We've made it to Lisboa!

Hola from Lisboa! (The Portuguese way to say Lisbon…)

We were up this morning about 7 and down for our last wonderful breakfast at our lovely hotel. Got everything packed up again and checked out about 9-ish.  So far, the weather has gone between pouring rain to watery sunshine!  Really interesting, to say the least!  According to our weather reports, we may not have rain in Lisboa, but definitely will along the way.

Obsidian Egyptian head

Actually a silver mask!

From Nimrud!

White jade pitcher

Carpets and porcelain

A lovely Chinese collection

And everybody needs a Della Robbia!

Lalique Brooch 

Lalique Hair Ornament

Another brooch

Stunning opal bracelet

Sudden shower as we were getting ready to leave!

Oddest hotel room I've ever seen!

Sink area

Seriously?  A hotel corridor??

Vegetable samosas

Chicken Tikka

Prawn dish; excellent!

As we didn’t want to take the toll-road, we found several really nice local roads to get us to the capital, and made it in about 2½ hours.  We came in from the north side of town, crossed the river and then headed downtown. Really no problems, as R is a wonderful navigator, but at one point GPS Emmy started recalculating on us unexpectedly, which did send us into a flat spin for a minute or two.  Lisbon seems to be the melting pot for the long-gone Portuguese empire.  On the way into town, we passed through an area where the businesses posted their names in Portuguese and Chinese – a link to Macao? Also, many Indian restaurants – from ties to Goa?  In any case, it is a big city and a striking contrast to Evora.

Finally found our way to the DoubleTree Lisboa and dropped our luggage at the front door.  Then made three right turns and found our way into their parking structure.  Up into the lobby and check-in.

Turns out they have upgraded us to a room on the 7^th(top) floor, but of course it wasn’t ready yet. So, we left everything with the front desk and headed out to see if we could find some lunch or a glass of wine. One of the two things that I wanted to do in Lisboa was to visit the Gulbenkian Museum, as it contains some wonderful Near Eastern art, as well as a collection of Lalique works of art.  As we were definitely within walking distance of the museum, we decided to head in that direction.  However, just as we were passing the Sheraton hotel, it started to rain again, so we reversed direction and headed inside the Sheraton for 1) bathroom and 2) glasses of wine.  

Very much enjoyed the short sit-down in the hotel’s lobby, as well as excellent glasses of local Portuguese wines – white for me, and red for R.  By this time, the sun was once again shining, so we decided to be brave (we had left the umbrellas at the DoubleTree of course…) and go for it!

Almost made it, too!  In the lovely park, there are two museums – the Gulbenkian Foundation Collection, and the Gulbenkian Modern Art Museum. There is also a children’s art museum, and what appears to be the Gulbenkian Foundation and Theatre.  So … somewhere between the Modern Art museum and the Foundation Collection, it started to rain!!  We eventually made it inside the Foundation offices, and were able to stay there until the rain once again stopped.  So much for walking!

Once we made it to the Foundation Collection, we decided to stop first in the café and see if we could get a little something to eat.  We ended up splitting a vegetable quiche with green salad; pretty good!  Then to the collection!

The museum is really interesting, as the collection was put together by a very wealthy man who was grateful to Portugal for giving him a safe home during the second world war.  His artifacts ranged from Egyptian through Mesopotamian with a huge collection of beautiful carpets and tiles.  There was also an exquisite collection of 17^th to 19^th century paintings and sculpture, including Degas, Monet, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Turner and Rodin.  Additionally, he had a superb collection of Lalique jewelry and glass.  Incredible!

By this time, it was 4 pm and we were feeling in need of a break, so figured we’d return to the hotel. Our bags had been moved in, and we were directed to room 705.  So … to describe our room is a little bit difficult.  Think stark and odd.  First off, we stepped off the elevator, and there is one, long, black corridor – fits one’s image of a prison cell block!  We finally figured out that the room numbers were on the FLOOR; silly us! Why didn’t we think of that?  Opened our room door, but there was so much black and glass that we couldn’t figure out for a minute or two where to put the key card to turn on the electricity.  Think of a rectangle.  On the left as you walk in, you will come to a small private room lined in mirrors with very little lighting … that’s the toilet room.  Then, step out of the toilet room and immediately on your left is the sink area.  Take one more step, and you have a tub in the middle of the room, with half black glass panels on either side.  Don’t really know how we’re supposed to get in or out of the dumb thing, and that does worry me a bit.  Okay, immediately on the far side of the tub is one nightstand – it’s actually concrete sticking out of the wall.  Then the bed, and then a second higher desk height concrete slab sticking out of the wall. Then you hit the black glass wall. This opens up on a small balcony with two chairs and an end table between them.  Now, the hotel faces west, so that when we got back here about 4:30 pm the sun was absolutely blazing in.  Now to deal with this, you have not one but two motor-driven black-out shades that you can roll up and down.  

Finally, on the other side of the room, there is a cement counter about a foot and a half off the floor, with padding on about 2’ of it at the end.  That and the one chair at the desk area is the extent of the seating arrangements available in the room.  The so-called closet is so high that I cannot physically reach the hanging bar to hang things up!  And that’s about it!  So, do you think I like our room?  Yeah…right…If we weren’t married to Hilton’s, I think I’d leave.  [Note from Robert: We have, in our travels, found ourselves in quaint and charming hotels; you know, the kind that have the lightbulbs dangling on wires coming out of the wall.  Well, this DoubleTree is so modern, so sterile that I think we have found the other end of the spectrum.]

Robert had some bookkeeping to do, so I fussed around in the room until we decided to go out for dinner. Fortunately, there are quite a few restaurants in the area, and as Indian was sounding pretty good, we chose Ola Nepal.  It was about a 10-minute walk away, and we found it with no problem.  Small place, but very nice people and the food was excellent!  We ordered our basic Indian meal:  Vegetable samosas; vegetable pakora; chicken Tikka; prawn jalfrezi, rice and garlic na’an.  YUM! Stopped at a mini-market on the way back for some sparkling water, and now in for the night in our interesting room…can’t wait til tomorrow and tackling that tub!

Lots of love,

m

xxx