BACK IN LISBON

We arrived back in Lisbon on Friday and after dropping our "stuff" headed to the grocery store.  A friend of mine from California was arriving Saturday around 9:00.  

Our objective was to keep her awake as late as possible on Saturday so she would then go to sleep and wake up on our time and be fully acclimated to European time. Off we went.

Of course we had to show her the beautiful miradouras.  

We wandered through the Alfama and the Chiada districts.

Stopped for lunch and took a "selfie".  So flattering- ha!  The place was neat - A Casa Brasileira. You can eat at the counter and get a fast lunch deal.  We opted to sit down and pay the bigger prices.  About 1 euro more for someplace to put your bum.  Worth the money especially if you've just flown in from LA.

They make everything out of cork so we had to show Sandy.  We also showed her many of the places we have already featured in the blog.  Finally we decided it was wine time so we headed home and prepared one of our speciality meals for Sandy.  Finally at 9:00 we allowed her to go to bed.  Actualy she was doing really well keeping awake.  

The next day we headed out to a couple of museum I had read about and wanted to see. Our first stop was at the Gulbenkian Museum. Calouste Gulbenkian,(1869-1955), an Armenian oill tycoon, gave Portugal his art collection ( or "harem" as he called it).  His gift was an act of gratitude for the hospitable asylm granted him during World War II ( he lived in Lisbon from 1942 until his death)  The Portuguese consider Gulbenkian- whose billion-dollar estate is still growing and vital arts foundation promoting culture in Portugal- an inspirational model of how to be thoughtfully wealthy.  (He made a habit of "tithing for art", spending 10 percent of his income on things of beauty.)  

His collection, spanning 5000 years and housed in a classy modern building, offers the most purely enjoyable museum experience in Iberia - its both educational and just plain beauitful. There are only a few select and exquisite works from each epoch.  

I wish I could have taken pictures but they were prohibited.  If visiting Lisbon put it on your to do list.

They did have a lovely cafeteria and we had our lunch there.

Our next stop was the Museum and School of Portuguese Decorative Arts.  This museum offers a stroll thorugh an aristocratic household, richly decorated in 16th to 19th -century styles.  In 1947, Ricardo do Espirito Santa Silva restored this Azurura Palace to house his collection of 15th to 18th-century fine art and then willed it to the state.  

This is a "Berlin style" coach with a state-of-the-art suspension system.  

The grand staircase leads past 18th-century glazed tiles ( Chinese-style blue and white was in vogue-upstairs into a world rich in colonial riches.

There was a little courtyard area attached to a cafe located in the museum.  

A travelling set of silver.  I mean would you go anywhere without your silver?

This is called the "Procession with Giraffes Tapestry.  It was fun trying to find the five giraffes, , an elephant, part of a zebra, a leopard and the head of a crocodile.

King Jose and Queen Maria I bedrooms

Art works from "The Nativity Room".

Then we went to the "chair room" and we each picked out our favorite chair.

Sandy sat in hers and I don't think she was supposed to but I decided not to tell.

I just thought this looked like me.

This was the table room.  We decided to forego picking out our favorite.

One of the many beautiful ceilings.  These are just a few of the highlites from the museum.

Sandy and I left Sharon at home and I took Sandy to get a drink of Ginzinha and to check out a few restaurants I had read about.  That night we went to one of them,  Bonjardim's.  They actually have two restaurants across from each other but only one was open during this season.  They serve the best roast chicken ever.  They give you a little African piri-piri sauce to paint on the chicken if you desire.  It gives it a real "bite".  I think we might have to go back there.