European Circle Tour # 12: Touring Outside of Lisbon

Our port call in Lisbon lasted barely 9 hours, and that was a real shame. I can think of few cities better suited to an extended two-day port call, not least because the ships dock right in the heart of the city, and not miles away as in Barcelona or (worse) in Rome or (worst of all) in London.

 

But you take what you can get. Having spent time in Lisbon on my last too-short port call, in 2022, I opted for this visit to broaden my horizons. There are many smaller towns around the city that could well be worth a visit, but two in particular draw the attention of many visitors. In part, this is because both of these places can be easily reached by train from Lisbon, so taking a day-long coach tour or paying an eye-watering taxi fare are not the only options.

 

It's also down to the differences in character between these two places, although both are fascinating. The first is the old central district of Sintra, a smaller town up in the hills. Small, old, crammed with shops, cafes, bakeries -- in a phrase, a tourist trap -- but a beguiling and lovely one all the same. Sintra has CHARACTER, all in caps and bold faced italic like that!

 

The old centre of this village gives you the feeling that it didn't so much grow as it happened by accident, with each successive builder squeezing in wherever they could get a footing. Streets that are wide enough to be used by motor vehicles are a rarity.

 

 

Yes, the alleyways in the old part of Sintra really are that narrow -- and that steep. The fiendish white and grey cobblestones which become slippery like ice when wet are everywhere too. When the alleyways get really steep, they've built in some steps -- but the steps still slope underfoot, just not quite as steeply as the alleyway would slope without steps. Truth be told, Sintra is definitely not the place for you if you are unsure of your footing or dependent on crutches, canes or wheelchairs. 

This is a good place to mention that Princess Cruises (and Holland America, my other favourite line) rate the tours they sell as Easy, Moderate, or Strenuous. This one was rated "Strenuous", and Sintra was the reason why. We had one couple on our coach walking slowly with canes, but I don't think they got far at all. The steep cobble-stoned alleyways are not for the faint-hearted or mobility-limited.

 

Among the alleyways, you can come across architectural treasures. Our tour guide started us on the square in front of the Palácio Nacional de Sintra. It's a good focal point, and was just a short distance up the road from the spot where our coach let us off. The oldest parts of the palace were built by the Moors back in the twelfth century.

 

Other architectural details and treasures pop up here and there. In order to see them, of course, you have to be able to take your eyes off the cobblestones and shop window displays. As in so many places in Portugal, brightly coloured paints and patterned ceramic tiles are popular methods of finishing the exterior of a building.

 

Oh, those shop window displays. Tempting, and in some cases downright dangerous. I've been known to gain 2 kilograms (nearly 5 pounds) just by looking into the window of a Portuguese bakery.

 

 

The people in our group who tried the Queijadas gave them a unanimous two-thumbs-up!

 

I automatically thought of a friend of mine who loves to wear colourful socks.

 

My late husband, Massi, would have made a beeline for this shop as soon as we got off the coach, not because he saw it but because he sensed its presence in some other mysterious manner -- and he probably would have bought one of these cute ceramic cats. "Cats call me, you know." That's what he used to say and it happened more than a few times in our travels together.

 

 

We had an hour of free time to explore the historic district. Then we returned to our coach and drove south, some twenty minutes or so, to the city of Cascais on the north shore of the ocean bay into which the Tagus River empties. 

Interlude: Language Lesson

Our guide took a few moments to explain to us how Portuguese uses stressed and unstressed vowels, also known as long and short vowels. He didn't mention the other key detail, but Portuguese pronunciation tends to soften many hard consonant sounds by combining them with an "h". The results sounds a bit slushy by comparison with languages that make extensive use of hard consonants. Which brings us to the city we were now going to visit.

 

"Cascais" is pronounced, more or less, as "Kesh-KYYYY-sh." That's how the guide said it, and I'm willing to take his word for it.

 

Now that we were at the shore of the ocean, Cascais was a much more level place, and that made it a lot easier to walk and really get going, which I did. The main landmarks in Cascais are the expensive seafront hotels -- some very modern, some quaint and old-fashioned but beautiful none the less.

