Ice cream!

The last night in Portugal we went to an ice cream place in Lisbon that is supposed to be the best ice cream in Portugal (some say the world!). It was really exciting. There was a line out the door of the small shop, and I happily ordered a large. One of my friends also got a large, and we tasted each other's flavors. I got mango, coconut, chocolate chip and lemon. I got to try raspberry, caramel, orange, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, pineapple and a flavor called "commercial radio" that was ice cream blended with frozen yogurt, passion fruit and raspberry. It was all so good I got back in line and got a small cone of mixed berries and passion fruit. The ice cream was amazing. Each flavor so perfectly captured the very best of each fruit, and despite having so much ice cream, it was light enough that I didn't feel sick at all. It was certainly the best ice cream I've had in a while, but I'll have to try a lot more of the world's ice cream before I can name this one the best.

Sintra

From Lisbon we took a beautiful and scenic route to an ancient castle. We could see the beautiful coastline running parallel to the mountains and forests we drove through. It was really pretty but didn't lend itself to good pictures.
The castle was so fun! We spent about an hour exploring the ramparts and towers, and the view of Lisbon, Sintra, the coast, and the countryside was phenomenal. It was easy to see the benefits of having a castle on top of the mountain, as we could see for miles in every direction.

On our way down from the castle, we walked through the village of Sintra. It was a small little town, but I was able to meet a local artist and get a beautiful water color painting from him. He was very friendly, and between my Spanish and his Portuguese, I was able to get a little background on the painting. It's one of a little cafe in Sintra, that is apparently a local favorite. The kings of Portugal have historically dined there on their visits, as well as other political and influential people.

Lisbon

Lisbon is absolutely beautiful. All the houses are white stucco with red roofs, and many of the buildings have tile work all the way up and down the walls, almost like some sort of wallpaper. The city has massive plazas with plenty of open space, the shops are fun, and the ocean is along the whole length of the city. We got a walking tour to get oriented.

If you're wondering, yes, the uniforms on those students do look a lot like Hogwarts robes. Apparently JK Rowling was married to a Portuguese man, and took lots of the inspiration for some parts of Harry Potter from the places and people in Portugal. The culture of Hogwarts university and the robes are inspired by a university in Lisbon.

We also made it to a fun little castle, and while we just had a short amount of time there, it was a really great view.

 That night we got a great presentation on the history and culture of Portugal and its transformation from dictatorship to democracy. (Portugal had a dictatorship even longer than the Franco regime in Spain). It was really interesting to see how quickly Portugal has modernized and become a free country.
Afterwards we had an extremely fancy, and delicious, dinner.

Lisbon: Cathedral and Coastal outpost

Lisbon really is one of my favorite places I've been so far. It's beautiful and the white stucco makes everything brighter and better illuminated, bringing life to the streets. We went on another walking tour, visiting the cathedral holding the tomb of Vasco de Gama, Portugal's greatest sailor. The cathedral was full of maritime imagery, with sea shells, ropes, and seaweed being carved all over the walls.

Constructed right alongside the cathedral was a beautiful cloister.

We then walked over to a nearby small castle, that was beautifully sticking out of the water right along the shore. On the way we saw a monument to Portuguese navigation. It's currently being restored, but we were able to get the general idea of it.

From there we went and got lunch- most notably more of the paséis, from what is supposedly the best place to get them in the world. I have only tried two spots (the other being reportedly the best in Evora) and it definitely was even better than the first ones. The dough was flaky and perfect, the custard gooey and creamy, and they were just wonderful. I, once again, got six of them. 

Almendres

Near Evora is a large megalithic site that predates Stonehenge by about 2000 years. It was super cool, and a few of the original engravings can still be seen; the engravings are mostly simple spirals and wavy lines. It was a really fun little trip, and had a short little hike to get to the site. We walked about two miles away or so and found a really gigantic monolith. We were allowed to touch all the ones that didn't have carvings.

Evora

After being in Merida, we went to the Portuguese town of Evora. Evora is a smaller town but absolutely beautiful. I could immediately tell a difference between Portugal and Spain. Portugal has more people driving on the streets, the architecture looks much more Mediterranean and the churches were generally a little more plain than they are in Spain. Portugal produces about 90% of the world's cork, and so there's cork everything, from postcards to shoes to picture frames to purses. They also love blue tile work, and so blue porcelain is everywhere.

Evora's main claim to fame is its "Bone Chapel". As the plague decimated European populations, many cities simply ran out of room for graves. So, in Evora, they took out a ton of old bones from the older gravesites to make room for the newer bodies. Once they had all these bones, they were trying to decide what to do with them, when they came up with an idea to decorate a chapel with them, as a reminder to all of how short life is, and to make sure to live by the commandments today. Above the entrance reads "Here lie our bones, we're waiting for yours".

There was a really cool old cathedral we went to see with the coolest spiral staircases. The staircases went up probably about 4 floors without any landings, and I almost felt dizzy after making it to the top. It was also amazing because as I looked closely at the stone, what I had thought was granite was actually beautiful white marble, but so covered in lichen moss and grime that it was almost entirely invisible.

As this post would be incomplete without mentioning food, the food in Portugal is great. They eat tons of codfish, cooked different ways. I had mine for the day in a light oil sauce with tomatoes and potatoes. The real gem though are the pastéis. They are amazing. Warm crisp creamy and with plenty of cinnamon on top, they're good enough that I had four and went back for more. One of the workers told me they were the best ones in town- which is why he entered his application there. He said that in the past 2 years of working at that store, he's gained about 30 pounds.

The city was beautiful with a few Roman ruins and lots to see (including what is possibly the first lego brick ever made?), especially with a much larger cultural difference between Spain and Portugal than I had anticipated.