Mark in Lisbon’s Cathedral

And finally our last stop on this Portugal Explorer was Lisbon, the capital and largest city. There is a lot to like about Lisbon – some great food, a top-notch boutique hotel, beautiful architecture, important history – but somehow it didn’t grab me as much as most European capitals do, or even as much as Porto did on the start of this trip.

Perhaps it’s just that we got off on a bad start. We returned our rental car on arriving in Lisbon and it was just an awful experience. Filling the gas tank on the outskirts of the city was ridiculously challenging – it probably took 15 or even 20 minutes, just extreme inefficiency. And then we were supposed to return it to a Europcar location in the city and when we go to the address there was absolutely no sign of a car return. We drove around a couple times but nothing. We tried to call the help number the agency gave us when we picked the car up and repeatedly just got a recording (in Portuguese so we had no idea what they were saying). Eventually we decided to try a ramp to … something underground … and sure enough, there it was. A sign outside would have helped.

The Palácio Principe Real, our glorious hotel for three nights

From there things got better. Our hotel was an 18th century palace that had stood empty for some 15 years before the owners, Gail & Miles, started restoring it and turning it into a hotel. It’s almost hard to believe that this the first (and last, they assure us) hotel they’ve ever done. It’s as though they had traveled the world, found all the little niggling mistakes that other hotels make, and corrected them all. The grounds were beautiful with a heated pool and very pleasant places to read and relax, and breakfasts were great.

There were some nice neighborhoods to wander around in but surprisingly there weren’t any great museums or cathedrals that you just had to see. One of the highlights of the city is the area called Belém, much of which was built out when Portugal was a rising imperial power so it has all that massive architecture displaying the now-spent glory that was once Portugal. Mark and I went down to look around but ultimately we didn’t actually do much.

Mark in front of the Monument of Discoveries in Belém, celebrating Portugal’s role in the 15th and 16th centuries Age of Discovery. When we got to it I realized the monument is literally the only thing that I remembered from my one visit to Lisbon 20-plus years ago.

The other highlight for us was that our NY friend David – last seen a few days ago at the wedding – came to Lisbon while we were there and stayed at our little boutique hotel. We have somewhat different schedules – he would be finishing breakfast as we were getting ready to go to lunch – but it was fun going to dinner with him and just spending way more time than we normally would in New York. But then it was Saturday morning and time to go to the airport – our little trip through Portugal was great fun, but now it was over.

The view of our courtyard from our hotel room. And while I didn’t get any great pictures of our friend David, that’s actually him sitting on one of the chairs at the pool talking to Mark.

Lunch at a great tapas restaurant on our last day

In keeping with our experiences in both Porto and Coimbra, Lisbon was pretty hilly with a lot of steps. I learned during this trip that the kene tendonitis I suffered with for well over a year was really, truly gone – if all this elevation didn’t cause it to flare up nothing will.

The former Jerónimos Monastery in Belém dating from the early 16th century. It was built near the site of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage linking Europe to Asia via the ocean. It now houses his remains along with those of several former Portuguese kings.

Mark in front of the Belém Tower, a 16th century fortification that marked the embarkation point for Portuguese world explorers

The Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

Just a cool Lisbon street. We found Lisbon somewhat grittier than most Western European cities we’ve visited. It had an aura of faded glory that was beautiful at times and a little sad at other times.

Lunch on arrival at our beautiful hotel

And breakfast

While the port of Lisbon remains an enormous work area – really cutting off the city from the mouth of the Tagus River – this area for sailboats was prettier

Beautiful and tasty sirloin at a cool Indian tapas place called Gunpowder

Mark at lunch savoring some octopus in front of him and a really great bottle of Portuguese wine

And random bears inside a random doorway

Margaret and Hajir arrive for one of many festive events, in one of Margaret’s many costume changes, at this epic wedding

So finally we get to the main point of this trip: Margaret & Hajir’s wedding. They chose as the location the Alentejo wine region. It’s worth noting that while the Douro Valley wine region – the second stop on this Portugal Explorer tour of ours – is a reasonably confined discrete area, the Alentejo region spreads across fully a third of the country. And unlike the area around our Six Senses stop in the north, where we were literally surrounded by multiple wineries, down here you can drive miles without seeing a single vine.

