Portugal

Cascais area of Lisbon

The previous post in this series is here..

Haven’t been able to finish blogging about a trip from July last year because life always throws some distractions. The last three weeks have seen me try to do yoga thrice. That is a new low. Severe allergies which kept me from office twice last week, then a sinus infection, fever, migraines, body pain thanks to some bug, then promptly followed by embarasing nose bleeds while in office.. it has been one thing after another.

Finally a long weekend which is going to be dedicated to recovery, lots of sleep and finish all those blog posts that were long overdue.. given the nose and throat, my sruthi is now enabling me to sing classics like “meow meow poonaikutty” and similar songs… so singing is also ruled out for now.

There were only two things we did after visiting Sintra on that Viator tour on our last day at Lisbon. The last stop on the tour was to Cascais area of Lisbon. We drove down the hill past beautiful beaches. I love beaches but we did not get to even wet our feet in one on this leg. We were in Cascais for lunch stop.

It was already late afternoon and my stomach acid had arrived in style. Badly needed some ginger tea to calm my head. There were visions of butter naans, malai paneers and jeera rice.. but google searches showed zero Indian restaurants in Cascais. San suggested that I just drink some water and wait till the acid subsides. She was going to eat at a Vegan place called House of wonders, which had rave reviews. The menu was all laid out and you got to choose with your eyes! She thoroughly enjoyed the food.. Even though I am allergic to lots of things and didn’t get anything, was very impressed with the visuals of the food and the service. After that we walked by a pizza place and I got to eat a nice full cheese pizza. We were the only customer in the second floor and the pizza was amazing!

Then we decided to walk around the souvenir shops and all three touristy blocks of Cascais and the waterfront. It was very windy and we mostly stayed in the side streets. That is when we found multiple really nice Indian restaurants! San saw the disappointment in my face and agreed to make up for the miss later. We were to meet outside a Mcdonalds before making our way back to the Baixa area on the return ride. So I got an ice cream to cheer myself up. McD’s does not disappoint.

A short video of our time in Cascais..

We were dropped back in Baixa where we were picked up early in the monring. It was our last evening in Lisbon… will finish that in the next post..

Sintra, Portugal - as cute as it gets!

The previous post in this series is here..

Our day 2 in Portugal was a bus tour to Sintra, then to Pena Palace, Cabo de Roca, and Cascais.

This first post is about the first part of the visit to Sintra. A cute hilly town.. we were picked up early from the square outside Baixa on a viator guided tour, and it was an hour plus bus ride to Sintra. We passed an aquaduct that was an engineering marvel (for any time)!

Got to listen to some history of the Moorish people who used to rule Portugal. We got to spend an hour walking around this place with a stop at a local pastry shop, Lord Byron’s cafe and a walk around the steps to the Musuem. We also got to walk up to Uniao das freguesias de Sintra… there was no time to go through it.. just walk outside it. It was a half mile hike up the hill and we had just enough time to go to the top and be back. We crossed some landmarks like Lawrence hotel..

A few pictures..

Two photo galleries.. one in landscape

and one in portrait format

A video highlights reel of this part of the trip..

The next leg of this tour on the next post..

An evening in Baixa

The previous post in this series is here..

After our guide dropped us off in Baixa, our first stop was the Elevator. San told me that standing in line to go up that elevator was not worth it. So we walked up the steps to the streets above and got pictures.. when we walked back down it was early evening and there was an intense craving for chai and desi food. We did not get a good read of the map. So we ate at the first indian food we could find. It was decent food but we simply could not sit inside the restaurant as it had a weird smell. Later we learned that there are places with nicer seating and less smoke.

Then we decided to walk all the way to the other end of the main road to the water front. I had a tough time catching up to my wife as she was running everywhere and my ability to follow was limited by the number of butter naans that had been consumed. It was an amazing evening with the sky putting on a show for us at the waterfront.

After spending an hour or so taking pictures and watching the street performers, we walked back to our hotel.

A video highlight reel ..

We were going on an all day packaged tour the following day. So we went to sleep early. My local tourguide had already visited two of the three places we were going to see and had already started describing it to me!

Our first day in Portugal was a hit !