The Burnetts have put a lot of miles on their rental car lately. Greg & Mel explored Lisbon before they picked up the kids from the airport. Lisbon is a great city to explore because it has great views from all of the hills and really, really likes tourists. There are whole streets downtown filled with restaurant after restaurant, tile shop after tile shop, museum after museum. It was interesting to learn how they reconstructed the city after the earthquake/fires/tidal wave of 1755. We also went to a lovely Fado music presentation in the middle of an eerie, abandoned mall. There is only one small problem with Lisbon. You won’t read this in a travel ad, but Mel thinks that some of the people in Lisbon should put down their brushes for their handpainted porcelain tiles and learn the art of making placards. With good English translations. There is a ton of interesting history there to convey, but the city seems reluctant to tell it. One does a lot of Googling. In the end, the best part about Lisbon was the Magnum Pleasure Store. Seriously. Went there twice.
We picked up the kids and took them to the town of Evora, a Unesco World Heritage site. Signage was much better here, and Evora had centuries of history within a few city blocks. It was great. We viewed Neolithic rock formations on the way to fabulous Monsaraz, a town in the hills completely enclosed within its old city walls.
Mel just took the kids to the Portuguese Discoveries Wax Museum, where they learned about Vasco de Gama and Henry the Navigator. The kids were relieved it wasn’t a museum about making wax.
The Burnetts are off tonight to Cadiz, Spain, so Mel will leave you to the pictures!
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