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!

 

 

European Circle Tour Part 7: The Cruise Begins

You just knew there had to be a cruise coming up, didn't you? 

 

This cruise is one of many billed as starting and/or ending at Rome. But there's a catch to that. It's an hour or more of open highway driving to get from the city of Rome to the cruise port at Civitavecchia. Taxis from Rome charge a flat rate of over 100 euros, which means that anyone travelling alone -- like me -- is definitely ahead of the game by taking the cruise company's transfer service. Plenty of others agreed with me, and the Princess transfer team filled up four coaches! Boarding was quick and efficient and I was onto the ship, bags dropped in my cabin, and eating lunch within about 40 minutes after we got to the pier. And here's the ship, Princess Cruises' Emerald Princess. It's my second time sailing on this vessel.

 

Princess Cruises photo.

The ship has just come off a 2-week drydocking which I assume took place at the Fincantieri shipyard in Trieste, where so many cruise ships, including this one, have been built. Regular visits to drydocks for safety checks and various maintenance issues are a routine part of all cruise ship operations. Sometimes a longer period in drydock will be scheduled to allow for a top-to-bottom refurbish of the public spaces or passenger cabins.

 

A voyage right after the ship comes from drydock might be considered a bit risky in terms of things not working, but so far the only glitch I've noticed with the ship is that there still isn't enough water to open all the pools. They're hoping to have all three pools ready by the end of Day 4. Otherwise, there are minor hassles with service on board since (I suspect) many of the crew may be new to their jobs, or new to this ship, or both. This is a 9-day transit cruise from Rome west, out of the Mediterranean, and north to Southampton in England, where the ship will be based for the summer season. Here you can see my entire route for the whole trip.

 

The first short leg took us from Civitavecchia to Livorno. That's the port for Firenze (Florence) and Pisa. Smart money says that hundreds of my fellow passengers took the 90-minute drive to Florence and spent the day there. Smug me says: I didn't have to. I'd just been! Instead, I went on a half-day excursion to the city of Lucca. If it wasn't as spectacular as the more famous places, it also was not nearly as packed full of visitors -- a definite bonus.

 

The old quarter of Lucca is a walled city. Here's an internet aerial view which depicts the relationship of the walled city to the much larger modern city which encloses it.

 

Photo/Map: Arne Müseler / arne-mueseler.com / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.de

 

Our coach had to park outside the walls of the old city.

 

 

We walked through one of the several gates in the walls, and convened outside the tourist information office. I'm not sure what purpose this building originally served.

 

 

I'm tempted to compare Lucca with the walled city in southern France, Carcassonne, which I have also visited, but there are more differences than similarities. One common feature, though, is the narrow cobblestone and flagstone streets. The cars and delivery vans which try to negotiate these narrow roadways have their work cut out for them at the best of times. When they find a party of tourists in the way, well....

 

We had one stop on the way into the heart of the old town, in a small square where a man sculpted in bronze was seated outside a typical multi-storey apartment house. Our guide informed us that this was the renowned Italian opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, creator of such legendary characters as Madame Butterfly, Tosca, and Turandot. The sculpture stands outside his birthplace, now a museum of his career.

 

 

We then moved on a short distance to the Piazza San Michele, site of one of the strangest looking churches I've ever seen. 

The real pride or hubris of that towering multi-arcaded facade becomes obvious when you go around the side of the church and then look back and up.

 

Any takers for climbing that crumbling staircase which seems to cling precariously to the back of the false front? For me it was a little too reminiscent of horror stories about staircases to nowhere. I don't think it is open to the public in any case, and this is likely a very good thing!

 

What is noteworthy about San Michele is that it continues to the full the Tuscan tradition of incredibly elaborate ornamentation and decoration. I suspect a bit of overt nose-thumbing at Pisa and Florence when Lucca was fully the equivalent of those cities in the wealth of its leading inhabitants.

 

It seems a bit ironic that the interior of this ornate structure is relatively plain to the point of severity. At one time, our guide informed us, the walled city of Lucca contained a total of 93 churches. Many no longer exist, while others (like this one) have been converted to other uses.

 

 

There are a couple of other interesting sights around the Piazza. One is this former palace, now a bank office, but still displaying some sculpture in the covered loggia on the front of the building.

 

Another commercial building now housing a bank plainly shows the brickwork of the centuries-old original -- and bear in mind that this is structural brick masonry, not just a brick facing or veneer as in modern construction.

 

One of the fascinating things about Lucca is that the tourists haven't taken over the town. There are still plenty of shops geared to the needs of the local residents. Clothing, hardware, shoes, food items, all are on display as you walk through the streets. And there's scarcely a souvenir shop to be seen anywhere. Of course, for a group of visitors who had to eat breakfast far too early, and won't get to lunch for quite a while yet, the food shops are especially intriguing! For example, the window display in this bakery...

 

 

...or the various sizes and shapes of pasta on show at this combination store and restaurant. The Tordelli Lucchesi in the upper picture is a particular local delicacy.

 

Near the bakery was this random piece of ornamental ironwork embedded in the wall, apparently "just because."

Our final stop of the organized tour was outside another church, San Frediano, dedicated to a particular local saint. The mosaic artwork on the exterior was the real eye-catcher here. Parts of this church date back well over 1,000 years.

 

Outside San Frediano was another lovely display. I took my time to enjoy this before it was time to head for our meeting point back at San Michele.

 

 An attractive final memory to carry away from an intriguing brief visit to Lucca.