Lovely Lisbon

Written on 23rd. Posted on 24th.

Saoirse says:

 On the first day we came to Cascais we just pottered around and then we went to a restaurant.  We were so tired that nobody wanted to cook. 

On the second day we went to see Hell’s Mouth.  This is a place where a huge wave crashes in.  All you see is white, white, white, and then blue.  We keep seeing waves crashing over the harbour wall.  They are coming down from Hell’s Mouth.  I bought a turtle made out of shells in a shop beside Hell’s Mouth. 

Hell's Mouth

Then we went to the Paula Rego art gallery.  She started doing modern art stuff, then she started doing human stuff, then there were humans in love with animals, then there were nursery rhymes and finally portraits. 

Outside the Paula Rego Art Gallery

We also went to a sealife museum.  They had lots of shells – it told me where they got them so I am going to look for them on our travels.  There were fake dolphins and stuffed seals and sharks and stuff like that.  We saw extinct stuff and stuff we have today.  We saw sharks teeth.  They had a statue of a girl made out of sand, shells and rocks in the front of the museum.

Later that night we went to the lighthouse.  There was just a small room with the bits of the lighthouse.  My mum told me how it all worked.  Then we saw a video on all the lighthouses in Portugal.

The next day we went into Lisbon on the train.  We went to the boat museum.  There were lots of boats.  It showed what the queen and the king’s room in the Yacht Amelia were like.  The queen’s room was much better.  It had 2 beds, it was much bigger and it had lots of chairs.  We saw a life-buoy with Yacht Amelia written on it.

Lifebuoy from the Royal Yacht Amelia

We went to Belém castle.  There were cannons all the way around it. 

Outside the Tower of Belem

We went to the archaeology museum.  We saw lots of jewellery from Egypt made out of gold.  We saw mummies.  We could actually see the bones of one of them.  There was a exhibition from an excavation of a Roman ruin.  They found lots of pottery and ruins of their ovens, that they called kilns.

We went to the cathedral and we saw Vasco da Gama’s tomb.  He was the first person to go to India on a boat from Europe.

Last night we went to the Santa Maria museum.  It was a house, which was built for an Irish man called Jorge O’Neill.  He made it for his daughter.  There were tiles on the wall brought in by him from an old cathedral.  I liked the one with Mary and Jesus and John the Baptist. 

Today we went to the park for most of the day.  First we went shopping to buy sweets and bread rolls for our picnic in the park.  Then we went to the post office to get stamps for our postcards.  We had to click a button to get our ticket.  When we went in it was on 188, but we got number 209.  We had to wait nearly an hour, so we were really caught there.  Then we went to a very, very, very big park.  We had a picnic there.  While we were eating lots of birds came over to us.  Then my Dad went home and we went to the playground.  We played lots of hurling.  Oisín and Fergal won.  It was 2-3 goals.  Then we came home.

Bye, bye, Saoirse

Fergal says:

Hello.

Cool Dude Fergal

The first day we went out to eat.  We were going to go to Skipper restaurant because we had a voucher for 10% off, but it didn’t work, because they weren’t doing food yet.  I saw an ice-cream shop where I really wanted to go, but we were going off for dinner so I didn’t get any that day. 

The next day we went to the Sea Museum.  We saw lots of stuffed seals.  Their fur was really fluffy.  We saw sharks and fish.  Some were fake models, but they looked like the real ones so we could see what they were like.  There were pictures of boats.  We saw one that raced against the Cutty Shark.  Then they turned it into a pontoon for storing stuff.  Then it was blown up by German submarines.  I can’t remember the name of it. 

Then we went to the Paula Rego art gallery.  It started off with really bad pictures, with people marrying dogs and cats and monkeys doing hairstyles.  Then it went to better ones with people loving people.  Then there were golems.  Then there were pictures for nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty,  Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, the Old Woman who lived in a Shoe and Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen. 

Then we went to Hell’s Mouth.  The waves crashed up through the hole in the rock and we could feel the spray on us.  There was a walkway, but it was closed.  We went into a shop and got some postcards, the one where Saoirse got her turtle made out of shells.  After that we went home and had lunch.

We were going to go to the beach, but it got too late.  So we went on a visit to the Lighthouse instead.  I liked the TV telling us where every lighthouse in Portugal is.  We saw how the light works.  The optics were there.  There is a thing that spins around and has bits on it that are blacked out and that’s how the lighthouse works its flashes. 

Waiting for the Archeology Museum in St. Jeronimo Monastery to open

The next day we went to Lisbon.  We went to lots of museums in Lisbon.  First we went to the Archeology Museum.   There were lots of religious stuff, with lots of statues of different stuff, with lots of different gods that people used to believe in.  It was cool.  We went into the Roman pottery section.  There was lots of different types of pottery that were made when the Romans were here.  The pottery was put in an oven to bake it.  Most were a mix of ovals and spheres.  Then we went to the Egyptian section.  We saw mummies, you could see the shoulder of one of them.  We saw a sphinx and another one like it with a ram’s head.  We saw some old flip-flops.  Mum asked Saoirse if she’d like ones like them because Saoirse is looking for flip-flops.

