Cascais, etc.

6-24-10  Now I’m in Cascais , a suburb, more or less, of Lisbon. I passed right by Lisbon today without stopping, but I’ll see it tomorrow. Today, I checked the surf in the local hotspot – Guincho. Of course it was lousy. Waist high onshore slop. I watched for 40 minutes looking for an edge I could ride for more than 3 seconds. Nada. Even the 10 board surfers were pulling out after 5 second mush rides. Oh well, I didn’t expect much anyway. But a guy can dream, right? So, after tracking down a cheap bed for the night, I backtracked into Belem, another suburb. It’s most famous for a 150 year old pastry shop that serves a little cream pastry with sugar and cinnamon on top.  There is also the Monastery of the Two Jeronimos, and a few museums, one of which is the Berardo Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. I checked out the Monastery and the Art museum before scoring my pastries. The Monastery dates from the early 15^th Century, with lots of modifications since then. It is beautiful. What you’d expect of a medieval church with stained glass, ornate stonework, and carved woodwork. Impressive. Of course, the woman I saw wearing a stylishly flimsy summer dress was at least as beautiful as anything in the building, I thought. The art museum was interesting. I’ve seen 2 other well known modern art museums this trip, but this was the best, by far. I’m not impressed by the art& language movement, but the collection had some really interesting pieces. There were several other special exhibits as well as one floor dedicated to a broad display of their permanent collection, from the surrealists (Dali, Picasso, Miro, etc,) to Andy Warhol’s soup cans, Dan Flavin’s neon lights, and the South American primitive submarine recently shown at the SD downtown Contemporary Museum. I finished off the day with a superb dinner by the sea back in Cascais. A lemon flavored fillet of fish with a side of tomato rice with shellfish after a nice fish soup. Desert was the house special – slices of pecan pie and pumpkin pie with dollops of strawberry and banana ice cream, all smothered in whipped cream. Washed down with a small bottle of white wine, of course. And that makes me done for the night.

Me at the MCA, listening to a tape of foreign sounds on a rickety ladder:

 I also went to Sintra to visit the Palace there. Cool place, but the President of the country showed up, too. I wondered why there was a band playing Sousa marches. The president is somewhere in the crowd.