 

Most of these hotels are grouped around the plaza in the centre of town which faces the bay and its beach. Perfectly turned towards the south, and the heat of the sun, it's no wonder that Cascais is such a popular area for a beach getaway from the big city. Even on an early spring day with the temperature only reaching 20°C (68°F), the beach had its sunbathers and there were even some people a bit later on getting right into the water and swimming or relaxing at length. Of course, the water could very well have been warmer than the air!

 

And yes, the sunshine was very warm and pleasant. As a by-the-way hint, cruise lines love to identify the tour groups on their tours with these stickers. It's best to wear utilitarian clothes which can't be damaged in any way by the stickum on the labels. I once had one become permanently glued to a synthetic t-shirt, and couldn't remove it.

 

One feature of Cascais, which you also can see in many public spaces in Lisbon, is the placement of the light and dark cobbles in this peculiar wave pattern. My guide in Lisbon back in 2022 swore that some people would get motion sickness from walking on them. 

My most lasting memory of Cascais, without a doubt, was the flower gardens. The city really puts an effort into maintaining these public gardens with their diverse varieties of colours and patterns in the blooms. Most of all, it reminds me of going to Niagara Falls during the spring and summer, and seeing the similar range of floral displays in the parks along the river. Here, the city's coat of arms is ringed by a flower display at the main traffic circle in the centre of town.

 

 

Later on, I saw these flowers bedded out at the square behind the beach.

 

Those dazzling colours were on my mind for much of the remainder of the day.

 

Lisbon was our final port call of the cruise. The tail end of the nine-day voyage was a stretch of two days at sea, from Lisbon north past the Bay of Biscay, and then up the English Channel to the port of Southampton. The Bay of Biscay and the English Channel are both names respected by sailors and experienced cruise passengers alike as notorious generators of rough weather. In this case, we had no real problems at all. We certainly encountered waves with heights of 5-6 metres (16-20 feet) but they are at enough of an angle that they didn't affect the ship much at all, just the odd moment of quivering. Of course, a cruise ship like Emerald Princess, at 113,000 tons, takes a really big wave to make it begin to shift in any noticeable way. For anyone concerned about weather and motion, bigger is better -- and time of year matters a lot too. Spring and summer are much more user friendly than fall and winter. Here is a sample white water picture from the first sea day.

 

By the evening of the same day, the sea had calmed down even more, the sky remained clear, and we got a glorious sunset at sea after dinner. I can think of no better place to enjoy a sunset spectacle. It's one of the biggest reasons I'm always looking for another cruise!

 

Once we docked in Southampton, I transferred straight up to a favourite hotel at Heathrow Airport, ready to fly home to Canada the next day. Looking forward to my next trip, and to having you join me on it!

 

 

Spring Nostalgia Trip # 5: Eighty Years Later

Our one and only port call in France was at the northern port city of Cherbourg, full name Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. One of the few truly deep-water ports on the English Channel, Cherbourg has a long maritime history. This was the penultimate port call of the Titanic before she sailed off on her never-to-be-completed maiden voyage. She may very well have been docked at the same pier where our ship was tied up, end to end with a massive Stena Line cruise ferry.

However, the entire region around Cherbourg, and especially just to the east of the Cotentin peninsula is preoccupied with more recent history. The Liberation of Europe in 1944-45 began here, just on the east side of the Peninsula, at the long string of beaches code-named "Utah." With the 80th anniversary date of the invasion fast approaching (exactly 2 weeks from the date of our visit), it was plain to see that this year's celebrations were going to be on an even bigger scale than usual.

The tour I took, then, was entirely themed around the landings on Utah Beach, and became the second day of my meditations on the war and its role in so many people's lives, stretching far into the future.

Leaving Cherbourg, we drove swiftly east on the expressway across the Cotentin, and then branched off onto the country roads. Here we could see that the traditional farming techniques of smaller fields divided by hedgerows are still followed. Our guide told us that many of the hedgerows were removed after the war to make it feasible to use larger and larger tractors. In many cases, they have now been restored (like these relatively new ones) because they do so much to soak up excess water in low-lying and flat areas.

