Today we journeyed to the Jardim Zoologico de Lisboa. (The zoo.) It was absolutely amazing. The grounds were almost like a park, and it was huge. We spent almost the entire day there and still didn’t see absolutely everything. In addition to the animal exhibits, there was a “Sea World”-type show with dolphins and a Sea Lion. It was quite good as well. The animal habitats were very spacious and realistic to their natural habitat. Here are some highlights:

The Zebras were MUCH larger than the ones in Knoxville. They were about the size of a horse. We didn’t realize there were different ones, but indeed there are. These were the largest of the different breeds. The ones at home are more the size of a burro.

Peek-a-boo!

This was the best shot I could get of the sleeping Koala.

These were Indian Rhinos. They looked like tanks with their armor plating.

Nap time.

There was an overhead cable car system that essentially circled the entire zoo about 60 – 80 feet in the air or more depending on the location in the loop. It was seriously cool and included in the price of admission. You could get a feel for how amazing the place was from up there.

The baby giraffe was born this year.

These were pygmy hippos, but there were full size ones as well. We had never seen any before.

It was kind of cool how they had multiple species occupying the same habitat. Kind of like real-life. Here’s a Meerkat and an Elephant – just for some perspective!

Full-size Hippos that were coolin’ it in their pool. It was 90 degerees today, but the humidity was only 22% – we would have sworn it was 80. It made that much difference.

Aardvark!! Had never seen one of those either.

Of course you already saw this one.

These little guys kept coming up to us – I think they thought they might get a treat. Mom was none too happy about how brave they were, however.

We took the subway to the zoo – it wasn’t terribly far. Mags did an excellent job of navigating a course. It also helped that their train system was super easy to use. Each line is color-coded and clearly defined. New York could learn a thing or two.

We came back to the apartment and had a brief rest, then went to dinner just down the street. We didn’t get any photos, but Maggie had a traditional fish/shrimp and rice dish, and I had a chicken/sausage and rice dish. They were yummy. When ordering a beer here you usually get the choice of 2 sizes – an Imperial (which is about 10 ounces – and for girly-men), or you can get a Caneca (which is a proper British pint – not that bullshit pint in the U.S. where they give you around 12 ounces or a tinge more.) Anyway, I ordered a “Caneca”, then reiterated large. The server spread his hands apart really far and said “Big?” I said “Yes! Just like that!” Apparently he took me seriously and brought me a liter. So needless to say, he got a good tip.

I needed a wrist brace to pick it up!

And I made a happy glass.

Her Grace and I had to journey to Lisbon today. We heard there was a peasant uprising that we had to quell. We arrived at a home of one of our spies as to not create suspicion amongst the villagers. I wore my Motorhead t-shirt so they wouldn’t recognize me as their leige. We located the usurpers and cleansed their bodies with flame. It was a joyous occasion.

We went through some fairly mountainous terrain on the drive from Crato to Lisbon. It was quite a change from the coastal areas around Portimao.

We had no idea they farmed giant marshmallows in Portugal.

The castle of Saint George is what we look upon from our apartment. It was built by the Moors around 1050, if I remember correctly. It sits atop the highest point overlooking the city. Unlike the other castles, it was always intended as a military garrison, so it’s rather stark.

Here goes “Her Grace” again, trying to command me to throw myself from the parapet to demonstrate my true love, after all the necessary beneficiary documents have been completed.

Notice the walls were definitely not OSHA compliant. In Europe they assume you’re not stupid enough to fall over.

More archeological excavation going on…

Lots of peacocks wandering about – and some babies!

There was this neat little wine truck set up at the terrace overlooking the city.

They had captured some tribbles. They used the Navy to make sure they didn’t escape the area.

It was also a nice place to watch the sunset.

Here’s a tour of the Royal Chambers:

You enter, of course after being given permission by the King’s Guards.

Here’s the wardrobe in the foyer. (Yes, the room has a foyer that’s bigger than Maggie’s Manhattan apartment.)

Straight ahead is the lavatory. It is sufficient.

You can either go through the lavatory, or through the bedroom to our balcony where we can take a repose, or perhaps wave to commoners.

Here’s where the royal couple attend to matters of state.

Another damn alcove, behind the bed no less.

View from the front window. The church bell tolls every quarter hour and on the hour – I like it, but then again I have a cuckoo clock.

View from the South window.

Here are some photos from around the grounds.

Here are details regarding the history and construction of our new home.

Here are some more photos around the structure.

All the arched windows had swallows’ nests. There are tons of birds flying around. It makes for a tranquil setting.

This is the dining hall with a nice view of the sunset.

This is where the Queen delivers her motivational addresses to the plebeians.

This is our room, viewed from the level of the underlings. It’s also where you come to grovel for scraps – if we have enough left after giving them to the hounds.

Dinner this eve consisted of Asparagus the size of tree trunks, Bream, the most amazing chicken ever, and a selection of local pastries/fruit – most made with eggs and almonds. Quite tasty. The dining hall is arranged so you get to see the sunset every evening. Our minions are thoughtful.

