Portugal

Our last stop in Europe will be Lisbon, Portugal. We meet Tjes and Marjan at Shiphol airport for one last cup of coffee together. We woke up with typical Dutch grey, cold and miserable weather. We’ve been really lucky with the weather the past weeks: it has been rather cold, but mostly dry and sunny. Most days anyway. We are looking forward to the mild Portuguese winter climate!

Also my parents, Truus and Karel, fly to Lisbon. They’ve interrupted their work on their boat ‘Nunki’ for this little family holiday. The 4 of us will drive with a rented car to Cascais, about half an hour outside Lisbon, where Lars has his boat ‘Belle’ moored in the Marina. Somehow we manage to drive the wrong way straight away and we extend the half hour drive with an involuntary touristic drive through Lisbon city centre. This lands us in peak hour traffic and 1,5 hour later we finally arrive in Cascais.

The next few days we explore the Cascais area and Lisbon. We drive through the beautiful Sintra nature reserve and visit the “Pena Palace”. This 19th century palace has been build by the Portugese royal family and is quite unbelievable! It looks like a Walt Disney fantasy palace, including bright yellow “onion” roofs, bright red towers, sculpted gates and a shiny blue ceramic tile façade. Over the main entrance a sculpted ‘gnoom’ is supporting the bay window, sculpted alligators are diverting (spitting out) the rainwater from the roof and all sorts of great patterns of ceramic tiles cover big parts of the façade. Also the interior is an explosion of diversity and creativity in materials, decorations, colours and furniture. Have a look at some of the pictures! Loads of fun it must have been to design this imaginative castle!

The ceramic tiled facades is one of the characteristics of Portuguese architecture. The whole of Lisbon with it’s narrow winding streets and big squares is covered in bright patterns and colours. Lisbon is located on the river Taag and is build on 7 hills, which makes that there are fabulous panoramic views on the river and ocean. To get from one spot to the next you take one of the authentic old trams with timber interiors. The people here are really friendly and cheerful and it is a joy to go out for dinner or drinks and meet the very hospitable Portuguese. Even the policewoman and the guys that towed away our car were extremely friendly…. In Lisbon we go ‘pitspitting’and ‘kipscheuren’, which is an event in itself, even though you aren’t allowed to spit the pits anymore, and the chicken has already been torn when served to the table. Some things apparently do change… I’ll leave this further unexplained, Lars will fill you in when you go visit him in Portugal.

On the 1st of March we go sailing and celebrate Lars’ [and Joost’s] birthday with chocolate cake covered in hagelslag, floating around in a “doldrum” [wind stillness].
First of March is also the day that Britta and Tim (friends of us from Perth) are getting married, an event taking place on one of the beautiful Australian beaches downsouth. Unfortunately we can’t be there to celebrate this day with them but we wish the happy couple a great day and start of the rest of their lives together!

We sail to Lisbon and see the city from the river. With the San Francisco-type bridge and the Rio de Janeiro-type statue of Christ this is a fabulous way we are able to make some great pictures. That’s the great thing about sailing [and also paragliding], you come in places and approach places from such a different perspective sometimes then any normal visitor.

Tomorrow we’ll have to get up really early to be on the airport to catch our plane to Chicago. Maybe this time our luggage won’t get lost? [happened on all our flights so far…]