FInishing up Lisbon 1964
First part of this trip is at http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241021 in which I get to Europe, go to Madrid, meet my sister and we go to Lisbon.
The next day, we tried to rent a car, but they were all taken so we got a taxi for 340$ escudos for the day (about $12.00) A car with a driver would have cost another $8.00 anyway plus a tip. This way we could both look and take pictures. We went to Queluz (which is a little Versailles and my sister said reminded her of a grandmother's house if your grandmother was a queen)
Throne room
The palace was painted pink outside
my niece on the extreme right
The next day, we tried to rent a car, but they were all taken so we got a taxi for 340$ escudos for the day (about $12.00) A car with a driver would have cost another $8.00 anyway plus a tip. This way we could both look and take pictures. We went to Queluz (which is a little Versailles and my sister said reminded her of a grandmother's house if your grandmother was a queen)
Throne room
The palace was painted pink outside
my niece on the extreme right
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After we finished with Queluz, we went to Sintra -- 2 castles to tour and the ruins of a Moorish ??, the monastery lined in cork,
There is a story about that ceiling which has magpies painted on it. This relates to the story that the king John I was caught in the act of kissing a lady-in-waiting by his queen. To put a stop to all the gossip, he had the room decorated with as many magpies as there were women at the court. (Keep in mind that this tour was in French as the guide did not speak English, so my sister and took turns translating for each other) There is something in the beaks of the magpies related to this story, but I don't know what it is.
This Portuguese couple was celebrating something with their whole family there in the palace.
My sister's photo of me
And another one where she got her camera strap across the lens
I did a selfie here
and I climbed up to the top of the turret
This was my sister's photo of me from the ground
We were both fascinated by the tiles on the walls and floors
and the other decorations
This is the cab driver holding my niece
And my niece in the stroller
I didn't get any good photos of the monastery that was lined in cork- it was very dark inside
Countryside from a church near Sintra
the Peniona chapel (where you can see 20 miles along the coast in each direction),
which is the westernmost point of Europe,
Calehair and Estoicil. It was a beautiful day -- cool and windy. It was so windy that my pocketbook flap flew open and the wind lifted my pocketbook away from my body
We also ate in a Fado restaurant where my sister had squid and we saw a very good floor show. The rest of the time we have been shopping for things and eating in our hotel room.
The next morning, I got up early and leaving my sister and niece asleep, I went down to the fish market and took some photos (including some of the mosaic in the streets)
I was fascinated by the way the women carried things on their heads (I tried it and sometimes still do this but it works better if you have a pad under the thing you are carrying)
Trucks outside the markets
Inside it was quite dark and hard to get a photo as I did not have a flash in those days (actually until I got a 35 mm camera for work in 1987, I never had a camera with a flash)
The women sorted the fish into the trays - the floor was wet so that the trays could be pulled around by the men (they had a long iron bar to pull them with)
And after the fish market, I went over to the vegetable market
Where I saw this little boy's family
On the way back to the hotel I took some photos of the trolleys
Tile store
We both went to a place I had read about and ordered custom made rugs. The lady had designs and we picked the design and the colors to go in each area. This is the one I ordered.
In the afternoon we went to the coach museum (not very good photos)
And then we took the ferry
across the Tagus
and ate a nice seafood dinner (sole for me and eel for my sister) with tiny little shrimp in tomato soup -- overlooking the river.
Picture from one side of the engine room to the other
On the way to the train, my niece fell asleep in the taxi. It was a long ride, the driver did not understand (!) and took us part way to the airport out of the way. At the station he wanted to charge us 50% of the whole bill for our luggage, and got a policeman to prove his point. We were furious -- it was about $1.50 for what should have been a 50 cent ride. The baby was fast asleep, transferred to her stroller. We were so mad that we refused a porter and carried our own bags. Besides we didn't have any more escudos.
But once on the train, the baby woke up, looked around, recognized the compartment as one she had been in, and went to sleep, from 9:30 to 4:30 and 4:45 to 8. We'd bought drinking water to wash bottles with, to supplement the bottle in the compartment. I slept on the top, the baby slept next to the wall on the bottom and the ladder kept my sister from falling out.
Spanish customs just looked at the "nina" and passed on. We slept until Madrid, where the conductor nearly had an apoplectic fit when he saw that we weren't all ready to leap off the train as soon as it entered the station. My sister was still groggy from sleeping, and was ready to spit nails at him for shouting "Vamoose" at her at the top of his lungs (My mom's note -- I have laughed and laughed over this, knowing her (my sister) in the morning!) We were all ready to go -- it was only a matter of disentangling the stroller from the ceiling rack and waking the baby up. But my sister was sans stockings and tousled when we emerged. We were wearing yesterday's dresses - my sister had my blue nylon that I lent her.
Taxi to the Valencia station, checked our bags, tried to get WL to Valencia. The only place left was for officials and we'd have to come back in a hour to see about it. With foreboding, we finally caught taxi to AmExp (Taxis are cheap). They had nothing at all for Valencia, but my sister could have a flight to Nuremberg. So at 10:35 we decided she should take the 1:15 plane. No time to take the airport bus -- taxi back to the station.
I disappeared into the depths to get the bags. My sister had the baby in the stroller, diaper bag, food bag and garment bag and I carried our two suitcases.
Taxi about $1.75 to the airport -- like going from downtown to Friendship. Weighed in at 10 lbs heavy (She had been, supposedly 18 lb overweight on the trip down with all the diapers and baby food).
After repacking, throwing out, and giving away (powdered milk donated to stewardesses nino cousin) they accepted the bags -- weren't so
picayune as the Germans were).
Everyone into the ladies room where we convulsed the attendants by my sister giving the baby and herself a sponge bath while I performed the magic act , standard form (consisting of washing bottles and making powdered milk and orange juice from a concentrate. This never failed to astound the Spanish). My sister changed clothes, gave me back my dress, combed her hair, took her leave from TA, exited through passport control. She said that in Spain, the Stewardess takes the baby from the mother. In Germany, the stewardess offers to carry the diaper bag.
My sister at the airport
Next - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241238
getting to Valencia