A day with Bruno

Monday, January 8, 2023

We officially went to bed about 8pm last night, but I briefly fell asleep a number of times trying to type, then just zonked out on the keyboard at the end. We were both SOUNDLY sleeping when my alarm went off at 11:05 pm. AAUUUGGHH. Apparently, I set an alarm for our morning nap and didn’t realize it was for pm instead of am. Keith got right back to sleep, but I didn’t. Darn.

We went to our hotel breakfast at 5 minutes to 7:00 – hoping to grab something very quickly. We had an 8-minute walk to meet our tour at 7:15 and it said don’t be late. We gobbled some of the incredible breakfast buffet and dashed at 7:05. We made it with a minute to spare.

We went in a van with a couple (have a property inspection company) from Kansas City and a couple (retired from American and Delta) from Dallas and our guide, Bruno (from south Florida, with a Brazilian mother and American father). He has an 8-year-old, Chloe, and his wife was having contractions all night, awaiting their new daughter, Cecila. He said he doesn’t get paid if he isn’t at work, so he will just be lucky if he is there for the birth. He has tomorrow off, so fingers crossed.

We set off out of Lisbon. He said it was not required to wear seat belts in the backseats, and not to worry because we wouldn’t be doing anything crazy or speeding. Then we went like a rocket past all the cars on the highway. I don’t know that we were speeding. Maybe all the other cars were just driving oddly slowly.

Pena Palace in Sintra was originally a monastery (the red part in the pictures) in the late 15th century. It was badly damaged in the big earthquake, fire, and tsunamis of 1755 (do you know about that day? Bad day. I had never heard of it before yesterday, because I know nothing about Portugal, but a 9.0 earthquake knocked most of Lisbon area down, including candles on All Saints Day, which caused a massive fire, only some of which was put out by two tsunami waves, two-thirds of the population died. Bad) and left to decay. In 1838, King consort Ferdinand decided it would make a great summer home and started fixing it up, then adding on. Construction lasted 20 years, two years longer than the Queen’s life. Ferdinand lived there for the rest of his life, and according to several statues within the palace, he looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. The three kings after him used it until the republican revolution in 1910 when the monarchy was voted out of power. (Two years after the king and his son were assassinated.) The republicans thought it would be a good idea to make some money off the deal and opened it as a museum not long after the royal family left for exile in England, so it conveniently still has all the stuff they left behind. Nice.

We got to the parking area about 8:10 and had a custard tart from Bruno. It was not from the original tart place we visited yesterday, and it indeed tasted different. Still very good. We got in line at 8:15 – the only people anywhere to be seen. Bruno likes being first in the line – going into all of the rooms without anyone in front of us. I think that is very nice, too, but we would have liked 5 minutes more for breakfast. Of course, I took pictures of every room, but all of my pictures of the backs on the KC couple and Bruno in them. None of them were taking pictures, so it was a little bothersome until I decided it wasn’t. (Oh! I forgot to say that we drove up up up hillls to get to the parking, then we walked UP, UP, UP to get to the palace. We got there before everyone else, but I was NOT FAST, and I was a bit huffy and puffy. UP UP UP!)

Notice the window in the red part to the left. Below this picture is a picture of that stained glass window from inside – Virgin Mary, St. George, King Ferdinand holding a model of his idea for the palace expansion from the original monastery, and Magellen. The other picture is taken by holding my phone up to the stained-glass window itself and taking a picture of the window in the model Ferdinand is holding. Talk about detailed plans!!

The second palace of the day was Quinta da Regaliera. It has some old bits but was mostly built in the early 20th century by a guy who just had some ideas. There is a house and church, but much more interesting are his wells and grottos and caves. The large well has a 80ish-ft tall spiral staircase going around its edge. The guy added some Knights Templar stuff and Dante’s Inferno stuff and Freemasons and other stuff. At the bottom of the well there is a stone compass with a Templar cross. It was never used as a water source. Supposedly, those seeking enlightenment would be blindfolded and sent down the well. At the bottom there are three caverns – the dark mouth to hell, the limbo mid-light one, and the light. When you found the light, you were enlightened. Or something. The caverns were cool. It was very Disney-esque. It really doesn’t make any sense that the guy would have manufactured fake rocks and all, but they are top notch rocks. Very attractive and easy to navigate. We were not blindfolded and just wandered around all the places. We also went into the labyrinth cave to see the ducks that swim in the dark – they were just sleeping on the edge by the outside, Keith and I went all through – we had to use phone lights because it was just pitch black with lots of puddles – while the rest walked in and walked out. They were sitting on the bench, waiting for us after. Sad for them.

Then we went to lunch. I have been on a lot of tours and a lot of them have offered lunch. I wasn’t expecting much. My expectations were wildly exceeded. We started with green melon (from Bazil, but local during the summer), cheese (what kind? really good kind), olives (some good, some not) and red and white wine. Keith tried the white wine and said it was really tasty (what? who?). There were ham legs hanging all over the restaurant that were aging. The ham was like prosciutto – super thin and delicious. There was talk of the legs going for $1000 or more, and this is the home of Iberico ham, but there is no way that there was a plate of super expensive ham on the table and no one made us fully appreciate it. Everyone tried it, but Keith and I just ate it all up before they took it away, because C’MON. You gotta eat your ham when you want your ham. The ham and melon were separately excellent, but together was just wonderful.

Menus in Portugal (and just Europe in general) have not gotten the message about selling your product. Last night and today our menus were white paper with lists on them. Spaghetti with mushrooms, pork with potatoes, beef steak with egg. Assumedly all accurate, but hardly really letting you know what you are ordering or making you really want one thing over the other. Chicken. Chicken with mushroom. Chicken with sauce. It actually makes me laugh out loud thinking about it. I ordered beef steak with egg because Bruno said it would be Portuguese style; that it was basically the national dish. I was in for that. It was incredible. The sauce was so good you wanted to lick the plate, except that there was so much food I couldn’t even finish all the french fries – that were soaked in sauce. Even the egg was so tasty! Keith ordered shrimp moqueca with coconut sauce because Bruno recommended it. It was amazing. The sauce was especially amazing. Everyone at the table gushed over their delicious meals. We sat and talked, and it was so leisurely and delicious and special. THEN they said what would you like for dessert? Every dessert looked amazing, but I went with profiteroles with hot chocolate. I could definitely have licked up that chocolate sauce, too, but the bowl was too deep. Keith got the national dessert, milk pudding, which was actually a flan with a fabulous caramel sauce. Did you know Portugal had fabulous sauces? I did not. Oh! We also ordered a Coke Zero and it came in a bottle! That was a first for me. And not a tiny bottle, a regular bottle. What a meal.

After lunch it was raining. Solid RAINING. We got really wet stopping to see the sights along the coast. The waves were big – and we saw a bunch of surfers. Bruno said the waves were probably 8-foot, but they looked bigger than that to me. It was so interesting how wide they were coming in – just a long, long line of wave that all crested at once.

Bruno just sent a message that he doesn’t think the baby will come today, but he is betting on tomorrow. His first daughter’s birthday is February 8, so January 8 was going to be so nice and organized, but babies just never pay attention to the details.

We stayed in all evening, because I was too full for dinner. Keith walked around the corner for a Doner kabab, and I ate the roll I stole from breakfast, in case of emergency hungry today.

Bruno took our pictures at several spots and made this nice video for us at the end: