A {super awesome} visit outside and around Lisbon

On our second day in Lisbon, we wanted to head out of town to see some of the cool sights in nearby cities.  We found this great group, We Hate Tourism Tours (check out the link, you'll get a feel for how awesome these people are), and contacted them to take us around!  The van in the picture below was our limousine for the day :)

We started off in Sintra, about 30 minutes north of Lisbon - there are a bunch of castles and a tiny, pretty shopping street, but we didn't spend much time at either of those... because we were headed off the beaten track.

 We ended up going to this crazy house in Sintra - The Quinta da Regaleira - full of hidden pasages and caves, built by a man who wanted to express his, um, *ahem* unique beliefs in alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians through the architecture and landscape.  Crazy, but very cool.

(btw, he did the following photo on purpose.  remember how much Brian loves taking photos?)

After our tour through crazyville (sorry I don't have more photos... it's tough to photograph yourself getting lost in a dark underground cave, but you can picture it), we drove out to a roadside market to explore and eat lunch.

 I bought some of this jam - homemade and delicious.

But the highlight of this market stop was lunch.  Fresh bread, baked with chorizo inside, then once baked, you cut it open and put in goat/cow/sheep cheese and devour.  How to describe how amazing this was?  So amazing that I've been recreating it at home with a box of Bisquik mix someone gave me, stuffed the dough with meat and cheese and gobbling it up as fast as I can.

We would definitely call ourselves foodies, but we're cheap foodies.  I think Brian and I would choose a tasty roadside truck every time over a nice sit down dinner.

After stuffing our faces, and enjoying boxed wine on the side of the road, we headed to the eastern most point of Europe.  Below is the view... to America.

It would be a loooooong swim....

Looking south along the coast.

  Our van also provided lots of entertainment before we got back on the road...

 We then headed to Cascais, a beach town, walked along the coast, and got some handmade ice cream.

With our sugar high buoying us along, we headed to our last destination... the city of Belem.  It's more or less a suburb of Lisbon, and has lots of huge touristic sights - below is the monument to the discovery.    Portugal used to have a huge empire and control over the "new world" and made many important discoveries.

 After touring the monument and a very quick visit to the nearby monastery, we wrapped up our trip with Belem Pastries...

...and the bottle of wine we picked up at the roadside market.  We could not have asked for a better day of exploring Portugal with Marta & Miguel!  8 hours of delight, slightly crazy driving, full bellies, a more full knowledge and appreciation of Portugal, new friends and great stories to tell... that's a real travel success!

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Last weekend in Lisbon

And by last weekend... I mean 2 weekends ago.  I meant to be more on top of this!

We have this list of places we want to make sure to travel to before we head back to the states... and we're slowly working our way through it.  I think this is the 4th iteration of this list, as we seem to be really good at crossing travel destinations off our lists!

We didn't have plans for that weekend, so on Tuesday night we started looking at flights for the following Saturday... we were thinking Switzerland or Italy for skiing, or Galicia for eating, or Portugal, either the southern coast or Lisbon.  Lisbon won out in the end!

Saturday morning, bright and early, we headed to the airport to catch our 1 hour flight to the capitol of Portugal.  We touched down and were at our B&B by 10 in the morning, and though we couldn't check in yet, they were gracious and let us have breakfast!  Crepes, french toast, fresh fruit and homemade preserves, and italian expresso.  I was in heaven.  I was SO in heaven that I ate so much I was sick for the rest of the day.... fail, Kate.

Lisbon is known as the City of Seven Hills, and thankfully, there are these funiculars & trolleys located all around town to save your legs from hiking up and down the uneven cobblestone!

 And, they give you access to these gorgeous views!  Lisbon is a poor, but beautiful city, trying to hold onto it's glory from the past when it was discovering the new world.

 See the bridge in the background?  It has a very famous cousin in San Francisco... built by the same company!  And to the left of the bridge, can you make out what it is?  It's a copy of Rio's Christo statue, overlooking the harbor.  Lisbon's officials visited Rio & thought the statue was so cool that they wanted to have their own...

 Old mixed with new.

This is the main plaza in town - Rossio.  I loved that with all the hills, you could really see the whole city from birds eye views.

Does it get better than this?  Enjoying a cool beverage while watching the sun set, on a terrace with 100 friends and your one and only very best friend, overlooking the water?

 Our B&B was one highlight of the whole trip - the staff were so classy and helpful, the room comfortable, the food amazing, and our views.... spectacular.  This is from our living room terrace.

The big long building in front of our door was the city market... I loved perusing the food stands run by grandmas and seeing what they had brought to sell.