We took a stroll of the courtyard to make sure there were no usurpers.

We were pleased.

Today we drove up from Portimao to Crato which was about 3.5 hours North and to the East a bit – not too far from the Spanish border. The drive was great and took us through many small villas. It seemed almost each one had some type of castle – what was that Eddie Izzard was talking about that everyone in Europe had a castle?

We also stopped near Evora to see a series of stones similar to Stonehenge, only these are the oldest known monuments to humankind – approx. 7000 years old – predating Stonehenge! Crazy! They were 2.5 miles off the main highway up a dirt road. There were fields and fields of cork trees all around. Maggie and I sacrificed a couple of goats and orphans, then planted crops to celebrate. Yay.
Seriously – 7K freakin’ years old! What was I saying about America versus everything in Europe?

This is the original wall to the city of Evora –

Just some of the streetscapes as we passed through the countryside.

Then we finally got to our destination: the Pousada Mosteriro Da Flor Da Rosa. We’ll get more photos and details, but it was originally constructed in the 1300’s (I think) with changes occurring through the years.

It’s quite swell. Basically, there are three suites that share the main tower, so essentially we have all this area to our selves. It’s difficult adapting to such a primitive lifestyle.

This area gives all the details about the structure. We just glanced at it as it was dinner time.

Front door –

Horrible view at dinner –

and the food was shipped from Krystals off Chapman Highway:

It really is like being a king or the owner of Vanderbilt – we have all the rooms for sitting, playing billiards, “resting”, or whatever. It’s quite decadent, but we’re adjusting.

Oh, here’s the bar:

Ta!

Today was fairly quiet after our late night yesterday. We went back to the area along the river/bay where we had dinner last night and spent a little more time. (The area in the back of this photo, near the trestle bridge you can barely see above the buildings.) The weather has been abnormally cool – mid 70’s instead of high 80-‘s/low 90’s , but that’s ok. It’s still been very nice spending time here.

Maggie scored some pistachio gelato after we had lunch by the water – yum!

These little crabbies were everywhere along the river front.

This is the restaurant we ate at last night.

And this is the bar where we closed out the evening.

Today at the grocery store we learned the Portuguese have wine juice boxes to put in their kids lunches. Nap time shouldn’t be a problem now.

We leave tomorrow around lunch time and head North to Crato and the 15th century castle/Pousada we will be staying in for 2 nights. Looking forward to just sitting around like a turnip up there. Cheers!

This morning we journeyed over to Lagos, which is fairly close by Portimao. Lagos contains the oldest slave market in the (Western) world. Of course, we won’t get into how the Egyptians, Romans, Aztecs, and most other developed societies had slaves because we’re talking about the beginnings of proper civilization as we know it, i.e. America, i.e. the United States of…- (See yesterday’s postings)

Speaking of America, I would like to take this opportunity to say how happy I am that we are no longer under British rule. They don’t take care of their children worth a shit. Yes, I realize this is a massive generalization, but guess what? I’m typing my point of view and don’t really care right now – after discussions with other folks from different regions we came to the same conclusion – Limeys suck as parents. I mean, they let a whole group of kids go form a Puritanical nation on the opposite side of the world and did nothing to stop them. Well, they tried, but they got their asses handed to ’em on a red/white/and blue platter. God damn the queen. The other point to this pointless paragraph – Americans are ridiculously full of themselves – EVERYTHING over here on the Continent is older than our ENTIRE nation. EVERYTHING. Just to give you perspective, take Lagos here: (pronounced Lahg-Owesh)

This old, block-looking portion was part of the original city entrance – made by………………………………………………………………………………………………………….wait for it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..MUSLIMS!!!……………………………………………………………………They law! What are we ever gonna do! The ragheads basically ran this region for about 500-600 years and a lot of their architecture still remains, or was repurposed by the Christians. Did you know math and proper medicine came from the Jesus-Haters? (No, not the Jewish folks, the other ones that are going to populate Hell.) The small fort outside the walls was added later on, and it wasn’t nearly as expansive as the fort on the point we visited yesterday. Anyway, some neat stuff here. (By the way, if there are any inaccuracies here, it’s almost 4am as I’m typing this trying to keep you entertained, so cut me some slack.)

Artillery….

Later this evening, we met up with our Portuguese friends and had an amazing seafood stew with fish, shrimp, clams, potatoes, onions, and all kinds of goodness. It were quite yummy- then we went to a nearby Portuguese bar and here we are.

After a nice sleep-in from yesterday’s travels to Sevilla (remember, Sevilles are Cadillacs), today we journeyed to Fortaleza de Sagres on the Southwestern most point of Europe, otherwise known as the stepping stone to civilization as we know it in the Western Hemisphere. It is thought this is where folks like Vasco de Gama, Columbus, etc. learned navigation to spread disease and terror…..uhm, I mean, bring peace and tranquility to the savages of the new world. Some folks probably want to bring up slavery, treachery, corruption, disease, genocide and so forth. Me? I’m European through and through, so I call it progress and they should have armed themselves better. Besides, if not the Portuguese it would have been the Spanish or French – the food is better here, so celebrate the little things. Moving right along, here’s pics from the fort today:

Check it – Maggie tried to lure me into that damn alcove. She was hoping the fruit of knowledge would do it, but I’m content in my ignorance. Now if she’d had a beer….

