Cascais

Monday was a write-off. It had rained all Sunday night and continued most of the next day, great sheets of it gusting past our front windows. We were astonished to see that work proceeded on the ramshackle building project below us. The workers must have been sodden.

When the rain finally stopped a bit before two – and the sun even began to peek through – Karen and I went out and did a big shop at the Pingo Doce. Then we came back and settled in for what we were calling a “down” day: reading, photography, blogging.

Tuesday, we were right back at it. A little before noon, we set out for a short walk to the 16th century St. Vincent de Fora (St. Vincent of the Outside) church and monastery. We had passed it on our way to the azulejo museum on Sunday. The church, as is often the case here, was free, the monastery and museum cost: 2.50€ each with our seniors discount.

St. Vincent de Fora church nave

The church was impressively large and spacious, but remarkably plain. The side chapels featured more carved unpainted wood statues than the kind of gilded or polychrome altar pieces that are the norm in Lisbon. The monastery was worth the price of admission for the Sacristy alone, with its marble inlaid wood paneling and painted ceiling, and also for the fabulous views from the tower.

St. Vincent de Fora church: sacristy

There is a museum about the history of the Lisbon patriarchs – the local cardinals. The monastery houses the pantheon of the patriarchs. The museum we dashed through, the pantheon itself was interesting for the style of its design: very modern-looking, with massive slab-sided granite sarcophagi, and an altar and crucifix (of a later date, I suspect) to match. Very austere. The entombed patriarchs go back to the early 18th century. The monastery also houses the Pantheon of the Bragança monarchs (the last ruling family in Portugal) and their consorts. It's surprisingly not as impressive.

St. Vincent de Fora monastery: pantheon of patriarchs

The cloisters are mainly interesting for the azulejo paneling, much of it 18th century, some of it by one of the top tile painters of the period – whose name, unsurprisingly, is completely unknown outside Portugal. They’re otherwise plain and not particularly charming.

St. Vincent de Fora monastery: cloisters

St. Vincent de Fora monastery: azulejo panel in cloister stairwell

The climb to the tower wasn’t too onerous for Karen, and the views – out over the river and the domed church of Santa Engraçia, now the National Pantheon, and back up the hill over gardens and rooftops – made it worth the effort. You have access to the entire rooftop with a full 360° view.

St. Vincent de Fora: view from tower (note walled garden with azulejos)

St. Vincent de Fora: view of Santa Engracia from tower

The other interesting thing here is the series of 30 restored azulejo panels illustrating the Fables of the 17th century French writer Jean de La Fontaine. It wasn’t clear whether this was a permanent exhibit or temporary. The panels certainly came from somewhere else. 

Panel illustrating La Fontaine fable of bear and man who loved gardens

I had never read any of the fables, or not that I remembered. Karen and I were both struck by how uniformly harsh and bleak they are – at least in the prose summaries included with this exhibition.  Here’s an example:

The Cat, the Weasel and the Rabbit: The weasel settled in the rabbit’s warren. The rabbit demanded his rights and ordered the intruder to leave. The weasel answered that things belong to those who take them and not to those who inherited them from their parents, like the rabbit. However, he suggested that they ask a cat that they knew to be the judge. So there they stood in front of the judge, and the cat said, ‘My children, come closer, for I am deaf due to my age.’ No sooner were they within the cat’s reach than he caught them and ate them. Thus, they were finally brought together.

Azulejo panel illustrating La Fontaine fable of cat, weasel and rabbit

So I looked up the originals, or at least English translations of the originals. La Fontaine wrote in verse. And yes, the morals are often harsh – it was the 17th century, after all, life was hard. But they are also very playful. Here’s the opening of the one quoted above in a mid-19th century verse translation by the American mathematician and abolitionist Elizur Wright:

John Rabbit's palace under ground

Was once by Goody Weasel found.

She, sly of heart, resolved to seize

The place, and did so at her ease.

She took possession while its lord

Was absent on the dewy sward,

Intent on his usual sport,

A courtier at Aurora's court.

The playfulness continues to the gruesome end, the moral now makes a little more sense, even if it's not very applicable in modern times:

The good apostle, Clapperclaw [the cat],

Then laid on each a well-arm’d paw,

And both to an agreement brought,

By virtue of his tuskèd jaw.

This brings to mind the fate

Of little kings before the great.

Panel illustrating La Fontaine fable

After St. Vincent, we trudged back up the hill with the idea of having lunch at home and then returning to take a closer look at the National Pantheon, which is just down the hill from St. Vincent. When we got back to the apartment, we found Rosa, the cleaner, still there. So we decided to have lunch out instead. We found a place we thought was one recommended by Rita, our landlady (it was the wrong one), in Largo da Graca. It wasn’t great, or particularly inexpensive. We ain’t in Valencia anymore.

After lunch, we went back to Santa Engraçia, the National Pantheon, where the great and celebrated of Portugal are entombed (other than the cardinals and the Bragança royalty). There was a major flea market underway in the streets around it, which we skirted through. It apparently runs twice a week. It looked like there was some interesting stuff.

National Pantheon

When we got to the Pantheon, we decided we didn’t have the energy for it after all – as impressive as it looked at a glance from the entrance way. It would have cost to get in, and if we’d paid, we’d have felt obliged to get our money’s worth, and we just weren't up to it. That’s the great thing about traveling this way: you don’t have to do it all now. We’ll be here for another couple of weeks, and the place is only a 20-minute walk away.