 We spent 2 nights, 3 days in Lisbon, and loved it.  A beautiful, laid back city, with people that were so kind and easy going - we're so glad we visited!  My next post will be on the crazy day we spent with the folks from We Hate Tourism Tours exploring the towns outside Lisbon...

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November trip to Berlin

We're going back a bit in history from the December Germany trip to our November Berlin trip, which was only a long weekend excursion.  First stop on our far-too-short weekend trip to Berlin.  We started with the Jewish History Museum.  It was designed by Daniel Libeskind, and has been at the top of my lists for cool architectural works to see while we're here in Europe.

The following morning, after all of our hotel issues, we made a huge tour of Berlin, seeing all the big stuff.  First, Checkpoint Charlie.

I didn't know much about Checkpoint Charlie before we visited, though I had heard a lot about it in popular culture & briefly in history books.  When Berlin was divided by the wall, this was one of three checkpoints between east and west, and the one that was used by international forces.  Now it's all done up with "soldiers" that people can take their photos with.

This brick line runs along the length of where the wall used to stand, throughout the whole city.

There are still sections left, placed around the city.  You can see the brick dividing line to the left of the wall.  

There is a very large section that has been left behind.  To the left of the wall, there has been a memorial/museum set up called the Topography of Terror, which has photos and documentation of what happened to the people of Germany during the war.

The land that this museum was on was on land formerly used by the Nazis to torture dissidents.  The rooms at the bottom of the pictures above were part of the basement that prisoners were held in.  The building was blown up in the war.

 This is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, design by Peter Eisenman.  It's a controversial space, creating a forest of concrete pillars, which Eisenman says lack symbolism, but represent the loss of order & reason.  It was a beautiful space to be in, disorienting as an unintentional hide-and-seek, forcing one to consider ones response to the tragedy of the Holocaust.

The Reichstag - the building that holds the German Parliament, and was partially burned down in 1919, which the Nazis used to their advantage in taking power.

 The Victory Column, gigantic statue in the middle of Berlin's Tiergarten, the huge park (like Madrid's Retiro or New York's Central Park).

 The Brandenburg Gate.

 We rented a couple of bikes on our last morning in Berlin and enjoyed riding around the city exploring.

One artist we really like is Richard Serra, and we seem to find his work in the cities that we visit.  Big, steel sculptures that create a sense of disorientation in space.

AND, we found ourselves another christmas market.  This was actually our first one of the whole season, and we loved it.  Currywurst, Glugvine, and hearty german beer.

Both Brian and I agreed that Berlin is a city we would love to move to someday.  There is a lot of culture, history, and beauty there, and we love the people and the city itself.  I've been scheming to get back there before we move home, so we'll see if I can make it happen.  Time is getting short!

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Germany & Austria Trip: Vienna

The very last stop on our Germany & Austria trip was to Vienna.  We heard wonderful things about the city, and it really was gorgeous!

As with many of these european cities, the cathedral is at the heart of the city.

There are a few architectural buildings in town that hold a lot of importance - every tour book will tell you about all the classical buildings, but thankfully I knew of two modern buildings in Vienna that we took detours to see.

The first was the Adolf Loos building.  He was revolutionary because he thought that "Ornament was Crime."  When classically designed buildings with gilded columns and cornets and superfluous decoration were all the rage, Loos made a statement with his plain and simple buildings.  In the 1920s, this was really forward thinking, and I enjoyed getting to see his work.

We also saw the Secession Building - another important work in for Modern architecture.  It was created to house forward thinking artwork - much of it Art Nouveau, but other design work as well.

Vienna is known for it's dark and brooding coffee houses - so we found one, and enjoyed sitting for a few hours eating and drinking while we escaped the crush of people in the streets.

Found another christmas market in front of town hall!  But by this time, we were pretty christmas market-ed out.  We quickly strolled through a couple of them here, but didn't spend much time eating, drinking or exploring any of them in Vienna.  They were so full of people we could barely get through, which made it hard to enjoy.  We were really glad for our other experiences in more calm markets earlier in the trip.

I will mention one very important classical building - the Vienna Opera House.

This building is not only important for it's architecture, but primarily for how many operas they put on in a year, and how successful it is at performance.  

Amazingly, one can get into a world-famous opera house for the low low price of 4 euros!  It's standing room only, but when the standing room is on the ground floor with a direct view of the entire stage (when you're directly behind thousand euro seats and directly underneath the King's box) it's completely worth it!  We saw a really weird opera, but it was still cool to get to be part of the whole opera going experience.

Of all the places that we visited on this trip, Vienna was the most completely overrun with tourists, and large annoying tour groups.  It is a beautiful town, and I realize I'm a tourist too, but it really got to me in this city!  I was ready to head home after being in Vienna, which was a good thing, I think.  Once we got back, we started gearing up for Christmas, which as you've seen, was wonderful!

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