too long in our
estimation) to walk around the town. It
is not much different than the resort cities along the New Jersey coast. But we did find a good gelato shop and had a
dish while we walked in the sun along the beach. What a difference 15-20 miles made – while
Sintra and Cabo da Roca where overcast, cold and misty, Cascais was sunny and
warm.
We returned to Lisbon around 5 PM and as we had had
a late lunch, we again gave up on any dinner plans and went to the Executive
Lounge for their Happy Hour. Tomorrow
will be another long day as we have our second tour.
Fatima,
Nazare, and Obidos
Again we had an early wake-up (7AM – note to travel
planner [Me!] – we are supposed to be on vacation). Again we met at the Hard Rock Café. This time our guide’s name was Jime (rhymes
with dime or time) and there was a 5-person family from Singapore.
On the hour+ drive to Fatima, our guide explained
about the cork industry – the third ranking industry in Portugal. The trees are planted as small saplings and
after 6 years of growth they are designated as natural resources and cannot be
destroyed. It takes 25 years until the
trees are ready to have their cork harvested.
When the cork is harvested, only one or two small circles are cut around
the tree. The harvest takes place in the
summer when it is very hot and the tree wants to shed its bark. The cutters have to be very careful that they
do not cut through the inner layer of the bark and kill the tree. After the bark is harvested, it takes 9 more
years until the tree can be harvested again.
Not a big return on your money – 42 years and you only get 2 harvests of
a small amount of cork! Oh the things
you learn that are not in a text book.
Our first stop was at Fatima, side of the visit
(apparition) of the Virgin Mary to three children shepherds that watched over
flocks in the Fatima area. The Basilica
of Our Lady of Fatima was built on the spot where the three children saw the
Virgin Mary and is one of the most famous Marian shrines in the world. Built in 1935-1938, it features Mary of the
Rosary, flanked by mosaics of the 4 Stations of the Cross in the
porticoes. An outdoor service is held
every 13th day of the month, the date when the Virgin Mary appeared
to the three children. Above the altar
is a request (in Latin) to the Virgin Mary:
“Queen of the Holy Rosary of
Fatima, pray for us.” The tombs of
the three children reside in the basilica – the two girls to the left of the
altar and the boy to the right. Over
four million people visit Fatima each year.
As the story goes, the three children – Lucia, 10
years of age and her two younger cousins Jacinto and Francisco, where tending
to their flocks when there appeared a vision of a luminous lady, believed to
the be the Virgin Mary On 13 the Virgin
Mary appeared at an oak tree in the fields where they were. She kept appearing to the children on the 13th
of the month from May to October 1917.
The only exception was in August, when the children had been kidnapped
and questioned by the local administrator.
The last visit (13 October) was proclaimed a miracle as “the day the sun
danced” There were over 70,000 people at
the sight who recounted that the sun appeared to actually “dance” in the sky
and seemed fall to the ground before resuming its normal pace in the heavens.
When the Virgin Mary appeared before the children,
she said that she had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman, and
child living in Portugal. These
apparitions appeared during WWI, and she promised the children that Heaven
would grant peace to all the world if her requests for prayer, reparation and
consecration where heard and obeyed. According to Lucia (the oldest of the children
who would later write a book about these apparitions), the lady seemed as
“brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a
crystal glass with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of
the sun.” She asked them to say the Rosary
daily, reiterating many times that the Rosary was the key to personal and world
peace. She further explained that war
was a punishment for sin and warned that God would further castigate the world
for its disobedience to His Will by means of war, hunger and the persecution of
the Church, the Holy Father and the Catholic Faithful. She specifically called out Russia who
(according her) would become God’s chosen “instrument of chastisement.”
The three secrets (as written by Lucia and then
forwarded through religious to the Pope) were:
·
Peace is coming. The first part of this vision was a
horrifying picture of hell “where the souls of poor sinners go” and contained
an urgent plea for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls.
·
Russia will reject God and
communism will rise, bringing a second great war. This prophesied the coming of WWII and said
that one of the conditions of world peace was the Consecration of Russia.
·
Someone will try to kill the pope. According to Lucia’s letter outlining these
three secrets, the Pope would be killed by soldiers at the foot of a cross on
top of a mountain. The Church’s
interpretation of this this secret is that it predicted the May 13, 1981
assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II by the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali
Agca in Saint Peter’s Square. Pope John
Paul credited Our Lady of Fatima wih saving his life, saying he saw her
intervene to deflect the gunman’s arm. This
third secret was kept secret by the Vatican until Easter 2000, when Pope John
Paul publically revealed this third secret during a visit to Fatima, beatifying
the two children who had died about 2-3 years of seeing the apparitions from a
flu epidemic that struck the country.
