Month: January 2017

A weekend in Lisbon, Portugal

/ Ryan / 1 Comment

With a move to Switzerland at the end of the month, we decided to squeeze in a few more trips from Spain. This previous weekend we went to Lisbon, Portugal.

We arrived pretty early in the day so Jenn found us some storage lockers to put our luggage in so we could join a walking tour. We brought walnut with us and he loved walking through a new town. The tour gave a glimpse into Portugal’s past. Portugal was the world’s first global power. They learned and put to good use navigation and other seafaring techniques to find trading routes around the world.

In the 1700’s there was a massive earthquake that nearly flattened Lisbon. It was on all saints day, and most people were in church- old, high ceilinged buildings made of stone. Further, because of the holiday, many had candles burning at home. Lisbon was ablaze, and the survivors gathered in the main square which is near the taiga river. The tidal wave that followed the quake wiped out many of the would be survivors.

Lisbon was rebuilt nearly from scratch afterwards. Many of the buildings we currently see in Lisbon are from that era, having been built to new, higher standards. Some buildings remained from the earthquake as monuments to those who were lost.

We joined a knights of the Templar tour that took us to several sites important to that order. We started at Castelo de Almoural. It was a defensive position on an island in the middle of a river. The water level was much higher when this castle was in use, but even today it required a boat for access.

In Tomar, we visited the Convent of Christ.  Founded by the Templar Knights, it was huge!  It was added to and and decorated many times over the years.  Much of the ornamentation is very nautical, in the Manueline style.

On our last day in Portugal, we took a train to Sintra.  At the station, we hired a private car/guide and went to a few incredible sites.  Montserrat, the National Palace in Sintra, and Quinta da Regaleira.  Carvalo Monteiro built an incredible estate here at Quinta da Regaleira, truly amazing.

Lisbon was fantastic and I can’t wait to go back.

Family

/ Ryan / Leave a comment

Late Christmas night Jenn and I watched a movie together and it got me thinking about my Dad.  He passed away just a few years ago and it moves me a lot whenever I think about him.  I was very close with my Dad, I think back to the times we’d stay up half the night chatting in the kitchen.  Who even knows what we could talk about for so long…

My parents divorced when I was a kid, so I spent every other weekend with him.  This meant most of the time I lived with my Mom.  Of course, this meant she had to do most of the odious disciplining and I’m sure that contributed to the teen angst my sister and I experienced.  It’s hard to look back on one’s past without those memories being colored by what one thought or felt at the time.  Memories seem like blurry things, I can recall emotions and feelings about events in my life but exact details are difficult to make out.

I’m grateful for the circumstances that intersected leading to the last time I saw my father.  Growing up, he lived in St. Louis and my sister and I lived in Omaha.  For a time, my Dad didn’t own a car and would make that ~8 hour drive on his motorcycle.  I was happy to see him, but as an 8-year-old I didn’t know what that drive was like.  I’m not trying to paint him as a superhero for driving a long way on a motorcycle when another man would have bought a car- or when another would have cancelled the visit.  Many years later I got a motorcycle of my own and drove the ~8 hours to visit him.  To be honest, it was a harrowing experience.  But that drive offered me a perspective I had not previously known.

I showed up at his house and we chatted for a few hours.  I had been humbled by the drive, and was grateful for his having done so many times in the past.  I am normally not humble enough nor grateful enough to those around me, family or friends.  But this day, this last time I would see my father, I had been both.  A few months later, he passed unexpectedly.  I miss him dearly.

I have a very strong memory of that visit.  We were happy, sharing stories and enjoying each others’ company.  When I happen to think back to that day, it’s a bright memory; one that I cherish.

JnR’s Merry Mallorca

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Walnut, Jenn and I went to Mallorca, Spain for the new year.  We’ll be moving to Switzerland in a month and are trying to squeeze in a few little trips in Spain before we leave.  The flight from Barcelona took about 50 minutes.  We stayed in Palma, a beautiful city on the coast.

We wandered around our neighborhood, visiting a small Christmas market and a fancy market street.  Cobblestone streets, horse drawn carriages, and ancient stone walls and cathedrals make the city feel like another world.  Castell de Bellver, found high upon a hill overlooking the port, cemented this feeling.

In the evening, the holiday lights formed tunnels down streets while stars and orbs floated overhead.  The cathedral and other ancient walls glowed in the mellow evening light.

The Palma Aquarium was pretty good.  Apparently, they have the deepest shark tank in the EU.  The sharks they had in there were huge!  They also had quite a few other aquariums, and I found their smaller tanks to be very good.

We went to a cave, cuevas drachs, on the other side of the island.  The public bus was easy to use and drove us the 60 miles or so directly to the site.  The cave was very large, with a pretty sizable lake (for a cave, that is).  At one point, they even boated in orchestra players to play a few songs for us.  After the visit, we had some time to kill and hiked to the nearby coast and sat in the sun for a while.