Eccentric Sintra

If you're building yourself a summer palace, you might as well go the whole hog, and back in 1840 King Ferdinand designed himself a Romantic fantasy with Germanic thoroughness. In a town where every building is a self-indulgent riot of towers, turrets and tiles - it's Portmeirion, for real - the Palacio da Pena is literally top of the heap. At the end of a winding cobbled road through an extensive English woodland garden, it grows out of the rock on top of the crag like something you'd see in Disneyland. We were assured that all this architectural extravagance was paid for with the king's own money - though that's hardly the same thing as being earned by honest toil.

Every square inch is decorated, with tiles, relief work, paint and carvings: lions, dogs, crocodiles, birds, plants and patterns. It looks like nothing so much as a playground for grown-ups, and it really is a delight, every room bringing some new astonishment. One struck me before we'd even entered: seeing cabbage trees and flax planted around the gateway, an odd sight against such an exotic backdrop - although for Ferdinand, and European visitors, of course it was the other way around, with the New Zealand native plants being the exotic feature. Inside, in pride of place in a courtyard with tiles and pillars, is their most treasured plant: a tree fern growing in a stone shell with tortoise feet. It's a young plant, but the original was placed there by Ferdinand himself - he built up a collection of 2000 plants from around the world in his garden.

It was the second palace we saw today, the first being the Palacio Nacional down the hill, which is even more grand, though we had to hurtle through it as, once again, we were running late. It's been the theme of this trip, and one of its greatest frustrations. Portugal is simply too good to rush, but that (apart from all those interminable meals) is exactly what I've been doing for the past five days - and now I have to leave.

Lisbon, with regrets

Lisbon in  a day: stupid even to try, really, but we did - in what time remained either side of fitting in a long lunch, and going out to dinner. Passing over, with huge restraint here, the disappointingly wasted time and opportunities that have marked out this famil as the most frustrating and unenjoyable I've ever been on - because really, you don't want to get me started on that - let's focus on what I did manage to extract from the day.

Not the scheduled Segways, alas, because - well, again, let's not go there - though we did keep our appointment with the GoCars, which are the same little yellow Noddy cars I drove in San Francisco. There, I managed to run aground on one corner of Lombard Street; here, the hazard was the series of teeth-rattling manhole covers along the roads, which in a 3-wheeler were impossible to avoid. But it was fun, and fortunately, as in SF, local drivers were considerate - possibly wary - and there were no traffic-related incidents. That was a relief, because the trams here are a menace, and I even got swiped by one as I stood on the footpath, the roads are so narrow.

They're what Lisbon is known for: the steep, narrow cobbled streets that snake down from the castle on its hill. They're not just historic and picturesque, they're also very lived-in, and give the city much of its charm and character. I also liked that there are 34 cats who live in the castle, which delivers great views over the jumble of warm tiled roofs, the wide Tagus River, the 18km-long Vasco da Gama Bridge (surely his parents would have named him more appealingly had they known how famous he would become) and the planes swooping down low over the houses to the airport just beyond.

Narrow streets and wide squares: the main square, so huge it has two names, is an elegant affair with marble steps from the river on one side and lovely yellow-painted buildings with colonnades on the other three. Abandoned by the Government offices that once occupied them, they're now being taken over by restaurants and shops, and a new attraction presenting the history of Lisbon in an entertaining manner. Much of it has taken place in and around the square: the 1755 earthquake, tsunami and fire, an incident of regicide, demonstrations, and of course the Inquisition, with the pyres burning just metres from where we sat eating sardines, anchovies and other fishy dishes.

It's a very pleasant city, and it would have been good to see it properly. Sigh.

Any port in a... well, glass, thanks

So today we drove towards Lisbon, vainly searching en route for sheep with bells on for a typical photo which turned out to be not typical at all, alas: some sheep, no bells. The absurdity of NZ writers scouring the Portuguese countryside for sheep to photograph did not escape us. It was the bells that were the point of difference, and they were suddenly not in evidence, after being formerly ubiquitous. Blaaaast.

We are now in Cascais, seaside town to the gentry - well, moneyed - which is neat and pretty and well-supplied with Irish pubs and Maccas, but also a proper fishing port with a real fish market that's so genuine it's boring, with 21st century handset bidding machines and a big screen instead of cliched shouting of bids and waving of arms. The smell was authentically real, though.

