safely home

Most of yesterday was spent waiting and en route. Since we were in no big hurry for getting back to the airport in Lisbon (Joel's flight was at 3:30pm, mine a little after 7:00pm), we slept as late as we could and still get breakfast, meandered down to the train station in the rain, and then took the train to the center of Lisbon and then a bus (which went all over the city thus affording us our only look at Lisbon; we also saw the St. Jerome monastery and the Belem tower from the train windows. Lisbon looks like a nice city; I hope we can actually visit it someday) to the airport. We were both able to check in, which was expected for Joel but unexpected for me since some airports don't let you check in so far in advance if you have any checked luggage, and it was about 6.5 hours before my flight. But since we were both able to check in we were able to head through security, find something to eat, find Joel's gate, and then sit together until he had to board. I then had something like 4 hours to kill (and had used up all the books I'd brought with), and was a bit worried because I hadn't seen any bookstores yet. I finally found a map of the terminal and found where the stationer was, and was almost completely thwarted by the fact that all the books they had on the shelves were in Portuguese. Thankfully, persistent looking turned up a small turnstile of books in French, and more persistence lead me to the one of books in English. Picked up two books (list price $7.95, purchase price ~13EUR, grrrr...), of which I read one while waiting and am about 100 pages into the other. Had an uneventful flight back, landed within a minute of the scheduled time, was one of the first people off the plane and the first to the luggage belt, which by that time already had our flight's luggage on it but I didn't see my bag immediately so I went and purchased my train ticket, and when I turned around there was my bag directly in front of me, so I grabbed it, got to the train hall 2 minutes before the next train to Amsterdam central was leaving, and got into Amsterdam central with enough time to walk over to the bus stop and have to wait only about 7 minutes for the next bus. Our plane landed a little after 11pm, and I got home a little before midnight, by far one of the smoothest and quickest post-flight experiences I've had.

So now I've covered everything except for Monday and I will write about that, but I should get back to work now.

catching up on Monday

As part of the extra niceness of this vacation came from the fact that we weren't over-planned, we wanted to keep Monday low-key and relaxed. One of the maps we'd seen had marked as an interesting geological location a point west of Cascais on the coast, so we decided we'd walk out there; it's called the Boca do Inferno 'mouth of hell'. We left around 11:30am, with the rest of our leftover picnic stuff and this time properly dressed, as it was pretty overcast. Luckily, the wind was from the west and we were walking west, and by the time we got to Cascais, most of the dark clouds were beyond us. We walked along the coastal road the entire way, not being entirely sure where the Boca do Inferno was, but figuring we'd see signs. For most of the way, the road was pretty much empty; occasionally we'd pass another couple coming the other direction, or see one going the same way, but there's so many little side paths which go off from the road down towards the sea (at this point, there's no beaches, just very high rocky cliffs) that we kept meandering down that it was easy to lose the other people. The first foot-path that we followed lead us to a field of big rocks where we sat to eat lunch. With our backs to the east, you could see nothing but sea and rocks and it was so extremely quiet and peaceful.

The Boca was pretty impressive; there's a huge circular hole in the top of the cliff face where the rocks weathered and fell through. Joel had control of the camera, but I'm pretty sure we got some neat pictures. It was much closer to Cascais that we'd thought, so when we saw a neat looking lighthouse further west, we decided to keep walking instead of turning around. But first we both agreed that we needed ice cream. Once the clouds had passed, it had been relatively sunny and nice, though still cool enough that I kept my light jacket on. When we had our ice cream, another slew of black clouds rolled in and it started raining, not heavily but wet enough because of the strong wind, so we crouched in the shelter of some rocks for a bit. It blew over very quickly; I have to say, the weather we had there reminded me a lot of Amsterdam, excessively changeable. I suppose that shouldn't have surprised me so much, since in both cases we've got weather blowing in from the Atlantic/other large body of water.

About halfway between the Boca and the ligthouse, we saw some steep stairs going down the side of the cliffs, and followed them; they went about half way down with a hand-rail and then turned into steep cement stairs with no hand-rail that about 8 steps down simple disappeared. We wouldn't let a little thing like no stairs stop us, so we climbed the rest of the way down on the rocks, to an area of relatively flat rock. It had gullies and grooves worn into it by the water and for a long while we just sat there watching the waves throw up water onto the rock and watch the water drain. There's something so mathematically fascinating about watching waves and water. You never know exactly what it's going to do next. I found from this trip that I really like being by the ocean. I could sit and watch the waves on the rocks for hours on end. And when you're so close to the coast, it's impossible to feel crowded, when you can look out on this huge empty expanse. If we ended up living by the coast some day (so long as it is not a coast which gets hurricanes!) we'd both be pretty happy.