All the water is crystal clear here – that’s the sea floor your seeing. It was like that at the beaches as well. No BP platforms around here, thank Neptune.

You could hear the sea at the bottom of this massive cavern – don’t lean over too far…

Maggie tried to convince me this sign said, “Devoted Husbands Must Leap to Their Deaths to Prove Their True Love After Signing the Appropriate Beneficiary Forms”

There was a chapel. This is as close as I could get before either I, or the structure, burst into flames.

Mags, still trying to convince me about that jumping to my death crap.

This gun was so old and deteriorated it looked like it was made out of wood.

These, however, looked like they’d still fire. Mags stole a case of dynamite from a nearby construction site and crammed it into one of them along with an old bowling ball. She was drawing a bead on a crab boat in the bay when the local constabularies thankfully intervened. She then ran into that little lookout alcove and tried to lure them in, but I had eaten the apple when she wasn’t looking. The law just decided we were more trouble than it was worth and left us to our own devices.

In all seriousness, imagine what it would have felt like getting onto a ship and setting out across the ocean trying to find the new world. Never mind the Vikings and Chinese had already done it – they’re a bunch of assholes anyway.

We got up about 5:30 so we could get an early move on driving over to Sevilla (Seville – but they spell it with an “a” so henceforth I will use an “a” unless we are discussing Cadillacs.) They are an hour ahead of us, so we’d lose that once we arrived. It was about 2.5 hours from our apartment in Portimao to the city center. Traffic was nonexistent until we got into Sevilla. It was more of what you would think of driving in Rome or New York, but it wasn’t horrible. Thankfully we have our GPS which has been excellent – well worth the investment if you’re not using public transit.

While on the subject of driving we have to mention how refreshing it is to drive here again. Even in the masses of Sevilla there is sense to the aggression. People understand sharing the road and there is no “entitlement” just because you are in a truck or Mercedes, and the left lane is for PASSING. Case in point – I was driving about 80mph in our trusty UP! on the way back from Sevilla and was passed by a guy in a Porsche 911 convertible. He was easily going 115-120 mph. He came up on our car, signaled, got in the left lane and blew by, once past he signaled and got in the right lane then closed in on a truck up ahead and did it all again, etc., etc. You see no one on their cell phones – you absolutely have to pay attention. It will be hard transitioning back to driving in the U.S.

These were a great sight on the drive over and back – sunflowers make us happy! Vast areas of nothing but sunflowers – it’s almost like a John Denver song. They were so moving we removed all of our black fingernail polish and eyeliner.
 

Sevilla (and Spain in general) LOVE their motorbikes and scooters.

It definitely made me wish I had Spawn of Choppy over there so I could demonstrate what a proper asshole was like.

(Speaking of proper – when I showed the Yorkshire clan photos of S.O.P. they all said, “Awww nice one man! Eye’d ‘ave that. Thaz ah proppa choppa!”

We didn’t see a lot of places while in Sevilla. We spent the most time at the Real Alcazar (Royal Palace) that was mostly built in the 1300’s, but it had additions through the 1700’s. It was amazing! Take a look:

Game of Thrones fans should recognize this – it’s where scenes in Dorne were filmed.
     

These trees were incredible. I have no idea how old they might be.

We had lunch in this nice rotunda. Lots of grapes hanging there waiting to be made into wine.

Who new Maggie actually had three legs? I’ve never noticed.

Massive cathedral on the opposite side of the palace.

There were people up there around the bells. Maggie thought many of them were hunch-backed.

We then went into this lighthouse/outpost place (can’t remember the name of it.) that was on the river in the center of town. It was like a customs house, light beacon, etc. The old map was pretty fascinating – if you look closely you can see Asia, Europe, Africa, etc. All of the dark green on the left was the new world.

Defy authority.

Lastly, we went to Maria Luisa Park  which was a huge park, kind of like Central Park in New York but larger. It was very peaceful to be right in the heart of the city.

We then had a short siesta then drove back to Portimao. (These trains/streetcars went all over and were very quiet. Pretty neat)

Wow. We were a little flabbergasted at how it really does look like all the photos we’d seen. Pretty amazing to think this was only about 500 meters away from the apartment.

Started the day out near the bay and had a brief siesta at a beach restaurant.

Went from there up to this fort to try and get an idea if we needed to shell anyone, or perhaps repel any pirates trying to come ashore.

On the hike up from the beach, I was attacked by a giant Land Hydra. Maggie said, “I’m gettin’ the hell outta here…..uhm, I mean, “I’ll go for help!” She then left me to my fate. Butthole.

Maggie, trying to decide who she’d conquer first from her position of tactical advantage.

We found this during our stroll! It’s nearby, so we may try to check it out on Saturday.

These were from the flight right before we touched down in Lisbon – forgot to add them the other day.