Friday, September 5, 2014

Travels with Amy

Amy and Barry are spending a month in Portugal (and I think Spain, too) and I told her to send some photos. I especially requested food photos, to which Amy told me she's too busy eating to be photographing her food. Maybe she'll change her mind.

First, the geography... where is Lisbon where they are now?



Amy writes: Your first of many glimpses of Portugal. Shot from a beautiful little park just under the castle of St. Jorge's.

Mini Lesson from Wikipedia: The Castle of São Jorge is a Moorish castle occupying a commanding hilltop overlooking the historic centre of the Portuguese city of Lisbon and Tagus River. The strongly fortified citadel dates from medieval period of Portuguese history, and is one of the main tourist sites of Lisbon.

Post-script of Amy's day: We had a great day taking a free (well, pay what you want at the end) guided walking tour of Lisbon. The kid is working on his Master's degree in Social Economics and he was a delight. Born and raised in Lisbon, spoke perfect English and gave us great facts and some entertaining stories about the city and Portuguese history without ever dragging us into a tourist shop, a cafe or restaurant or museum. It was terrific and we paid him fair at the end (which was good because he gave us directions to walk back to where the good seafood restaurants were down by the water). Ate well, drank, kicked back, and then finally took the subway back to the hotel just before rush hour. Now we are done for the day. I like long, late lunches and no supper. 

Tomorrow we get the car and head north. I just booked us an apartment in a beach town through airbnb.com, a service I love. Well, if this works out I'll love it. I've used it in other cities and it has worked great. More to come! 

2 comments:

Amy Laboda said...

Wow! Pat you know more about that castle than I do! We did learn a lot about the 1755 earthquake and tsunami that nearly wiped out the town (but not that castle). Also, that earthquake was the beginning of seismology science and building codes. The buildings that replaced those that toppled or were burned (where there are earthquakes there are always fires) all were built with the best anti-earthquake technology of the day, which was developed by the Portuguese. Pretty cool.

Pat said...

I had no idea... very interesting.