Night view from apartment: Our Lady of Grace, castle, lower Graca

Wednesday was forecast to be a lovely day: sunny, with highs in Lisbon of 18-19°C. It was the perfect day to head to Cascais (cash-kaysh), the ocean-side fishing and beach town just up the coast. It was originally developed as a summer retreat by upper class twits in the 19th century, and still attracts the rich of Lisbon. A lure for us was the free bike “rentals” from the city tourist organization, and the fairly new ocean front bikeway. The trip, however, was not as we might have wished.

It started at the Caise Sodre station in Lisbon where we would get the train. The station is a 10-minute tram ride from the square where we’d caught the trolley for Belem a few days before. When we got to it, we found six automatic ticket machines, one working only intermittently, with about 150 people clustered around them, mostly tourists. There were also two or three wickets with ticket sellers, but each with a long, snaking queue. Probably 300 people altogether were trying to buy tickets. There appeared to be no staff around to help tourists buy from the balky machines. Many in the queues had no idea how to use them.

We queued for almost 20 minutes – missing the first train we could have got – and then discovered that the machine we had lined up for was out of change, or its bill-changing mechanism was on the fritz: it would only accept silver. We had to go find change, and line up again, for another almost 25 minutes. We missed a couple more trains, but finally got our tickets. The next train, as it happened, was a milk run that stopped at every station. It took over 40 minutes. By the time we got there, it was well after noon.

We came out of the station in Cascais, armed only with our Lisbon pocket guide, featuring a tiny key map of Cascais, and two brief pages of information about what to see. We expected a sign pointing to a tourist information centre, but there was nothing, not even a map of the town on a board. We wandered towards the water, and were unimpressed by the touristy, beachy scene – been there, done that. It wasn’t as bad as Albufeira, but heading in that direction.

It took us almost an hour to give up on finding an open tourist office. (We found a closed one, with a sign pointing to an “information point” across the street, which we also never found.) We knew we were too late to snag one of the free bikes anyway. All the information online said you had to get there early to have any chance at one. So we decided just to make the best of it.

We had seen a Pingo Doce in our wanderings and went back to it and bought cheese and Portuguese rolls for a picnic lunch. We had our own fruit from home. We wandered down to the town hall and tiny Ribeira beach near the fish market and settled on a park bench in the sun. I found a nearby convenience store and bought a split of vinho verde and a can of Sagres beer. Okay, things were looking up. We sat for 30 minutes, watching the crazy foreigners – mostly French, the country is swamped with French right now – cavorting on the beach as if it was mid-summer.

The Lisbon book in fact gave us leads to enough things to do to keep us occupied for what was left of the day. We started by walking up around the citadel, an impressive fortress converted into a hotel. 

Citadel at Cascais: fun with perspective

Cascais harbour

Along the way, there were views out over the bay with fishing boats. On the other side of the citadel is a municipal park, a lovely spot with peacocks and roosters roaming the leafy paths. At the edge of it, we found the Museu Biblioteca Conde Castro Guimarães, a towered mansion that has been preserved as a museum. It was one of the recommended things to see.

Castro Guimarães mansion: inner courtyard

Castro Guimarães mansion: front garden

It’s impressive enough, with some nice paintings and lovely azulejo-lined fire places. But the main attraction, according to our book, was the collection of rare illuminated 16th century manuscripts. When we’d completed the self-guided tour and had seen no sign of the manuscripts, we asked about them. They were in the library, the attendant explained, which was one of three rooms in the house currently closed. Thank you. You can’t really complain, though. Like all the museums in Cascais, this one is free.

We meandered through the park in search of the Casa das Historias, an art gallery devoted to the work of Paula Rego, a living Portuguese artist, and found it on the other side. It’s a stunning building, all flame-coloured stone with window-less walls and pyramid-shaped towers, a bit brutalist perhaps, but striking.

Casa das Historias (courtesy of industrializedarchitecture.com)

We’d never heard of Paula Rego, but she’s one of my new favourite artists. She’s a realist and illustrator. Most of the work on display right now is drawings, etchings, aquatints and acrylic on paper paintings, but there is also one ‘tapestry,’ created on commission for an Algarve hotel but rejected by it, and she apparently also does collages.

Paul Rego, one of a series inspired by famous Portuguese novel about priest who has an affair with a parishioner (courtesty of Casa das Historias)

Her themes often relate to the role of women – and men. The place is called Casa das Historias, house of stories, because many of her series are based on works of literature, including one based on Jane Eyre. She was married to a Brit and, I think, lived there for awhile. She had artist-in-residence gigs at more than one British gallery. In fact, she was the first ever artist in residence at the National, where she was meant to create new art inspired by works in the museum. She did, and some are on display here. I like that she writes very wittily and unpretentiously about her own work.

Castro Guimarães mansion

We walked back across the park to the Castro Guimarães mansion because Karen had seen from one of its upper windows a walkway along the sea front. We found the walk, which was also the beginning of the bike path we'd hoped to follow, and walked a short way along it. We stopped to have a look at the lighthouse and another old mansion. Then we were out of the city proper with wild rocks and ocean on one side, and very large, fairly modern houses on the other.

Casa de Santa Maria

Manhattan: just beyond the horizon

Our last activity, back in town, was a brief exploration of the narrow grid of streets and becos (alleyways) behind the Church of the Assumption. They are picturesque and charming as advertised, and we found some excellent street art. By this time, it was almost six, though, and we were tuckered out. All in all, not a bad day, considering the start.

We walked back to the station, got on a train waiting there – which turned out to be an express that got us back to Lisbon in 25 minutes. We walked 10 minutes to a street that the No. 28 tram ran down, caught one fairly quickly, got seats, and rode home in comfort.

Ridin' the 28

All’s well that ends well.