That is to say this is a very different wine region compared to up north. Still, because it is a largely rural and dispersed area there was no single large hotel or resort to house the hundred-plus people Margaret and Hajir were expecting for the ceremony. Instead we were spread out for miles in various inns and guesthouses and winery-hotels.

The beautiful countryside around Assumar

Mark & I ended up in an absolutely lovely small guesthouse in the tiny town of Assumar, certainly the smallest town we have stayed at in years. And the country boy that’s still in me loved the stop. We were only there for two nights but both days I went for long walks in the country (joined by Mark for one of them), discovering cork trees, grazing sheep and cattle, a huge solar farm, and plenty of mud. I love living in Manhattan but you don’t get a lot of opportunity for country walks there so I did my best to make up for it in Assumar.

The turn-around point of one walk. I’d wanted to go a little further, and this pleasant pasture was inviting, but Walt had warned me that the cattle here were aggressive beef cattle, not docile milk cows. I saw them spread across the path, saw the big horns on most of them, and decided discretion was the better part of valor. I turned around and thus survived to write this blog.

Besides great walks in the country two memories from Assumar stand out. When we first arrived – delayed some 45 minutes by a terrible accident on the highway down there – our host Walt took us to the tiny restaurant in town where the menu was … ribs. Really good ribs, I should add, in the most typical small-town café filled with old men who probably sit there every day, telling the same stories. There was no menu – you ate what he was cooking that day. There were side dishes, however, three of them to be precise. Potatoes, potatoes, and potatoes, cooked in three different ways. Not the meal I would normally choose but a genuinely unforgettable meal.

And then just the guesthouse itself. Walt & Hilde, the proprietors, had recently restored an old farmhouse; I don’t remember just how old but at least a couple hundred years. They couldn’t have been lovelier, our room was big and bright, and they even had a pool in the backyard. Of course, notwithstanding the early April calendar I went in for a dip. Cold but exhilarating.

Walt and Hilde the absolutely lovely hosts at our Assumar guesthouse

And then of course there was the wedding. We’ve socialized with the couple for dinners and parties at both our house and theirs and one thing we were confident of was that there would be enough alcohol. In fact we were a little concerned because the wedding ceremony (ceremonies) themselves were scheduled to last some 10+ hours, with open bars the whole time. And as if that weren’t enough there were dedicated tequila- and whiskey-bearers wandering around throughout ready to help anyone in need.

We didn’t know many of the people at the wedding but we’d met John at a dinner party at Margaret & Hajir’s just a couple weeks ago and have known Alice almost since we first moved to New York, so it was fun to spend time with both of them

In fact it was all pretty fabulous – a somewhat traditional Persian ceremony to reflect Hajir’s family, a more English country estate ceremony complete with arrivals on white horses, a planned escape by hot air balloon that had to get scrubbed because of the weather, and plenty of food, music, and socializing. All in all we had a pretty fabulous time.

It was scheduled to be a two-and-a-half hour drive from Coimbra down to Assumar. Instead no more than a minute or two before we got to this spot there was a terrible accident; a car hidden behind that van was demolished. It didn’t appear that anyone died but at least one person had to wait for the emergency responders to get removed from the car. A good reminder to drive carefully.

The wonderful and memorable lunch in Assumar

Me with ribs and potatoes. Before the bill came I asked Mark if he thought it would come to under or over €50; we both thought maybe a little under. In fact it was €32. We can’t afford not to come on vacation here!

A grove of 400-year-old cork trees. Walt explained that it takes 10 years after removing the bark to make corks for the tree to recover before it is ready for “harvesting” again. So they paint a big white digit on the tree to show when it was last harvested; this tree, obviously, had its bark removed in 2019 and will be ready again in 2029.

Another shot of our country walk

Margaret and Hajir arrive to one of the ceremonies on horses. This all looked good but a second later the horses decided to be less cooperative….

Some pictures of friends, old and new. Here are Elizabeth and David.

Alice and Najeen, cousin of the groom

Sarah, Laure, and Laura. Notice Mark, reflected in the mirror behind them, taking this picture.

Me with Robert, father of the groom (and official tequila bearer), and Kylie from Indiana

Rebecca, Annie, Kris, & Leah. I’d complimented Kris on his tie when he explained it was his daughter’s hair bow and she didn’t want to wear it any more so he turned it into a festive tie!

You recognize us!

Here we are again with Walt and Hilde who joined the early part of the festivities

The vows, with officiant cousin Hasti. You’ll notice that instead of traditional bridesmaids and groomsmen Hajir & Margaret are joined at the front by the tequila- and whiskey-bearers. I mean, you never know when you might need a little extra nip!

The entire group from our little guesthouse: David, Linda (mother of the bride), Sarah, Laura, Greg, Jake, Mark, me, and Tina, aunt of the bride

And one final view of the serenity of the Assumar countryside

The 19th century manor at the core of our resort was at the top of a lot of stairs

The second stop on this Portugal Explorer was an easy 90-minute drive into the Douro Valley, the country’s most famous wine region. We stayed in the Six Senses resort, located high above the Douro River in a grand 19th century manor. Truth be told there wasn’t really a lot to do so there’s not a lot to say about it.

The food was good, though because of the isolation of the resort there were no off-resort restaurant options and after just a couple days of looking at the same lunch menu it gets a little old. And the weather was spectacular for this time of year – sunny and in the 60s much of the day.

Lunch on the patio at Six Senses Douro Valley surrounded by vineyards and with plenty of sun

Being right in the middle of wine country – literally surrounded by vineyards – we took advantage of the hotel’s offer to do a wine tasting. For €55 you get to taste several wines with a sommelier giving you a history of the wine, the region, all that. Some of it was interesting but there were two downsides. First, none of the wines they chose were particularly representative of the Douro Valley. That was really strange – they all had at least some non-native grapes, and in a couple cases all the grapes were not native to the region. The whole point for us was to learn more about this specific region.

The other problem was annoying: they listed the price as €55 but when the bill came they added a €5 charge for the little food nibbles you get as a palate cleanser. Sorry, you don’t get to advertise one price and then just add a little extra. There’s a happy ending to the story though. After I complained at the front desk and had them take the extra charge off we saw the next day that the advertisement for the wine tasting had been changed to reflect the cost of €60. Victory!

Our sommelier telling us about the Douro Valley wines without actually using typical Douro Valley wines

Otherwise our days were filled with a lot of reading and a fair amount of exercising. There was a really nice gym on site and there were some great walking trails along the river and into the vineyards. A few days walking and reading in the sun with nothing to worry about isn’t the worst way to spend time!

There was a trail from below the hotel that ran just about exactly one kilometer along the river, a pleasant part of every day we spent there

And then you could extend the walk up into the vineyards. Even in just three days I could watch the little green sprouts emerging on the vines – my sense is that in just another week or 10 days at most this will be way more green than it is now.

There was a nice pool but it being the start of April and all the water was too cold for most people. I went in, though, and while I was there we found that it wasn’t too cold for ducks, either, two of whom landed while I was in it. You can see them in the upper right of the pool!

There I am, even closer to the ducks

Another view of the vineyards. Our hotel is off in the distance, almost exactly in the center of the picture.

More wildlife! The hotel had two very calm dogs that hung around with guests. This one, Foxy, wasn’t very strategic: completely ignored you, even if you tried to make friends. But then at lunch time when there was food he was eager to be fed. Sorry, you weren’t friendly when I wanted you!