There was a suspiciously sharp-edged sandcastle (I'm suspecting non-sand fixatives), a nice little antiques and collectibles market, a generic shopping mall and narrow lanes populated solely by Baby Boomers risking their collective hips on the slippery marble cobbles. A creep of a man ogled the girls on the beach below, studiously avoiding my censorious frown at him; and an older lady shooed the pigeons off a bronze statue of John Paul II before stroking his gown fondly and giving it a respectful kiss.

There was a massage at the spa of our fancy 5-star Villa Italia Hotel which I would like to say I enjoyed, but since I fell asleep during it, I can't say for sure; and a thankfully light and gourmet seafood degustation dinner at Hotel Miragem which was honestly delicious and enhanced by the company of marketing manager Christina, who's Estonian and agreed with me that Portuguese sounds like Russian. It's as much like Spanish as English is like German: a bit, not much. And then we ended the night with a 10 year-old tawny port and the even more exciting mention of the existence of what sounds a fabulous aperitif: white port and tonic. My new quest!

Power play and other disappointments

Borba is a marble town, and I strolled around it early this morning watching the sun warm it up as it rose high enough to shine down into the narrow lanes. It’s not just the churches and statues that are marble: so are the cobbles, the kerbs, door sills, window surrounds… it seems very profligate, but here it’s just the local building material, and it certainly gives the place a glow. It helps that it’s a morning ritual for the women to mop their doorsteps and leave them clean and shiny.

At Evora it’s the same: marble everywhere from the Roman temple to Diana, the ancient churches and cathedral, the palace, the university founded by the Jesuits (16^th century lecture rooms with 19^th century blackboards, 20^th century overhead projectors and 21^st century students) down to the patterned cobbles in Giraldo Square. It’s a World Heritage place and if that makes it sound worthy but perhaps a little dull, it’s also a lively town. It's full of course of tourists providing the main industry, but it’s lived-in too, and today the students were making a feature of themselves. It’s the start of the new academic year, and in most of Portugal it’s traditional to begin it with a ritual humiliation of the first-years by the third-years. The seniors are dressed in black suits and ties, with black cloaks trailing behind them, and groups of them take junior classes hostage and parade them around the town, making them chant and sing, hold hands and dress up, and end by ‘baptising’ them in the town fountain. Though some of the groups we saw seemed cheerful, others were not enjoying the experience at all – youngsters away from home for the first time, surrounded by strangers, and then made to do embarrassing things. It wasn’t kind.

Nor, on the face of it, was the chapel lined and decorated with bones and skulls: 5,000 skulls, in fact, and uncountable femurs and other bones, arranged in patterns on the walls and ceiling. It seems so disrespectful to treat human remains as design features, but the idea was apparently to demonstrate to the rich worshippers, who were the only people allowed into churches inside the city wall, that everyone is the same underneath, with the same fate awaiting. Above the door, it read “We bones that are inside, we are waiting for yours.” It’s a novel twist on socialism.

From pillory to post

Today's been one of those "you're not on holiday - this is a job" days, starting at almost 5am with jetlag and homework with Lonely Planet and brochures. The walk I took around the village was nice, with cats and sunshine and sheep with tuneful bells, and much leaping to the side of the cobbled roadways as cars flapped past; but breakfast was a foodie exercise with far more discussion than eating.

And then we were packed up and on the road again for a full day of history and architecture, and lots of warfare too. We went back to Marvao again for a proper look, and that was lovely, climbing up onto the castle ramparts and looking across the wide plains into Spain, and back down to the main square where the pillory stands, well-used during the Inquisition - but it was nice that they'd put the effort in to decorate it, I thought. Then we went to nearby Castel de Vide for more of the same, plus Jews, who had a hard time of it there (surprise!) and whose story is well told in the former synagogue. The town was also very pretty, full of steep narrow lanes lined with potplants and sunflowers growing through the cobbles, and more cats, and birds in cages peeping and twittering. We had lunch there, at the same restaurant as last night, and again ate far too much; and again there was far too much discussion of it, which is what happens when one of you is a food writer, I suppose, but it had me hankering for the days when it was considered ill-mannered to talk about what you were eating.*

Elvas came next, after an uncomfortably - not to say scarily - fast drive to catch up with the clock. This town, which also has a pretty pillory, is enclosed by an impressive series of star-shaped walls, built in succession from the 9th century, and from the walls of its keep we looked out towards other smaller forts. One of them we went to, where model soldiers stand next to pyramids of cannonballs and the museum is full of glass cases of caps and medals and swords, a spiked ball on a chain cutely called a 'morning star' and other delights of warfare that left me entirely cold. We had earlier bumped into a Brit in the street who had spontaneously launched into an enthusiastic review of one of the forts, though, so I'm guessing it's a man thing.