Then we went to the cathedral.  Vasco da Gama’s tomb was there and another tomb of a famous Portuguese writer.  They were both just there in the church.  It was very nice up at the altar.

Beside Vasco da Gama's tomb

Then we went out and we went to the Maritime Museum.  In the entrance there was a very big statue of Prince Henry.  The other people from his school that he sent on voyages out around Africa were all there as well.  Eannes was there.  He was the first one to go out past Cape Bodajor, into a place they called the great green sea of darkness.  They thought that if they went there that monsters would eat you and that the sun would be so hot that you would melt and that the water was boiling. 

Looking at the Routes of the Portuguese explorers

We saw lots of maps, where they started figuring out latitude.  It showed where all the Portuguese voyages went to.  Then there were boats, boats, boats and more boats.  In the big hall filled with boats.  There was a boat that Queen Elizabeth II of England went for a trip on when she came to visit Portugal soon after she became the Queen.  Then we had lunch in the museum café.  I had a sausage roll, but the sausage in it was like Dad’s smelly old sausages.  I did not like it.  So I had one of Saoirse’s breaded steaks, because she had two, which was very nice of her. 

Then we went to see the Tower of Belém.  It was very good.  It had a lot of steps to go up to the top.  It was very tiring, but very good exercise.  We saw the bastions.  It was very cool.

It was bucketing rain and it was all very wet so we came home. 

Yesterday we had a very nice restaurant and all had lunch. 

Today we went to the park and had a picnic.  We played hurling for half the time.  Me and Oisín are the champions. 

At the playground

Fiachra says:

Hi

Fiachra in new Sailing Gear

We went to a café the night we arrived.  Nobody wanted to cook because we were so tired. 

The next day we went to the Sea Museum.  There were stuffed seals and sharks.  There were boats like the Cutty Sark and another one that raced it on the Tea route to China. 

Then we went to the Paula Rego art gallery.  Her pictures were very stupid at the start, but I liked them when we got to the Nursery Rhyme pictures.  I liked the Old King Cole one. 

Then we went to “Boca da Inferno” – Hell’s Mouth.  There were waves crashing into the mouth.  They made a very loud sound as they crashed through the arch.  Then we went to the shop and bought lots of postcards. 

Then we came home and had some lunch and then we went out to the lighthouse museum.  It was very small and there wasn’t a lot in it.  There were lighthouse optics.  They had all sorts of bulbs used in the different lighthouses. 

The next day we went into Lisbon on a train.  We went to the Archaeology museum.  We saw Roman kilns with the pottery that was made in them.  There was a lot of Portuguese glass and a full section on how it evolved over time.  There was also an Egyptian section.  There was lots of gold and -flops made of reeds.  Then we went to the chapel beside the museum.  We saw Vasco da Gama’s tomb and the tomb of a Portuguese writer.

Fiachra with Prince Henry the Navigator

Then we went to the Maritime museum.  We saw lots of boats.  There was a model of a boat, which was taller than Fergal.  There were loads and loads of models.  I liked the big one that was taller than Fergal. 

Model ship taller than Fergal

I saw a figurehead with a black dot on one of his eyes.  They are rebuilding a replica of the boat that it came off and it will go on that boat when it is made.  I saw a compass that is thrown out and it is dragged behind the boat, to get a reading, which is not affected by any of the magnetism on the boat.  Then we saw the actual boats which we had seen models of in the museum.  They were in a huge hall in the other side of the museum.  Then we went to the Maritime Café.  I had breaded turkey and chips. 

Then we went to the Belém castle.  It is really just a big tower. It had lots of cannons in it – about 15 or 20.  The tower was to guard the sea, to stop enemies coming into Lisbon.  On each floor there was a huge fireplace.  There was a well on one floor.  They had never seen a Rhinoceros and one was brought, but the boat sunk, but the rhino was recovered and stuffed.  They carved one on the side of the tower.

Then we went home and had a good nights sleep.

Today we went to the park and had a picnic, a very nice picnic indeed.  After that we had a game of hurling, for the first time in ages. 

Goodbye from Fiachra.

Oisín says:

Hello,

The day after we arrived we went around Cascais.  First we went to the Sea Museum.  It had stuffed sea animals and replicas of sea animals.  It had lots of documents about famous sailors.  One of them was a King who got his passion for the sea from his father.  There were Roman ruins, which were found under the sea in a glass case.  There were also very good fossils of trilobites.  We went into a fishing section, which showed the evolution of fishing from catching by hand up to advanced fishing equipment.  It also had a section on the women selling the fishing.  There was a section on navigation and how it evolved.  There were compasses, sextants, quadrants and old lifejackets.  Then we went into the section on evolution.  It was all about Darwins theory and the evolution of species. 

After that we went to the Paula Rego art gallery.  It showed how she started with lots of crazy modern art pictures that were just paint all over paper.  Then it started to take shape into freaky people and weird animals.  Then she went into a period where she did nursery rhymes, like Humpty Dumpty and Little Miss. Muffett. Then she went more mainstream and drew normal pictures of people and things.  One of the last things we saw was a satire on corrupt leaders called Prince Pig, who kills his first wife, his second wife dies and he marries his third wife.  It was satirical on corrupt leaders. 

