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things I've only read about in books
May. 17th, 2008 11:30 amIt looks like I'm not going to quite get my sunny hot Mediterranean vacation here (because for the last week Estoril was rainy and cool and for the last hundred million years (give or take some) it's been on the coast of the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean), but I'm not too disappointed with this because the primary reason for coming here is here, and that's Joel. I had an uneventful flight from Amsterdam to Lisbon, and then stood in the longest taxi queue I've ever seen (thankfully, it was also extremely quick moving; there were always new taxis coming in and usually 3-4 loading up at any given time), before getting in one myself, pulling out the piece of paper I'd written the hotel name and address on, and pointing at it to the driver. He asked me either if I spoke Italian or if I was Italian (don't know which), and I smiled and said I was American and he explained that he doesn't speak much English. So it was a quiet taxi ride though after we'd gone blazing past the signs on the highway for Estoril (where the hotel is) and the Avenida Marginale (the road along the coast on which the hotel is), I was getting a bit worried that he'd misread or misremembered the hotel. We got all the way to Cascais, about 7 km beyond Estoril, and then started heading back the direction we came in, through the city, and at one point when I must've begun to look a bit worried, the driver turned around and said "three minutes", and sure enough a little bit later on he'd pulled into the entryway of the hotel where Joel's conference was held. This was the closest I've ever been to a five-star hotel. The doorman came over and opened my door for me (and also went to the trunk of the taxi only to find I had no luggage there), which I don't think I've ever had done for me before by a hotel staff person. Joel was in the lobby and since the conference had ended about half an hour previously he got his things and we headed back to his hotel (about 15 min. away, but a nice walk).
Later in the evening we went down to the beach; there's a nice sandy beach just south of the hotel, but I think it's going to be just a bit too cold to want to do any swimming, though I brought our swimsuits with just in case. This is the first time that I've ever actually seen the Atlantic up close, in fact, it's the first time I've seen ANY ocean up close. So that was pretty cool. There's a long path along the coast from that beach over to the east and we walked it as far as it could go, occasionally leaving the path and going down to the rocks below. That was so cool. First all, the geologic formations were amazing. There's long strips of rock that are at 90 degrees to the surrounding rock, like they were dug out, picked up and turned. We also found a huge boulder of shale with quartz striations running through it where the shale had weathered by far more than the quartz had; there were huge streaks of exposed quartz coming out of the rock. The shale is so non-robust that I could crumble it away from the quartz with my hands. But this was not the neatest thing. The neatest thing were all the little pools and gullies and channels that the rocks made up, which at high tide are completely covered with water and which at low tide are mostly completely exposed. There were tidal pools! I've read about tidal pools but I'd never actually seen one. There were limpets of various sizes (including ones with moss growing on them, which was surprising), clusters of salt-water bivalves (I think mussels, but maybe they were clams), ranging from the size of my little fingernail to the size of my thumb, tiny little shrimps, a couple of crabs. A couple of times we saw some guys in waders out among the pools picking the bivalves. I could've spent all day poking around down there, picking up shells, and pretty rocks, (and a huge absolutely clean fish-bone that Joel found), finding neat things in the pools, stomping over the stand (which is so firmly packed by the waves that you hardly leave any footprints), climbing on the rocks. It's the sort of thing I've always loved doing and I don't really have nearby opportunities to do any more. Joel commented on the same thing, that he doesn't get to go out and just see what neat things nature has as often as he'd like. So tomorrow (if it's nice) or Monday (if tomorrow is not nice) we're going to go up to the national park by Sintra and just go hiking for the day.
Today our plan is to walk over to Cascais and go to the Cascais citadel, which the little pamphlet in our hotel room describes as "a 17th century fort situated by the sea, on the western side of Cascais Bay. Small open air artillery museum."
Later in the evening we went down to the beach; there's a nice sandy beach just south of the hotel, but I think it's going to be just a bit too cold to want to do any swimming, though I brought our swimsuits with just in case. This is the first time that I've ever actually seen the Atlantic up close, in fact, it's the first time I've seen ANY ocean up close. So that was pretty cool. There's a long path along the coast from that beach over to the east and we walked it as far as it could go, occasionally leaving the path and going down to the rocks below. That was so cool. First all, the geologic formations were amazing. There's long strips of rock that are at 90 degrees to the surrounding rock, like they were dug out, picked up and turned. We also found a huge boulder of shale with quartz striations running through it where the shale had weathered by far more than the quartz had; there were huge streaks of exposed quartz coming out of the rock. The shale is so non-robust that I could crumble it away from the quartz with my hands. But this was not the neatest thing. The neatest thing were all the little pools and gullies and channels that the rocks made up, which at high tide are completely covered with water and which at low tide are mostly completely exposed. There were tidal pools! I've read about tidal pools but I'd never actually seen one. There were limpets of various sizes (including ones with moss growing on them, which was surprising), clusters of salt-water bivalves (I think mussels, but maybe they were clams), ranging from the size of my little fingernail to the size of my thumb, tiny little shrimps, a couple of crabs. A couple of times we saw some guys in waders out among the pools picking the bivalves. I could've spent all day poking around down there, picking up shells, and pretty rocks, (and a huge absolutely clean fish-bone that Joel found), finding neat things in the pools, stomping over the stand (which is so firmly packed by the waves that you hardly leave any footprints), climbing on the rocks. It's the sort of thing I've always loved doing and I don't really have nearby opportunities to do any more. Joel commented on the same thing, that he doesn't get to go out and just see what neat things nature has as often as he'd like. So tomorrow (if it's nice) or Monday (if tomorrow is not nice) we're going to go up to the national park by Sintra and just go hiking for the day.
Today our plan is to walk over to Cascais and go to the Cascais citadel, which the little pamphlet in our hotel room describes as "a 17th century fort situated by the sea, on the western side of Cascais Bay. Small open air artillery museum."