About when we reached the lighthouse we found a map, and all told out and back we walked about 15 km. We spent something like 4.5 hours doing so, at a nice leisurely pace. But by the time we got back to Cascais the sun was out again and it was almost warm (to the point where I was thinking that maybe it would be nice to take off the socks and sandals and go wading; I still was not convinced that I wanted to go swimming!). It was still late afternoon and we had no real plans to do anything else, so we picked a nice cafe overlooking the coast and had margaritas. I'm not really a beer drinking, and while I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, it's infrequent that I sit back and think "Gosh, I'd really love an alcoholic drink". I did that day, and even though mixed drinks are much more expensive in Europe than in the US, we decided to heck with the costs, we were going to treat the day as if it was our anniversary and do our celebrating then. As we sat with our drinks, the clouds came over again and though it didn't rain it got pretty cold, and we hadn't had the biggest of lunches. So we eat got a bowl of soup and also ordered one of the appetizers on special, roasted Portuguese sausage. Yum!

After that we meandered back to the hotel room, napped for about an hour, Joel caught up on his email and I read for a bit, and then we went out for dinner. We went to a place he'd eaten at the first day he was there, which we found out was owned by the same people who own the place where we had pizza together; the restaurants have the same name and are across the casino square from each other, but are completely different in style. We went all out at dinner. In Portugal (or at least the parts of Portugal we were in), restaurants will bring out a selection of appetizers to your table. If you don't eat them, you don't pay for them, but if you do eat them, you do pay for them. Which, when you think about it, is a fantastic scheme. I bet they make a lot of money from this -- both from unsuspecting tourists who don't realize they'll be charged, and from people who know how the system works but can't stand the temptation. We decided to not even bother trying, and thoroughly enjoyed the garlic bread, soft new cheese, and pickled octopus they brought out. (Well, Joel enjoyed the octopus. I, on the other hand, did at least try a piece before deciding I don't like it. It didn't sproing like octopus that's been fried does, but it was just a bit too fishy for me). We ordered a half-bottle of green wine again, a different vintner (good but not as good as the Arca Nova), Joel had a dish of rice in a tomato sauce with mussles, clams, shrimp, and crabs, with cilantro and just enough spice to make it mildly hot, but not overpowering, and I had a skewer of mixed meat (chorizo, pork, beef, bacon, and what looked like beef and smelled like game, and almost certainly had to be duck). It was one of the most fun meals I've ever eaten, because of its presentation. The skewer is a huge wrought iron thing with a ring on the end, and it comes hanging from a wrought iron stand with a wooden base inlaid with granite. I would love to have skewers like that! Such fun.

So that was our anniversary dinner, and our last day in Portugal. I may not have gotten the warm and sunny Mediterrean holiday I was expecting, but I did come back with proof I'd been on vacation: even the clouds and the fact that I was wearing my hat most of the time on Monday, I managed to get a nicely lobster colored face. I can't remember the last time I burned my face so badly -- maybe the last time I was at summer camp in high school? Unlike Joel who has incredibly fair skin for all his hair and eyes are dark and who burns pretty easily, it really takes something tremendous for me to burn. I think even with the uniformly bright pink visage I came back with, only my nose was burned badly enough to peal. But, yeah, you can definitely tell that I was someplace sunny just recently. :)

Oh, something else. Right on the outskirts of Cascais there's this huge house that looks like it's been grafted on to the back end of a castle. When we'd walked past it in the morning, we'd heard a number of roosters crowing. Coming back, we stopped to watch the tide going out from the little moat around its base, and suddenly heard a loud, strident "Miau! Miau! Miau!" I turned to Joel and said "I don't know if that's a cat, a child, or a chicken!" He said he thought it was a cat, I said I thought it was a chicken. Turns out I was closer -- a moment later walking up a path on the other side of the moat, I saw a peacock! No doubt at all, that's what made that awful noise.

If anyone is looking for a place to go on vacation, I can highly recommend it. It's relaxing, easy and cheap to navigate (the bus to Sintra was 3.35EUR, the train from Estoril to Lisbon was 1.60EUR, and once you're in Estoril walking to Cascais and the surroundings is extremely pleasant), has great food, and also pretty much everyone at restaurants and hotels speaks reasonable English. I would definitely go back if I have the chance!

Boca do Inferno

Cool, I found it on google maps.