Lisbon Portugal - Day 1

So for Thanksgiving this year we decided to head down to Portugal.  I found a good price on flights and an apartment and off we went!  Ryan Air only flew Wednesdays so we took the boys out of school one day and headed down.  This is the first time we had decent flight times so we didn't have to wake up at the wee hours of the morning!  It was great!!!  We arrived there on November 26th and grabbed a taxi to our apartment.  It was a great apartment in the Alfma part of town.  The owners were so nice and had milk, juice, bread, jelly, cheese and a few other goodies waiting for us.  After Andre gave us his recommendations for around the area, we headed off in some search for lunch.

 

Michael really wanted McDonald's so I told him he could have it once.  So off we went.  Here he is with his Skylander mask on.  So fierce looking!!!

 

And of course with our family, what is lunch without a card game.  I brought a couple new ones, so we were trying one out.  Then the rain started, and it wasn't a drizzle it was a down pour!!  So we decided to play a few more hands before we headed back to the apartment.  Well it was still coming down and actually harder the longer we sat.  So we decided to just hike it in the rain.  I only had two umbrellas with me, so AJ had one and Michael and I shared.  It was raining cats and dogs.

 

On our way back to the apartment was a cathedral, I decided why the heck not.  We are soaked to the bone, but might as well get some sight seeing in for the day. :-)  So we stopped at The Patriarchal Cathedral of Santa Maria Maior.  The cathedral was built in the Romanesque style in the second half of the 12th century, but underwent alterations over the years.  It is the oldest church in Lisbon and has been the seat of bishopric since the 4th century AD.

 

The altar at the front of the cathedral.

 

Some of the churches relics and chalices.

 

Some of the beautiful stained glass, there wasn't any sun shining through them but they still looked amazing!

 

I love how the light looks since it is so dark outside.

 

Where the King worshipped, pretty impressive.

 

I know, more stained glass, but man they are sure beautiful!!!

 

Here is half the organ, it was so big they had to put it on both sides.  I really wish I could have heard it in action, it looked pretty impressive!!!

 

Here is the other side of the organ - too cool!!!

 

 

This was a huge painting in the back of the church, if you look to the bottom left of the picture you see a doorway and some stairs just to give you a little perspective of how big this is.

 

We decided to head into the ambulatory and apse chapels that were built between 1325-1357.

 

This is the Gothic tomb of Lopo Fernandes second wife.  Michael noticed that on most of the tombs the people on top were reading books.  I told him it was even great to read way back then.

 

This is Lopo Fernandes and AJ really loves all the dogs on them.  He had to pet each one.

 

This is called Crib by Machado de Castro in 1766.  He is a famous sculptor from Portugal and made this nativity scene and two other for the town of Lisbon.

 

As you can see there is so much detail in it, it was truly magnificent!!

 

This is the Gothic sarcophagus of a Portuguese princess from the 16th century.  Again with the dogs on the end and the boys loving them!!!

 

They also had 9 chapels in the back part of the church.  This was Chapel of S Lourenco.

 

This is the hallway that leads to all of them.  They were pretty impressive.

 

This is the Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Piedade.  This was the main centre for the Misericordia charitable organization founded by Queen Leonor in 1498.  The tomb is D. Margarida Albernaz and an unidentified bishop.

 

 

One problem that they have had here in Lisbon is earthquakes.  This cathedral has lasted through three of them.  The earthquake of 1755 was the worst and destroyed several parts of the church.  You can see here they haven't rebuilt the ceiling on this walkway.

 

I thought this was really cool, it is an archaeological dig in the middle of the cathedral.  It began in 1990 and have unearthed a series of structures from different eras, dating from the 8th century BC to the 14th century AD when the cloister was built.

 

On the right hand side of the picture you see the hole and the wall behind it is an old Roman wall that divided the street.  The hole in front of it are Roman street around it and they are steps gong down.

 

This is trying to show you how hard it was raining.  There is no roof there and you can see the rain pouring down.

 

On the bottom left of the picture is the Roman Sewer that was under the street.  Then if you can see just behind that was an Islamic Vaulted Niche that belonged to a public Islamic building.  Back were the scaffolding is on the left is the Roman Street from 1st century AD and to the right of that is the Islamic Dump.  It is just amazing how they kept building on top of everything. 

 

David poising for me around the dig.

 

You can see the amount of water coming down and this was one of many that was draining the water.  It was insane amount of rain falling down.

 

My boys around the archaeological dig.

 

Michael my goof ball, he always cracks me up!

 

I really liked the doors on this cathedral.  The boys showing off their karate skills and also the heights of the two small doors and you can see how much bigger the other ones are.

 

So we decided to head to a doner place for dinner that night since it was right down the road and we wouldn't get too much wetter.  We grabbed it to go and this was AJ's meal.  It was so pretty!

 

Then our nightly game - we played two different ones.  We were in a little earlier than usual because all of our shoes, socks, feet, pants, coats, etc were soaked and we were a little cold.  It was nice to come back and have a place to dry out.  Even with the rain it was a good first day.  Though in our prayers that night we prayed for dry weather.