The port of Lisbon is located right near the old part of Lisbon. The gangway was already backed up with people waiting to get off to walk into the city. Our arrival time was a relatively late one – 10:00 a.m., and we had “gained” an hour over night. An extra hour or two of sleep felt great.
Not knowing a thing about Portugal or Lisbon when we booked the excursion, we picked one that had a palace in it.
Right from the start I felt that our tour guide, Sylvia, was making assumptions of our knowledge of Lisbon, its surroundings, and Portugal in general. Something about the way she talked about how we were getting on the highway to get to the Queluz Palace made it sound like we already knew what it was and that it was on the far outskirts of the city. Nope, not, me. No clue.
Anyway, the Queluz Palace was built in the 18th century to be the residence of the Portuguese monarchy. The Palace is only partially restored ($$ issues), but to me it had a strong resemblance to Versailles outside Paris, France.
Here are a couple of photos of the interior
After the tour of the interior, Sylvia (tour guide) took us outside to see a canal:
Now, we were all using the “whisper” devices – little radio sets with ear buds, so we could hear the tour guide from quite a distance. I stuck fairly closely to Sylvia, to minimize the chance of the usual guide-takes-off-and-I’m-left-behind scenario. But the group was rather widely dispersed – people were roaming everywhere. Sylvia made no effort to determine if the whole group was with her or not.
Sylvia kept walking and talking, walking and talking, as we (those close enough to her to see where she was going) followed the dirt path that headed back towards the palace at a back entrance.
She pointed in a vague direction and told us to go through the only open door and keep going – we would find the souvenir shop and the bathrooms. We had a 10 minute break and we’d meet at the bus.
Little did Sylvia know that she had lost a bunch of people back at the canal. She had never checked to see if the entire group had heard her instructions.
When some of us were on the bus, Sylvia came on board and said, “I think most of us are here, yes?”, and I said, “No – at the very least, I’m missing four people!”. Then she finally looked at who was on the bus and all the empty seats. “Oh, it’s not worth it to count people yet,” she said, and she hopped off the bus heading back towards the palace.
A few minutes later, the Lost Eight found their way to the bus totally on their own, completely frustrated that they had been left behind.
The next stop was up the coast a little bit, the town of Sintra. There was no tour – we were given instructions on how to find the bus in 45 minutes. There was a palace there if you wanted to buy your own ticket and walk through.
We did our best to stimulate the local economy by having some gelato and buying items from the ceramics store.
Next and last stop was Cascais, even further up the coast. Once again – very pretty, with palm tree lined streets and a beach on the bay. And that was about it. 45 minutes later we were back on the bus to head back to Lisbon.
This is the wharf at Cascais:
Sylvia mentioned that during WWII, many Jews escaping Europe stopped in Cascais until their visas to other countries were ready.
The bus took a different route on the way back to show the beautiful shoreline, California-Pacific-Coast-like.
We asked Sylvia if she could drop us off in downtown Lisbon, so we could find some late lunch. Which she did, with a recommendation for a restaurant as well.
Though an enjoyable day, at least I thought there was something kinda lacking in this particular tour.
Tomorrow – Day At Sea!
Maryland Meshugas 