K’s Birthday Trip- Day 2- Sintra, Cascais, and Lisbon, Portugal

Our whole group hopped on a mini bus this morning and made our way to Sintra (about 45 minutes outside of Lisbon). 

Our first stop in Sintra was Pena Palace. Pena Palace is a colorful historical palace on top of a hill above the town of Sintra. Multiple Portuguese kings and queens lived in the palace (during certain times of the year) throughout the years after it was built. It was completed in 1854.

The road up to the palace was narrow and windy but the views (when we could see it through the trees) were beautiful!

Once we exited the bus we had to walk up a bit of a hill to make it the rest of the way to the palace. It sure was a beautiful walk!

Pena Palace from below!

I loved how colorful the palace was!

Me, Heather, and Mom!

We had a tour guide while we were here and most of the days of our Portugal portion of the trip. It was the same lady the whole time.

I must admit, basically everything she said went in one ear and out the other. She spouted out a lot of facts with no emotion or humor and I just couldn't pay attention to her. Good thing I wasn't the only person in the group and there were other people who were listening and asking questions occasionally.

Triton Gateway

My sister-in-law, Mika took a picture of me (the picture above this one) and then took a picture of herself. I, of course, had to include the picture of Mika. 🤣

Bedroom of King Carlos. According to the sign in the room the majority of the decorative pieces were original to King Carlos. 

Manueline Cloister inside of Pena Palace. 

Me and Heather at the Manueline Cloister.

It's so pretty!

Look at the details on this wall in the bedroom of Ferdinand II which was later the bedroom of Queen Amelia.

So beautiful and intricate!

Still in the bedroom of Ferdinand II (the picture above and below).

Great Hall of Pena Palace! Mika took this picture but I really liked it and wanted to share. 

The kitchen of the palace.

Courtyard of Arches! So pretty!

Kristina, me, Tricia, and Denise

So many pretty views no matter where you looked!

Me and Kristina

Sisters and Mom!

After exploring Pena Palace, we went back to the mini bus and we got dropped off in the town of Sintra. We had a few hours there to find food for lunch and explore the town. 

Sintra is a cute little town. 

Lara did a little research about restaurants in Sintra that had decent gluten-free options. So Lara and I made our way to a restaurant which was in a little different area, down a big staircase and up and down hilly roads (less than a mile away though).

On our way to the restaurant. 

We sat outside for awhile when we first got to the restaurant.

I liked this bright pink house across the street from the restaurant. 

They had some fancy glass water bottles at the restaurant. 

We realized later that it was common to have glass water bottles in restaurants but you could not take them with you even if you paid for them and didn't drink them all. I guess the restaurants have to return the glass bottles or they get charged extra.

I also liked this other house across the street from the restaurant.

It got a little windy and chilly as we were waiting for our food and so we asked if we could sit inside. Thankfully they had room inside the restaurant.

I got beef steak with potato gratin (not pictured) and vegetables. It was delicious!

On our way back to the main area of Sintra. 

Sintra!

And of course Lara and I had to get gelato after lunch! 

Another view of Sintra!

A fire truck in Sintra!

After we were done in Sintra, we got back on the bus and headed to Cascais, a coastal resort town not too far from Lisbon.

We didn't spend a ton of time in Cascais but it was a decent city. 

Walking around Cascais!

I liked the walkway here!

A few of us (Heather, Mom, Annie, Denise and I) bought ice cream at Santini, which is the oldest Portuguese ice cream parlor in Portugal. The company is 75 years old and uses the original recipes from when it first opened. They only use fresh fruit and natural ingredients in their recipes.

My mango sorbet was delicious!

Walking around Cascais after eating ice cream/sorbet!

Like I said earlier, we didn't do much in Cascais, but it was a nice town. 

After Cascais, we rode back to Lisbon and went on a sunset cruise on the Tagus River. We were on a sailboat. 

Although we were on sailboat, they did not put the sails up because it was too windy this day. 

Monument to the Discoveries (on the left) and the 25th of April Bridge!

Monument to the Discoveries!

The other side of the Monument to the Discoveries!

Commerce Square from the water!

This picture makes me laugh, I look like I'm posing like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. 🤣

The Christ statue is called The Sanctuary of Christ the King. It was inspired by the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I really like this picture of the Christ statue and the sail boat!

I love the way this picture turned out!

Sisters (Heather was in a different part of the boat)!

Sunset!

What an awesome sunset boat tour!

After the boat tour, we were taken back to the Airbnb. Some of us were kind of hungry, though, and wanted to find food near where we were staying. We had a hard time finding an open restaurant. 

We finally found one open but didn't eat until after 9 pm. It was interesting eating late two days in a row. I'm not used to eating that late, but my schedule was all messed up anyway so I guess it was all good. ;)

(In the picture above, there was a random mirror on the street as we were looking for food and I had to take a picture.)

Overall this was a good day with lots of history, beautiful views, and good company!

K’s Birthday Trip- Day 1- Lisbon, Portugal

My sister, Kristina, turns 50 this year. For her 50th birthday, she decided she wanted to have a girl’s trip to an international location. She chose Portugal for the first part of the trip with family members and friends. Then to Italy for just a family members portion of the trip. 

Kristina let us all know about a year in advance so we could plan accordingly. There were 13 people on the Portugal portion of the trip. There were six family members and seven of Kristina’s friends.

Since there were so many people coming on the trip, Kristina hired a travel agent to plan the Portugal portion of the trip. 

I arrived a day later than everyone because I couldn’t take off so much work. But the first day they didn’t have any official activities planned so by the time I got there on the second day I had only missed one activity (tuk tuk rides through Lisbon). 

