Local Flavors

With our return to northern Portugal, we were finally able to take our long-delayed trip to Guimarães. It was certainly worth the wait! (But that overview will be a different post.) In Gumarães, we stumbled across the  Museu Arqueológico da Sociedade Martins Sarmento. Housed in the former 14th century convent of São Domingos, the museum displays works of the famed archeologist, Martins Sarmento. Sarmento was known for his work on the nearby Iron Age Citânia de Briteiros and Celtic settlement of Castro de Sabrosa. He began his work at the  Citânia de Briteiros in 1875 and the museum housing his discoveries was inaugurated in 1885.  It is one of the oldest in Portugal, with a collection that includes thousands of pieces gathered from his lifetime, including many pre-Roman Celtiberian and Roman artifacts.  In addition to tiles, weapons and other tools, it showcases Celtic and Roman sculpture, gravestones and statues.  It took the sting off of the ru...

Viana do Castelo is a nice little town in northern Portugal near the Spanish border. It has what I'm told is a very nice beach, but we did not have time to take the ferry to it on the day we visited. The downtown is also nice, with tons of the types of tourist shops and restaurants that you would see at any beach town. It also has a medieval fort at the river's edge. But the real attraction is the  Santuario de Santa Luzia that sits at the top of a steep hill (accessible by a funicular.) Santa Luzia is a brand new chapel, by Portuguese standards - it was started in 1904 and completed in 1959. It sits on the site of what had been a medieval hermitage dedicated to St. Luzia - the patron saint of sight. A local cavalry captain, Luís de Andrade e Sousa, came to the hermitage to pray for help with his eyesight. When his sight improved, he instituted a fraternity to take care of the hermitage in 1884 in gratitude. The chapel (and later, a complete temple) was erected to serve...

It's either the creepiest example of recycling ever, or a sobering reminder of how fleeting this life is. Either way, the  Capela Dos Ossos, or Chapel of Bones, in Évora is among my  favorite Portugal side trips, so far. The bones used in this chapel are those of the inhabitants of the area who were disinterred from the local cemetery to make room for newer corpses.   Beyond the somewhat macabre idea of creating a chapel from actual human bones, the place held a weird beauty, as well. The bones weren't simply stacked to make a space - the chapel is laid out meticulously in the same baroque style as the cathedrals of the day - with "decorative" columns of human bones and high arches outlined with skull and filled with bone filigree. There was something oddly peaceful about the place. The only bones that were even slightly disturbing were the complete human skeletons laid out in display in one room - a reminder that these are not simply architectural elemen...

I’m studying Portuguese in Lisbon. There are a lot of people who live in Lisbon who do not speak Portuguese. The people in my class come from all over the world – from Canada, Venezuela, France, Albania, and, of course, Spain. Most of them live in Lisbon now. They want to speak Portuguese better for many reasons. Some want to be able to talk with their family members who are native Portuguese speakers.  Other wish to speak more correctly for work opportunities. One is a doctor who wants to be able to converse with is colleagues in Portugal. One is a journalist who needs to be able to speak fluent Portuguese to cover Portuguese news. Most of the class has about the same understanding of Portuguese. Our instructor is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. We are learning not only Portuguese grammar, but also regional differences. For example, she explained to us that people in the north of Portugal, slur their words together more. I noticed that when I rode the Metro in...

I n Portugal, history is everywhere. It is, in fact, literally just below your feet in many spots. In Braga, we happened upon a Roman bath in the underground car park for the train station. In Conimbriga, of course, an entire Roman city lay just below the top of a hill among farms.  In Viana do Castelo, the same was true for a Celtic settlement at the top of a hill.  In Evora, there was a Roman temple, beautifully preserved behind the walls of a slaughterhouse for centuries. In every major city there were castle walls and cathedrals from medieval times, and homes with foundations that went back many centuries.   Among the most fascinating finds on our trip, was  ruins - going back nearly 2,500 years - found under the foundation of the Millennium BCP Bank in downtown Lisbon. While finding a few Roman artifacts is, apparently, no big deal - dig a hole in Lisbon and you'll hit an urn - finding extensive remnants of Celtic, Roman and Medieval civilizations all in ...

Buskers - street performers - can be found in just about every tourist area of Portugal. The types of performances vary markedly by location.  In Porto, for example, most buskers are m usicians and are confined for the most part to the waterfront Ribeira tourist area - although there are a particular concertina (small accordion) player who works the Metro, riding it back and forth between the airport and train station with a small chihuahua on his shoulder.  Another notable busker was the old organ-grinder (with a pet chicken) who used to play  a barrel organ in  front of the  Mercado do Bolh ão (a famed Porto market and landmark) . The mercado is closed for a couple of years for total renovation, and the market is now in the basement of a nearby mall. Much cleaner and not nearly as interesting. I wonder what has become of all of the  peripheral  people who made livings just on the edge of the market as performers, trinket sellers, etc. There is no...

Wherever you go in Portugal you are surrounded by beautiful mosaics and tiles. Many of the buildings in cities such as Porto and Lisbon are covered in distinctive azulejo tiles. The sidewalks, city streets and largos are paved in calçada Portuguesa  ( Portuguese pavement ).  Together, these tiles help give Portugal its distinctive ambiance.  São Bento train station in Porto Capela de Santa Catarina, Porto The term azulejo comes from the Arabic word az-zulayj, or "small polished stone." While the name comes from the Moors, the actual decorative tiles were introduced from Spain in the 15 th  century. King Manuel I was fascinated with the ceramic tiles decorating the Alhambra Palace when he visited Granada, Spain. He decided to have his palace in Sintra decorated with the same tiles. Soon they were all the rage in Portugal, decorating everything from churches and palaces, to ordinary houses, shops, and train stations.  The til...