Lucia, who became a nun as an adult, was subsequently beatified after she died on 13 February 2005. Over the years Lucia wrote two books, Memoirs, recounting the events of Fatima in her own words, and Calls from the Message of Fatima, giving answers to the many questions about living the message of Fátima.
In the second apparition, that of June 13, Lucia asked the Lady, "Will you take us to heaven?" The Virgin responded,
“Yes, I shall take Jacinta and Francisco soon, but
you will remain a little longer, since Jesus wishes you to make me known and
loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish devotion in the world to my
Immaculate Heart.”
Leaving Fatima we made a short stop at the Batalha Monastery. Founded in thanksgiving for a major military
victory in 1385, Batalha Monastery is a magnificent example of medieval
Portuguese architecture. In 1385, King
João I vowed that if his outnumbered army defeated the Castilians at the
important Battle of Aljubarrota, he would build a magnificent monastery
dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The king was victorious, resulting in the
independence of Portugal from Spain and the great Batalha Monastery.
King João I gave the monastery to the Dominicans. It took over a century to build, starting in
1386 and ending circa 1517, spanning the reign of seven kings. It was built in the Gothic and Manueline
styles. The first two kings (King Joao I
and his son King Joao II) and their wives are buried within the Monastery. Along with all other monasteries in Portugal,
Batalha was dissolved in 1834.
This was one of the most beautiful monasteries that
we have seen. The artwork and sculpture are
exquisite. One section was never
completed – the Imperfect Chapels. Only
the walls were constructed – the roof was never completed.
From Batalha we drove to Nazare, a small fishing
town and home to some of the biggest waves in the world. In January 2013, Hawaiian surfer Garrett
McNamara set a world record for the largest wave surfed – over 100 feet. These waves appear on Nazare’s North Beach. These waves are peculiar to this part of the
European coast. In the winter, there are
big storms in the North Atlantic that push swells toward Europe. But it is Nazare’s rare undersea geography –
a deep canyon that points like an arrow toward the town that creates the ideal
conditions for these monster wave.
Normally, as the open-ocean swells approach the coastline, they get
slowed down by the ocean bottom as it gets shallower. But at Nazare, the ocean swells get focused
in this submarine canyon and have much more energy. At its deepest, the Nazare Canyon is16,000
feet deep. So first you’ve got really
deep water, and then as it approaches the shore it gets very shallow, ad that
enables the waves to climb really, really big all of a sudden. We stopped at a high point overlooking North
Beach to watch the waves break out away from the shore. They were only about 30 feet today, but they
still looked like monsters.
South Beach, by contrast, is much more calm and is a
popular resort in the summer. However,
as we walked along the boardwalk at South Beach, the waves looked anything but
gentle. They were breaking close to
shore with heights of 10-15 feet. We ate
lunch at a lovely restaurant along the beach.
We ordered the shellfish rice bowl – it is designed to feed 2 people,
but it could have easily fed 4. The
seafood was very, very good.
Our last stop of the day was at Obidos, a very
well-preserved walled city. Founded by
the Celts in 300 BC, it has been ruled by Romans, Visigoths, and Moors. In 1282, King Dinis brought his bride Isabel
to the city and she fell in love with it.
The king then gave it to her as a wedding present, and this tradition
was continued by later kings. There was
a large chocolate festival taking place when we arrived, but we were unable to
go to the festival. Our guide took us to
a shop owned by a woman who made and painted her own tiles (they are very
prominent in Portuguese architecture) and made her own ging ja – a cherry
liquor. You stuff sour cherries in a
large bottle and then add brown sugar, filling all the air spaces around the
cherries. You can also add some cinnamon
and cherry bandy. You then seal the
bottle and wait about 2 years for the cherries to ferment and make the cherry
liquor. It was very, very tasty,
especially since it was served in a small chocolate cup. After walking around the town for a little
while – with its narrow streets and many shops (it reminded us of San Gimignano),
we departed for the hour+ ride home.
Again we had had a very late (and very filling)
lunch, so dinner was the wine and snacks at the Executive Lounge.
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