Then we went for a walk along the coast and came to the Boca da Infierno – Hell’s Mouth.  It is a big archway where the waves crash through and well up into a big gorge.  Then we went home and had late lunch. 

Then we went out to the lighthouse.  It was an extremely small museum, just telling us how lighthouses work. 

The next day we went into Lisboa.  We went to the Archeology museum, which was in the Jeronimo monastery.  There were lots of stones with inscriptions and columns.  There were statues of boars, bulls, gods and people.  Then we went into the pottery section of how the Romans made caves with chimneys.  A fire was lit in the base and the head went up through the chimney to where the pottery was and it baked there.   These were called kilns.

Then we went to the Egyptian section.  It was all Egyptian treasures.  There were mummified crocodiles, a falcon and two people mummies.  One of the mummies was wrapped in the linen and half of it had rotted away so that you could see his/her shoulder.  There was a statue like a sphinx with a rams head rather than a persons head.  There was some string with reeds flip-flops. 

Then we went to the sacred treasures section.  There were some Celtic amulets made of gold.  There was a sheet of gold with dimples coming out of it.  I haven’t a clue what it was for.  There were also lots of gold earrings, jewellery and coins.

After that we went to the big cathedral – which was just outside the archaeology museum.  Inside it was massive.  Just inside to the left there was the tomb of the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama who travelled around the Cape of Good Hope and was the first to go by sea to India.  There was also a tomb to the right of Luis Vas da Camoes, a famous Portuguese poet man. 

Blending into the Picture of Henry the Navigators school in Sagres

Then we went to the Maritime museum, which was absolutely huge.  The first part was all based on the early Portuguese voyages which Henry the Navigator set up.  In the entrance hall there was a large statue of Henry himself and then ones of all the captains of the voyages.  There was a couple from England that we talked to about the Treaty of Torsedillas and they were asking us lots of questions about it.  Then we went through a section with models of ships from the early voyages right up to the present day.  In the last room there was a boat named Amelia which was used by the king of Portugal. It had a room set up the same as the kings cabin and the kings living room.  Then we went to the café in the museum. I had a weird spicy chicken thing, which was actually pretty nice.  Then we went to an art shop and my Mum bought a plastic container for holding our maps and me and Fiachra bought a felt-tipped drawing pen. 

In the tower of Belem

Then we went to the Castle of Belém.  In the basement there was a gunpowder store next to prison rooms.  They held about 100 people in a total space of about 40 square metres.  On the bottom floor there was more than 180 degrees that 12-15 cannons could fire out.  Upstairs there was a large courtyard with bastions on every corner.  On the next floor there was a courtroom where courts were held.  The next floor was the kings rooms.  On the very top there was a big courtyard with more bastions on every corner.  There was also a thing about rhinoceros.  It was brought from India on a ship which sunk.  The sign said the poor rhino was “recuperated” and then stuffed.  We think it should have said he was recovered.  They had a fascination with rhinos, so there was a small rhino head sculptured on the side of the castle.  It was quite small, about the size of my head.  It pointed North West off the castle. 

Rhino on the side of Belem Tower

Then we went home.

We went to bed very tired. 

Yesterday we went to a house designed and built by an Irishman called Jorge O’Neill.  He built it and lived in it with his daughter.  There were tiles which covered most of the walls of the house were all taken from churches and brought in when the house was being built.  There were a lot of Holy Mary and Jesus and the angels.  There was also one of a goblin with a massive club beating up a man with strange, clawed hands on the floor.  Because we were Irish the lady minding the museum brought us down to see an old painting with all the months of the year on it.  It had the various planting and tilling tasks for each month.  She spoke no English or Spanish and she was trying to ask us something about it, but we didn’t know what the question was.  We just told her that it was really lovely.

Then we went for lunch in a café.

Today we went shopping and got some bread and lots of stuff for a magical lunch in the park.  We went to the post office and posted some postcards.  It took about 45 minutes to get stamps because they were so slow.  We came back to the boat and got our gear for the park. We went to the picnic tables in the park and had a lovely lunch in the park.  Then we went to this big playground and messed around for a while on things you hang upside down on.  Then we went onto this pitch area and had a hurling match.  Fergal and I won by a goal.  We came home all muddy.  Then we went for a shower and we came back and started writing the blog, and writing the blog and writing the blog.

Lucina says:

Through the Looking Glass

We are having a great time here.  The weather is significantly better than it was when we were in Porto, which is always a good help.  We took a day or two to recover from the long passage here.  We have done a lot of exploring around Cascais and also done a trip into Lisbon.  We had planned on moving quicker, but there is really still a lot of interesting things to see in Lisbon yet and I’m sure we could spend a week in itself up in Sintra too.  It is even very relaxing just walking around the town here.  There is a fantastic park just directly across the road from the marina and everything is in very easy walking distance.  We have seen a lot related to the Portuguese explorers, which is very topical and catching the kids imagination.  Seeing the evolution of navigation instruments is also very real as they are used to all the instruments we now have.