Cascais and Estoril

We didn't stay right in downtown Lisbon during our stay.  We were hoping to see the city, but also to enjoy the beach and some relaxing in Portugal. So we rented a condo just a little west of Lisbon in a small town called Estoril.  And just another mile or so west is the village of Cascais. 

 

First day on the beach near our condo!  Reunion with friends from home!

 

View up the beach in Estoril - we had dinner just to the left of this picture the first night.

 

This was one of the really nice buildings on the boardwalk by the beach. We never found out what it was!

This was the main square in Cascais, just up the beach.  Again with the awesome tile designs on the ground!

The Race in Lisbon!

The whole point of our visit to Lisbon was to run the Rock and Roll Marathon!  Well, half marathon for me and Beth, while Bruce ran the full.  The day before the race happened to be Beth's birthday, so we had a birthday dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe!

 The morning of the race, Bruce started the full marathon a bit west of where we stayed.  Beth and I took what turned out to be a THREE HOUR journey to the starting line.  First, a 15 minute walk to the train station followed by 30 minutes on the train into central Lisbon.  Then two subway trains took about 45 minutes more to a bus station.  At the bus station we waited 30 minutes to board busses that drove another 30 minutes out onto the Vasco de Gama Bridge where the race would begin. Our bus dropped off a 20 minute walk from the start line, so we pulled up just a few minutes before the race started.  NEVER imagined it would take that long!  

Here is a view of the race crowd on the bridge just before the start!  I know my finger is in the picture - I don't know why I do that, but I regularly photograph my finger.  Sorry.

 A view back towards central Lisbon from the Bridge start...

 Me and Beth getting ready to go!

So there are no more race pictures of us after this - it turned out to be a fairly hot day and we were sweaty and disgusting by the time we finished!  We grabbed lunch and bought dry tshirts at the mall near the finish while waiting for Bruce.  He came running in a little more than 2 hours after we finished and here he is approaching the finish line - still smiling!

It was a fun race and a fun day!  But we were thrilled to get back to the pool at our condo and relax for the rest of the afternoon and evening!

Lisbon - part 2

The western edge of Lisbon is a neighborhood called Belem and it has some of the best sights to visit in the city.  Our first stop (after Portugese pastries for breakfast snacks!) was the Jeronimos Monastary.   

 

Me in the chapel of the Monastary...

 Scott - maybe he is thinking about the meaning of life...the universe...lunch?

The Monument to the Discoveries sits just along the River.  Portugal boasts a wealth of famous explorers including Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, Prince Henry the Navigator and Batholomeu Dias.  Many of them started their journeys from Lisbon.  All the famous figures have a statue on the monument and they face west out into the Atlantic Ocean. 

Just adjacent to the Monument is this section of pavement that shows a map of the world and notes the famous explorers and where they went.  It was just recently featured on an episode of the Amazing Race!

Lisbon

Portugal!!  So this is only two months late. I went to Lisbon the first week of October to run the Rock and Roll Half Marathon with my running partners from Atlanta - Beth and Bruce.  Beth's boyfriend Scott came along for the trip as well and the four of us had a great time! 

 

Lisbon was so sunny and beautiful!  We took a bus tour around the city the first day and here are some highlights:

 

It is a little difficult to see, but the outside of this building is covered in small hand-painted tiles.  They were everywhere and amazing!

Also, they had the most beautiful sidewalks in Portugal that I have ever seen!  Everywhere they had these black and white paver-type of bricks making up the sidewalks.  This was in a particularly lovely boulevard through the center of the city, but even the regular sidewalk had them.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Although this is a couple of days late, Happy Thanksgiving anyway!!  I celebrated Thursday evening with a group of about 15 friends.  My friends Alison and Joe from Pennsylvania were our hosts and everyone brought the sides and desserts.  It was good fun and a delicious dinner.  Thankful to have made so many good friends over this last year in London!

I still need to catch up the blog from my trip to Portugal in October and I've just returned last week from Cambodia and South Korea.  Lots going on in the next few weeks before Christmas but I'll be working on this too!

French Wine!!

I would be remiss in my blogging about France I didn't mention the wine.  Ah, the wine!  I'm not a wine aficionado at all, but I do like it!  The Loire region makes some fantastic wines that are sold all over the world.  We did several tastings throughout the trip.  

So I mentioned before about the caves in the hills behind many of the Chateaux?  They have caves dotted all over the countryside and use them for wine storage.  The environment is suitable for storage because the caves are cool, consistent temperatures and consistent humidity.  Here is one that we visited just a little west of the town Chinon.

