This Is A Lake - A travel blog

My last sunny, warm, beautiful day in Lisbon started with a dose of high culture: I took the metro to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, an art museum formed around an oil tycoon’s private art collection. It occupies two buildings surrounded by gardens, and a single €10 ticket gives you access to both. The first building, called “The Founder’s Collection”, contains ancient art, with a few extremely old Egyptian trinkets and sculptures (I was impressed to see a cup seemingly made from alabaster that was noted as dating from 2700 BC), Chinese pottery, Turkish tiles and carpets, and various European pieces of furniture and clothing. The diaphanous showing rooms, with all their straight lines and spotless wooden floors, made me feel like I had walked into the film  Columbus .  Aside from this wing, there’s another one for paintings, which didn’t interest me as much except at the very end, when I found a beautiful Singer-Sargent right next to a gorgeous Renoir. They also have a fe...

After spending most of yesterday in and around central Lisbon, today I took it upon myself to visit the Western side of the city, namely the neighborhood of Belém, home to quintessential Portuguese landmarks like the Tower of Belém or the Monument to Discovery. Belém isn’t really served by the metro, so it’s best to go by bus. When researching different bus routes to get me there from my hotel in Avenida da Liberdade, I found a bus that in about half an hour would take me to the Palacio Nacional da Ajuda. You know that I love me a good palace, so I jumped at the chance, by jumping on the bus! The Palacio Nacional da Ajuda is the Portuguese Royal Palace, which is well preserved and open to the public for €5 a ticket. It was built in the 18th century, which makes it more recent than other European palaces, and which also means that it is entirely Neoclassical in its style. Shockingly, even though it’s a beautiful place and well worth a visit, I was the only person in the entire palace fo...

This is going to be a closer, shorter adventure than others in this blog: I’m in Lisbon for a long weekend! I’d been meaning to come for ages so I’m super excited! I flew in last night from Paris, so I had all day today to discover the city. (Quick tips: I took the metro from the airport, which dropped me off at the city center in around 40 minutes. You can buy the local version of an Oyster card directly from ticket machines and load money on it, and then you can tap in and out of the metro, buses and trams in Lisbon.) It was sunny and warm today, but not hot, so I decided to start my visit with a nice long walk to get acquainted with the layout of the city. I walked down Avenida da Liberdade, through Restauradores and Rossio (two squares, the former big but rather empty, the second with a large fountain in the middle and a classical building at the head), and then I found myself right in the Baixa, the lower neighborhood of hilly Lisbon. The strets here are narrow, the buildings old ...