I got picked up from the airport and had them take me straight to the Pastel de Nata cooking class. I arrived a little late but still got to help in the process and also eat some of the finished product. 😋

Pastel de Natas are Portuguese egg custard tarts and are popular in Portugal. 

Ricardo was our main teacher. 

The dough before we put them in the mini pie tins. 

Alicia filling the pie tins with the custard. The lady in the far left of the picture was the assistant teacher, Veronica. 

The finished product! I thought they tasted delicious!

At that point I hadn’t had any other pastel de natas but even after trying other ones, I still think ours were pretty good!

Our group waiting for the pastel de natas to come out of the oven. 

It was a fun (and delicious 😋) class and I am glad that I was to join them.

After the cooking class, we had some free time. So we were shuttled back to our Airbnb in vans. 

I hadn’t been to the Airbnb yet but it was a nice place. It was clean, in a good location, and it was big enough for all of us. I don’t think I took any pictures of the inside of the Airbnb. Oh well. 

The picture above was the view when you walked out the front door of the building and turned left.

Heather, Mom and I walked to a nearby pharmacy because Heather needed to pick up something there. 

The picture above and the next six pictures were from our walk to and from the pharmacy. 

I liked these doors and the colors of the shutters above the doors. 

I thought this was a cool looking car!

The church near where we were staying. 

Another cool looking car!

This evening we went to a dinner in another part of Lisbon. This picture and the next were near where we ate dinner that night. 

We had a multiple course dinner with musical numbers in between the courses. This particular type of music played at restaurants is called Fado music. 

It’s common in Portugal to have these types of shows. 

We had three courses and we had multiple choices for each course. (I did not get a picture of each course).

For my three courses I had: 

-Croquetes de Alheira 

-Free range chicken with poached egg (I’m not entirely sure if this is what I got for my second course but I think so). 

-Velvety Hazelnut Caramel and Vanilla

All of the people at our table at the Fado music dinner. 

One of the singers of the night. There were three singers, two ladies and one man. There were also two people playing musical instruments. All of the musicians were excellent!

My dessert! Delicious! 😋 

Another of the singers that night. 

We started dinner at 8 PM and did not leave until 11 PM. But it was a fun night with delicious food, good company and beautiful music. 

Overall this was a good day to start off my trip. :)

Washing Machine

One day at the end of August someone knocked on the door and said hey we have water coming down the ceiling of our apartment from your apartment. 

We soon found it was the washing machine causing the flooding. I had started a load about 5 minutes before and didn’t realize that the water was overflowing from the washing machine. I immediately turned it off. The carpet in front and around the washing machine was already soaking wet as well as some of the hallway carpet.

My brother and the downstairs neighbor immediately went to the front office and let them know. While they were at the office, I had been using towels to soak up the water. I think I got at least 6 bath towels soaking wet with water from the floor and could have been more if the maintenance people hadn’t come with the industrial size fans to put under the carpet. 

The picture above is what the hallway and my brother’s bedroom looked like for a few days.

I must admit this situation stressed me out. One reason was because the fans were so loud. Even if I went into my bedroom with the door closed, they were still loud. Also one of the fans had to be plugged in in the bathroom which meant we couldn’t close the door all of the way. So anytime my brother or I had to use the bathroom we had to let the other person know not to come near there until we were done. 

The first night after this incident, I asked one of my friends if I could stay in her spare bedroom for the night. Thankfully, she let me. I needed some calm amidst the chaos of my apartment. 

Since the load I had in the washing machine did not finish its cycle and I had no idea how long it would take the maintenance people to fix the washing machine, I decided I needed to go to a laundromat. I did the load that had been in the washing machine as well as a load of the soaking wet towels I had used to clean up the water. 

It was quite the adventure going to the laundromat. The machines only took quarters. So I had to get at least $20 worth of quarters, that was fun. ;) The laundromat was quite busy. Although I had brought a book to read, the place was a little too chaotic for me to concentrate on reading. I just listened to music and looked at my phone.

Here were some of the quarters I had to use the machines. A few days later the maintenance man came and fixed the washing machine in the apartment. (He found it was the sensor that told the washing machine that it was full enough). 

I will say this experience has made me appreciate having a washer and dryer in my apartment so I don’t have to go to the laundromat on a regular basis. In the past, I have lived without a washer and dryer in my apartment but the laundry room was still in the building. I have also lived in a place where I had to do my laundry by hand because there was no washer available anywhere nearby. These places were years ago though. 

I say all of this to say that I am grateful for having a washing machine and dryer in my apartment that doesn’t require quarters nor does it require me leaving my apartment. 
 

Visitor in Town

Back at the beginning of August, my brother who lives in Tennessee came to town for a day or two. 

On that Saturday morning he was here, I met Nate in downtown Washington D.C. and we walked to the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, and Lincoln Memorial. I didn’t take a ton of pictures while I was downtown but here’s a couple from that day. 

The Washington Monument

Reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial. We did walk all the way to the Lincoln Memorial too, but I did not get a picture of that. 

We were kind of in a hurry downtown because we needed to meet our other siblings (who live in the area) for lunch. 

I took the picture above at L’Enfant Plaza metro station. I don’t think I had ever been at that station before and I thought it looked kind of cool. 

  

All of my brothers (Matt, Pete, Nate, Tim) and I!

We met up at a BBQ place to eat lunch and hang out with Nate before his flight later in the evening. 

Part of the group that was there for lunch that day. A few people had already left and one person was taking the picture. 

I like this picture of my brother and niece and I from that day! 

It was fun to have Nate in town even if only for a short amount of time! Thanks for coming to visit.