One area inside had some very OLD bottles in storage - I think they were maybe for show mostly, but that's ok.

A room full of barrels aging.

Wine at a tasting table - this one was delicious!!  Almost so sweet though that it was like a dessert wine.  I didn't care and bought two bottles to bring back to London.  Yummy!!

We drove through some beautiful country during the entire weekend and saw vineyards...

And LOTS of sunflowers!  As a matter of fact, we made multiple roadside stops to get pictures of the beautiful sunflower fields - they kept not cooperating and sagging towards the ground because it was raining.  But we finally got a sunny day!!

Amboise, France

The closest town to our Chateau in France was Amboise.  The Chateau d'Amboise is there and dominates the old part of the town.  We did not make a formal visit, but took a couple of pictures.  I also fell down the stairs outside this one and sported a HUGE bruise on my arm for a couple of weeks.  Nice.  

But it was a super cute little town and we enjoyed walking around, visited their market on Sunday where we both bought scarves (because what else do you buy at markets?) and ate some of the best meals I've had since moving to Europe.  Seriously.  I didn't even know I was into French food but it was amazing!!! 

Chateau Chenonceau

Chateua Chenenceau was our last stop in France before heading back to Paris.  It is one of the most famous in the Loire Valley and the tourist crowd was significantly larger and more obnoxious than anywere else we visited the entire weekend!  Chenonceau, along with Chambord, is one of the main stops that day tours from Paris will make in this region.  So LOTS of tour buses! 

 

After buying our tickets in a building near the parking and having our bags checked for contraband (NO picnics allowed!), we made our way down the grand entrance to the Chateau...

 

Here is it! 

This Chateua is very unique, in that it sits over the River.  It wasn't always like this.  The original Chateau here was only the building part you see on the left, with the turrets.  At some point after that an outdoor bridge was built to connect to the opposite bank of the river.  Then at an even later date, the rooms were built up over the bridge. 

 

Here is a look at the main gallery that is in the section on the bridge.  I thought this was the grandest room in the entire Chateau!

The Chateau has quite a remarkable history!  I'd love to tell you more details, but I can't remember everything and for some reason Wikipedia isn't working?  What I can remember is that the Chateau was primarily built and funded by a Frenchman who was some type of finance minister for the King.  Mostly he used embezzled money to build it!  When the King found out, he confiscated the Chateau and gave it to his mistress.  When he died, the Queen like it, so she claimed it back from the mistress and set up her residence and court here.  She was the one who built the galleries over the River and used the room above for balls and other court-related gatherings.  I'm sorry I can't remember which King it was. Pretty interesting though, right?

 

The Chateua had some nice gardens, although nothing nearly as grand as Villandry.  Here is a building that was part of the original structure.  I think it looks a bit like Rapunzel's tower in Tangled!

An outbuilding in the gardens...

Me and Lizzie, my travelling buddie!

I almost forgot another interesting story about this Chateau! During World Was 1, the gallery was used as a hospital.  During World Was 2, the River was the border for some time between German occupied France and the part still controlled by France.  The Chateau was frequently used as a means of escape for people in the Nazi occupied side! 

Chateau de Villandry

The afternoon visit was to the Chateau de Villandry, where our primary goal was to visit the gardens. Mission accomplished!  

Look at this fantastic dog statue!  I loved it. 

We didn't actually end up visiting the Chateau itself because we were there too late in the afternoon.  But the gardens were our goal to visit and they were amazing!

Chateau d'Usse

There are many chateaux in the Loire Valley that are open to visitors, so we narrowed our list down to visit three.  The first was Chateau d'Usse.  Wikipedia was not very clear, but it looks like the Chateau was originally built in the 11th century, but the current version was more from the 16th-17th centuries. Similar to the B&B, the back part of the Chateau was built into the hillside and there were tunnels underneath used for safe escapes into the forest several kilometers behind the Chateau!

Finally, Usse is renowned for being the inspiration behind the story of The Sleeping Beauty, written by French author Charles Perrault.  It does have a certain Disney-ish quality!

We were able to climb one of the towers...

And tour a portion of the interior.

This was the view down to the nearby Village of Usse.  I was sorry it was so overcast, but at least it wasn't raining and you get an idea of how charming it was!

The courtyard of the Chateau...

And the gardens down in front.

There was also a small chapel to the left of the Chateau and some caves used for wine storage.  We were there about 2 hours and the rain held off until we got back into the car.  Onto the next stop!