The Bahblog

We went to Belem (a part of Lisbon) on Sunday to see the Monastery of Jeronimos. King Manuel erected the monastery as a "thank you" to the early Portuguese explorers for the discoveries they made. I have yet to receive a "thank you" quite this grand. Monks often accompanied the sailors, hoping to convert heathens to Christianity. It was financed in part by "pepper money," a 5 percent tax on spices from India. It is of Manueline style, which we later learned is one of the few "true" Portuguese styles. King Manuel was also the one to expel all Jews from the country.

Getting there was a bit of a mess. We planned to take the trolley, but it had a ridiculously long line so we walked to the metro.

We took the metro to Belem, but it turns out the metro station is a 45 minute walk from the monastery, so we ended up Ubering. Thus, we were a bit frazzled by the time we arrived at the monastery and we were greeted by a Disneyland-level line. Except there's no fastpass so we had no option but to wait. And there's no roller coaster at the end, so it was a bit of a letdown.

The only photo we have of how long these lines were are the ones Nate took of the a man's ridiculous shirt. Nate very much enjoys the English language shirts worn by folks who don't speak English as a first language, as they're often quite bizarre. I digress.

We waited about 30 minutes to get in to see the cathedral, only to find out that mass was happening and we could only go in the back half of the cathedral. Thus, we admired from afar. The columns are slimmer than Gothic columns and the ceilings are all one height. I also sat for a bit and listened to the mass, which was obviously in Portuguese. It was impressive, but after seeing some of the cathedrals in Spain it was a bit underwhelming.

After the cathedral we went to see the cloister, which had an even longer line. We waited in line for about 45 minutes, but Nate left at one point to wait in another line to get us pastel de Belem. Pastel de Belem is like a creme brulee tart and it made up for the long line to get into the cloister. The cloister was beautiful and is also Manueline style. It has gargoyles going around the perimeter and each gargoyle is a different animal.

We also stepped into the old dining hall, which is covered in beautiful tiles.

Our first attempt at lunch in Belem also involved waiting in lines. We tried to go to a recommended cafe, but the line was out the door and around the corner. We ended up waiting in line at a Portuguese fast food restaurant only to find out that they were literally out of everything. Next we tried McDonald's, but the line was just as long there. At this point we were tired of crowds and frustrated with everything, so we walked down to the waterfront and admired the Monument to the Discoveries, which honors Henry the Navigator. It's right next to a cool marble map that shows the routes of Portuguese explorers.

We were determined to get out of Belem at this point so we took a cab to the Gulbenkian Museum. Stepping out of the cab was sweet relief. It wasn't crowded, there was literally no line to enter, and it was free because it was after 2pm on Sunday! We grabbed a delicious lunch at the cafeteria (spinach quiche) and explored the museum.

The Gulbenkian is a small museum but it's very well organized and pleasant to visit. Its collection spans over 5,000 years. We started in the Egyptian exhibit, which seemed a bit small compared to the collection at the British Museum, but there were statues of cats so we were happy.

We then moved on to the Greek and Rome exhibit and the Islamic exhibit, which had some beautiful rugs.

From there, we saw the Far East exhibit, which had a lot of pieces of blue and white pottery that I swear my Mom owns as well. We then saw the renaissance painting collection, the Louis XIV, XV, and XVI furniture collection (I received lots of inspiration for decorating our new apartment), and the impressionist paintings.

We finished with the Rene Lalique jewerly collection.

It was a lovely museum visit and exactly what we needed after a long morning of waiting in lines. We had a lovely walk back to our AirBnB where we freshened up before going out to dinner.

Dinner was nice, but definitely not as good as O Marques. We were actually hoping to have dinner at our hostel but not enough people signed up.

We finished the day with another highlight - a Fado show. Fado is to Lisbon what Flamenco is to Sevilla. It's also known as the Lisbon blues as singers often sing about lost sailors, broken hearts, and bittersweet romance. Our show was organized by our hostel and our guide did a lovely job at explaining the roots of Fado in Lisbon's busy seaport. The show was wonderful. Each act consisted of a singer and two guitar players - one playing a Portuguese guitar and another playing a more traditional guitar. There are various "genres" of Fado music. The first singer's songs were fairly melancholic, the second was a bit more upbeat, and the last was a genre of gypsy Fado. It was fascinating to see the different types of Fado.

This was one of those days where there were a lot of frustrating moments and what felt like a lot of wasted time, but looking back that was only a small proportion of the day. It served as a nice introduction to Lisbon.