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One thing you will see in every single souvenir shop in Portugal is a rooster. It isn’t just any rooster, either, it is of a very particular and ornate design. The rooster is seen on nearly everything that can hold the image of the rooster (magnets, oven mitts, pins, keychains, … Continue […]

I have now been in Portugal for several days, and I have some random wisdom to share. Continue reading The post Iberia Day 4.5: Miscellaneous Portugal appeared first on Tin Lizard Productions.

I have become a believer in traveling very light when flying internationally. I can usually get by with one carry-on piece of luggage and a decent-sized under-seat bag, even when traveling for a couple weeks at a time. That means I usually only have four or five changes of clothes. … Continue […]

We had an amazing food day today, in Lisbon and Sintra! Breakfast at The Folks in Lisbon: Turkish eggs (poached eggs in yogurt), French toast with berries, tiramisu latte Lunch at Paco Real in Sintra: mushroom risotto, gigantic beers, and the most perfectly cooked octopus I have ever encountered. […]

The second half of the day, after our lunch, was spent at the Pena Palace, a stunning building that sits atop a small mountain over Sintra. It is an eye-catching Romanticist collection of towers and walls, with huge sections painted school bus yellow or rich, carmine red. Ornate carvings cover … […]

Today was the first day that Fes and I met up with “the rest of our group”, aka the folks we would be sailing with on the following day. Our group is a College of Curiosity travel group, who get together to do travel (usually cruises) a couple times per … Continue reading The post Iberia Day […]

Hi, folks! I’m sorry if you were following along with the Iberia adventures and were left hanging after Day 4. Time got away from me, I had no cell phone access in the evenings for half the trip, and I picked up a nasty cold somewhere between Gibraltar and Malaga. … Continue reading The post […]

Let’s get down to it: Lisbon has excellent food. Everything I’ve eaten thus far has been a delight. Everywhere you go here, there are restaurants of every nationality next to Portuguese fare. There are obscene numbers of cafes and gelato shops. The waterfront has unbroken rows of seafood […]

One of the most iconic sights of Lisbon is the Rua Augusta Arch, a massive triumphal arch that faces the river on one side and a large promenade of shops on the other. Thousands of people buzz around the place at all times, shopping, eating at restaurants, and watching buskers. … Continue […]

I’ve long believed in visiting flea markets and thrift stores during travel. There are few better ways to really know a place than by digging through its junk. Thus, when I learned that there was a flea market in Lisbon every Saturday and Tuesday, I knew exactly what I was … Continue reading […]

Today, I slept unexpectedly late, coming to life around 11am. This cut our Lisbon adventures of the day considerably, as many of the museums and tourist sights close around 5pm. But it was a lovely (and windy) day, so we quickly put ourselves together and did as much as we … Continue reading The […]

I was talking in previous posts about finding layers of history in these very old cities in Europe, where foundations have been built on other foundations for thousands of years. In our search for archaeology sights in Lisbon, we found a very modern hotel that had incorporated the former Roman … […]

These are just a few more random things from today in Lisbon. Continue reading The post Iberia Day 2.10: Miscellany appeared first on Tin Lizard Productions.

Sardines are a thing in Portugal, a culinary icon of the country. In Lisbon, you’ll see the fishes represented in tourist shops next to shot glasses, tiles, and a particular rooster. (More about the rooster in later posts.) In fact, at the Lisbon airport, there is a sardine throne. A … […]

Back when I lived for a very, very short while in Spain, I was housed only a couple blocks from the grand cathedral of Toledo. 25 years ago, there was something I saw in the cathedral that I’d never seen before: a wooden table/box with lines of light bulbs on … Continue reading The post Iberia […]

I wrote yesterday a little about the unusual sidewalks in Lisbon. Today, I have better photos. The sidewalks in the older parts of Lisbon are made entirely of hand-hewn and hand-placed bricks. This started after the earthquake of 1755. During reconstruction, someone realized that it would be nice […]

Tucked into the heart of Lisbon is Livraria Bertrand. It is a bookstore, which is already great, but what makes it truly special is that it is the oldest operating bookstore in the world. Established in 1732, the business even survived the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, though not in … […]

In today’s hunt for archaeology fun, we continued onward (and uphill) to the Carmo Archaeological Museum, which is built inside the former Carmo Convent, which ceased to be with the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Friends, I was not prepared. See, the convent collapsed during the earthquake, and was […]

We were thus far today stymied in finding Roman ruins to oggle, so our next visit needed to be surefire: a museum featuring an excavated Roman amphitheater. Once we climbed up enough hills to reach the place, I was pleasantly surprised that you can just walk into the main dig … Continue reading […]

As we walked out of Lisbon Cathedral, we walked about about half a block before we encountered the Church of Saint Anthony. Fes remarked, “Who puts a church in front of another church?” The answer is Lisbon, apparently. This church is free to visit. There are only a few rooms … Continue […]