Our first stop was on a flattish hilltop west of Utah Beach. Here we saw some of the gun batteries which the Germans had installed as coastal defences here, as along all the long winding coastline of their vaunted Fortress Europa. 

 

 

The big bunker with the massive concrete roof could withstand direct aerial bombing, and the gun which would have been installed under it could have inflicted severe damage on naval ships far out at sea. 

 

 

The guns in smaller emplacements commanded the actual beachfront area. That's still several miles away, and now concealed by closer vegetation which would have been cut down when the guns were installed. Dozens of these batteries ringed the five invasion beaches. 

 

 

The x-shaped tank traps were installed here, and in thousands in the offshore shallow waters, precisely because tanks would not be able to overrun them.

We did not enter the site because it charged a 20€ admission fee (about $30 CDN!), but also because we were racing the clock to get to everywhere we needed to go. The tour company was running two of these tours back-to-back in the one day before our ship sailed again!

When we drove down from the hills at Crisbecq, we were met by this broad stretch of flat land, actually all of it marshland which was painstakingly drained by the Norman farmers. The Nazis heedlessly inflicted suffering and food shortages by flooding all the land again to deter invasion troops. The buildings in the far distance on the horizon are actually built on the higher sand dune which fringes the entire length of the beaches.

And then we arrived at the next stop, a memorial overlooking Utah Beach itself.

It's hard to look at this peaceful scene today, and to try to visualize the firestorm which erupted on this placid shoreline in 1944. What's even harder to visualize, though, is the fact that in many areas of the five main invasion fronts, the landing troops actually made it off the gunfire-raked sands, and sometimes most of the way through the marshlands beyond, all in the first day. 

Somehow, these gnarled and twisted trees survived it all. I know I'm making an assumption which might be wrong, but trees that grow in windswept environments often live to great ages without ever growing to great heights. To my inexpert eye, these look like they might very well have been here eighty years ago to greet the invaders. At all events, they certainly seem to be here to stay now.

Across the road, a direction sign includes names that would be familiar to many a veteran and many a students of the D-Day landings.

Needless to say, the Nazis in 1944 had removed all road signs to avoid giving the invaders any help. One of the names on the sign, "Ste Mère-Église" points the way to the country town which was our next stop, some miles inland from the beaches.

 

In Sainte-Mère-Église, there stands another highway sign with memorable names.

 

The real attraction of  Sainte-Mère-Église (the name translates literally as "Holy Mother Church") is the town's medieval church.

It looks like many another medieval village church -- until you look closely at the side of the tower.

What appears, at first glance, like a ghoulish Halloween prank is an actual representation of what happened to U. S. paratrooper John Steele during the landings of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions in the early hours of June 6, 1944. Steele survived by hanging on the tower, pretending to be dead, for over two hours until he was taken prisoner. Many of his comrades were killed  by gunfire as they descended or were caught in trees. Steele later escaped and rejoined his unit. According to our guide, he returned to Sainte-Mère-Église for the yearly celebrations of the Liberation every year for the rest of his life.

Inside the church are two striking memorials in stained glass. The first honours all the soldiers involved in the Liberation, with figures of paratroopers shown on either side of the Virgin and Child.

The second honours the reunion held by the paratroopers at the 25th Liberation celebrations in 1969, as recorded by the deeply evocative words at the bottom of the window: "Ils Sont Revenus"/"They Have Come Back."

Out and around in the town, there are many banners and flags containing the stars and stripes of the American national flag. Our guide told us that when the actual anniversary of the Liberation comes around each year, the houses blossom with untold numbers of American flags. The emotion seems as deeply and truly held here as it does in Holland for the Canadian soldiers who liberated that country not long after the events on Utah Beach and in Sainte-Mère-Église.

 

Upon leaving Sainte-Mère-Église, we detoured back down to the beach. One of the women had told the guide that there was a relative's name engraved on the main Utah Beach memorial, at another site, and she had hoped to see it. With the ready agreement of all on the bus, we made the detour. After that final short stop, there was applause and cheering when she climbed back onto the bus and announced, simply, "I found it."

 

And I was glad that, like me, she had managed to reach a place of significant family remembrance. It had been a meaningful pair of days for me.

 

To wrap up, here again is the updated map of our voyage.