Lisbon - 1st Impressions - Wonderful

Lisbon home of the explorers. Vasco de Gama. I loved history in school. I loved the explorers, how could I have forgot how important Lisbon Portugal was to the shaping and discovering of the world. As I started to research this country that I was going to for the water, waves and sunshine I realized very quickly that the history here is as extensive as any European country in the world. The Moors, the Muslims, the Romans, the Knights Templar, to name a few all have history here and unfortunately on this trip we will only see a small portion of it. Definitely could stay here for a month and never get bored (just homesick LOL)



Lisbon is a lovely city, we had a great airbnb on Dom Carlos Ave right near the parliament buildings and right in the historical part of Lisbon, so we were able to walk everywhere. Our exercise started with climbing 4 flights of stairs to our apartment. Helped work off our red wine :). Thomas, the property manager, had a bottle of wine and 4 little "pastel de nata" - it is basically a creme brulee in a pastry.  Delish but oh so sweet and definitely not lo-cal. Jim fell in love with them.  I thought they were a mini quiche - great breakfast food - right.  NOT!!!.  I had 1 and then the odd bite of Jim's over the week.  

The city is covered with graffiti and some amazing works of art as every blank wall became a canvas for someone's artistic talent.  

Lisbon also has a great transit system, trams, buses, trains and the taxis are so reasonable, about 1/2 the price of Toronto.  Tram 28 takes you to all the main tourist areas of Lisbon.  

Lisbon might be hillier than San Francisco so our calves are getting a great work out. Thursday’s walk was around our neighbourhood. Beautiful little apartments with their lovely little balconies and ironwork around the windows, lots of little market stores with fresh fruit and veggies. We asked Thomas about drinking the water and he looked at us aghast. The Portuguese don’t drink water, they drink wine, sometimes with a little glass of water on the side LOL. We decided to opt for bottled water for our trip.

After all this walking we needed some food and a wee glass of wine.  We found a Cafe right at the bottom of the street called Opolo. I had a mushroom burger with a chickpea paste on top, delish. Next stop was a wee nap.

After our nap and a glass of wine, we set off to find a restaurant for dinner, so we set off in the other direction and came across this great market - The Time-out Market, which was like a classy food court, with kiosks by some top chefs and long tables to eat at. It had a great little bar in the middle called of course “The Time Out Bar”. 

Dinner was still beckoning us, so we had another we wander and found a restaurant called Otto. Fish and octopus are so popular here in Lisbon, not a fav for Doug or I so luckily we keep finding restaurants that have pasta and pizza :). Tonight 3 of us had a shrimp linguine.  The Portuguese wines are amazing, and we had a different bottle with every dinner. :)

    

After dinner we headed down for one more drink at the Time Out Bar, well 1 turned into a couple of portos and voila we were talking to everyone. A great night, our cab was calling us and so was bed.

    

    

 My new favourite drink and our favourite waitress and waiter.  

    

Tip:  If you head to the bathroom and glance up quickly and see "homens", it's not a spelling mistake that means "mens".  Ooops !!!!!  btw we never had a problem on our whole trip finding a bathroom.  Didn't see one restaurant that said "customers only" and I walked into a few of them.  

Tuscany, Siena - a magical place

Could there be anything better than waking up on your birthday in Florence, Italy.  I was so looking forward to my day.  Ilaria from Fun inTuscany was taking us to Siena and another vineyard for lunch and a tasting.  Up we all get and head to the local cappuccino and pastry bar to start the day.  Siena is only about an hours drive from Florence, so I took a chance on a large coffee.

Ilaria had her van decorated for my birthday with balloons, hats and leis.  Getting in the spirit of it, I might be a year older I may as well enjoy it.  I popped the little hat on and proudly wore the lei in the Italian colours (I'm sure part of me is Italian after all).

First stop the beautiful city of Siena.  Parking in all of these walled cities can be a nightmare, thankfully Ilaria knew all the tricks.  She dropped us off at the Basilica Cateriniana de San Domenico, 

 

 

 

St. Catherine is not only the patron saint of Siena but also a co-patroness of Rome and a joint patron of Italy with Saint Francis of Assisi.  Remember the term reliquary, well they have one of St Catherine's head in the basilica.  This picture is from their website.  And yes it is her actual head.  This church is a pilgrimage site.  She was responsible for Pope Gregory XI returning to Italy from Avignon.  

I somehow missed the big sign that said no pictures below.  It is considered a very holy site, only whispers permitted and yes no pictures.  There was a very spiritual and holy feel to it.  

We continued our walk up and down the hills of Siena.  Lots of alleyways and basically no cars.

Ilaria takes us to her favourite cappuccino bar.  It's called Nannina's.  And was delish.  Ilaria not missing a chance to celebrate my birthday, brought a pastry with a candle in it.  LOL.  She was brought up in Siena, her grandmother and mother still live there.  After our coffee we stopped in to see her mother as she had to pick up another surprise for me :).  This is FUN IN TUSCANY.  LOL

We headed down to the famous Piazza del Campo (this Piazza is one of the reasons UNESCO recognizes Siena as the ideal embodiment of a medieval city) where Ilaria popped out a bottle of champagne.  The day just keeps getting better and better.




As we drank our champagne Ilaria gave us a history of the famous Palio Horse Race that runs around the square twice a year, once in July and once in August.  The town is divided into contradas (neighbourhoods) and they all wear the flag of their contrada.  The people are in the middle of the square while the horses race around the outside.

 This is the crest of Ilaria's family.  Needless to say how could I resist buying a scarf and draping it around my shoulders to match my other decorations :)

Siena Cathedral

    

We were given an hour to wander around Siena before we headed off to the vineyard for lunch :).  How could I not stop in this little store to pick up my handmade Christmas Santa :)

To get to our next stop we were able to sit back and enjoy a beautiful drive through the Tuscan countryside.  At the top of this long driveway is Querceto di Castellina, an organic family vineyard.  Our hostess was actually from Napa and had met and married her husband and became a part of the vineyard family.  She explained to us about the rooster that appears on every bottle of Chianti Classico and what the DOCG rating means:

"Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG): Seeing this on the label of your wine bottle means that the wine producers followed the strictest regulations possible to make that wine. The wine was tested a committee that then guarantees the geographic authenticity of the wine and its quality. There are currently only a handful of Italian wines that qualify for DOCG status." DOCG, DOC

The vineyard was built on a hill with magnificent views.  We met 2 ladies there who were taking a week long cooking class (no husbands).  There are 4 wines to taste with our meal today.  As you can see Jim has totally recovered and is not missing a drop today.

What a fun holiday with a great group of family and friends.  Thank you to Ilaria for making our last day in Tuscany so memorable.  One last stop on the way home to find our "Gladiator" moment.  

We are all very sad about leaving this beautiful piece of Italy.  The countryside, the cities, the history, the people, the wine the coffee, the food (I could keep going on and on) are truly beautiful.