And now we're in Borba, at an eclectically-designed boutique hotel with such things as a genuine confessional screen hiding the shower stall, and the others have gone out for yet another no doubt deeply discussed meal but I'm giving my belly and brain a break and staying in tonight. I've done enough work today.

* And then the God of Coincidence suggests I could be pilloried myself for hypocrisy in sneering at food writing, reminding me that I've done it myself: overnight I received the pdf of that story I laboured over - it must be said, with very little enjoyment - producing a review for Vacations & Travel of Queenstown restaurants, in most of which I have (so far) never set foot. But I live in hope, and if/when I eat at these places, I shall be properly respectful of what's on my plate.

Bem vindo a Portugal!

There are worse ways, I guess, to spend a sunny Sunday than sprawled in Emirates’ business class watching movies – but I’m glad the journey’s over at last and we’re finally here in Portugal. We swooped in low over Lisbon’s cathedrals and its hills clad with tiled roofs and headed straight out of town to the north-east, into the region of Alentejo, which we’re already learning is Portugal’s forgotten land: less well-known, less glamorous than the Algarve where most tourists (especially the English) go. So it’s quiet and rural, unspoiled and very pretty: connoisseur country.

We drove through rolling countryside where huge boulders lay like sleeping elephants amongst the olive and cork trees, through small villages where mostly old people lived, sitting on benches in the sun or standing at doorways keeping an eye on things. Up on the hills there are forts, built for repelling all the invaders who have swept through here during the last couple of thousand years or so: stone-walled with watch-towers and battlements, above a sprawl of white houses. We visited one, Marvao, driving through the narrow and carefully-designed offset gateways (the stone full of scrape-marks, ouch) into the tangle of little cobbled lanes. In a hurry, as ever, I leaped up flights of steps to the top where there was a long view over the countryside from a lovely parterre garden with a fountain just below the castle – beautiful in the evening sunshine.

And then we went (eventually) to dinner, to eat generous proportions of peasant food: chorizo, venison, pork and hare, all tender and tasty and some of it boiling hot, literally, served with heaps of carbs: clearly we won’t be wasting away here. Nearly every dish, including puddings, includes bread, so this is no place for the gluten-free fusspots. We even got the recipe for our dessert, a sweet and delicious almond-based dish called Golden Soup. Yum. And then our driver, Antonio, who’s solicitous and keen to please (and who enjoyed the dinner even more than we did, scoring several souvenir “medals" of drips on his red tie) whisked us back along the dark winding road to bed, finally.

From both sides, then

Six ear-pops and 124 floors up from the ground, this is part of the view from the world's tallest building (currently - Saudi Arabia is closing in on that claim). The fountain pond is virtually the only splash (ha ha) of colour in the whole scene, everything else being concrete or sand. Well, there is a surprising amount of green too, especially since it's all planted and artificially irrigated - but mainly it's the expanses of empty sand, both within the city and all around it, that dominates the view. It's a pretty stunning demonstration of how busy they've been here making something out of nothing.

The whole place is artificial, and despite the miles of manicured gardens, trimmed hedges and avenues of date palms, life here takes place indoors for the most part - well, with summer temperatures of 50 degrees, how else would you live? The Emirates man we dined with tonight talked about the summer the way we do winter: "It seemed such a long summer this year, with the kids cooped up inside the house." He took us back to the Dubai Mall to eat at a restaurant nearby, in the block connected by the bridge in the photo to the mall on the left. It was all very pretty, floodlit and with fairy lights twined all around the palm trunks, reflecting in the ponds - and throughout the evening, at half-hour intervals, the fountains perform to music, swirling and shooting up high in a very entertaining manner. And of course, it was very, very warm, even in the dark.

Today we did shopping: or rather, saw what shopping could be done here, which is a major industry. There was a cliche Aladdin's Cave of a warehouse market with dimly-lit narrow aisles crammed with handicrafts not just from here but from 27 countries - life-sized wooden camels, pretty glass lanterns, Santa Claus carvings, jewellery boxes, pashminas, carpets and framed scorpions and bats. Oh, and a diver's helmet and a pair of giant wooden clogs. Bizarre. And at the other end of the scale, fabulously expensive and occasionally fabulous-looking embroidered wall-hangings with gold, silver and jewels, silk carpets, huge copper tea pots, inlaid marble table tops, furniture made from camel bone... Kind of interesting, but easy to resist, though apparently most people drool over the variety and the prices. Meh. I'd rather have spent the morning in the desert being shown how to fly a falcon. Yes, the actual bird. Next time?