(Finally) wrapping up Portugal...

Belem, June 3
Sintra, June 4

Belem lies like a gleaming jewel in the west of Lisbon. The shining white of ancient buildings and the lush green of parks complement the azure background of the Tejo River. Belem played an important historical role as the port of embarkation for the Portuguese explorers, and today it attracts modern explorers as well.
Perhaps the most spectacular sight in Belem is the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, an imposingly beautiful piece of Manueline architecture harking back to 1496.

The monastery's cathedral has enough Gothic arches to rival any of the other famous cathedrals in Europe, but it can additionally boast of being the final resting place of explorer Vasco de Gama.


The monastery also has an entire room decorated with yellow and blue azulejos, hand-painted tile paintings. Most impressive of all is its courtyard, festooned with stunningly intricate carved stone arches and pillars.



Across the street from the monastery, a great monument rises up over the Tejo, celebrating Portuguese exploration. At the base of the monument is a mural of inlaid stone and tile depicting a map of the world.

The monument bears the same sense of heroic idealism shared by such objects world over, but with this one there is a sense that it is actually deserved. Honoring forebears who indulged their curiousity about the world around them and ventured out into the unknown seems much more noble than honoring those who "courageously" slaughtered the enemies of their nation in war. In addition, it is located near the exact spot where the depicted explorers set out on their adventures. Standing by the stone figures you feel an inclination to follow their gazes out over the Tejo, shading your eyes against the blazing sun to follow the course of the river to where it meets the endless possibilities of the Atlantic.

From the monument you can also gaze down the river at the real point of embarkation, the Torre de Belem, an island fortress of majestic turrets, vaulted ceilings and ornate arches. It rises out over the river like something out of a fairy tale, or an idealized vision of history. Like the monastery, it is a masterpiece of Manueline architecture, but it had a practical defensive purpose when built between 1515 and 1521.




Seemingly endless narrow, winding spiral staircases beckoned the way to lofty heights and spectacular views over the river from the top terrace of the tower, 35 meters high.
After clambering all over the tower under the relentlessly blazing sun, we headed off for a break, to test the widely-reported belief that the custard pastries of Belem, pasteis de Belem, are the best in all of Lisbon. (They are.) We took our snack to a riverside park where there just happened to be some kind of folk festival. We were surrounded by natives in traditional costume, young and old. On a stage at the front of the open green musicians played and groups performed folk dances. The music seemed to feature high, shrill female voices in a nasal tone, akin to ululations classicly associated with the Arabic-speaking world. It was peculiar but enjoyable in the quaint, comforting way of folk traditions.


We next headed to the Parque das Nacoes in the eastern region of Lisbon, a thoroughly modern area constructed for the '98 World Expo. In stark contrast to the classical historicalness of Belem, this area is replete with a shoppng mall, restaurants and modern glass-and-steel architecture. Yet somehow it was still a pleasant place to watch the sun set over the Tejo and to people watch, trying to get a feel for the modern Portuguese. It is an ecclectic mix that promenades along this flower-filled riverside park, from the packs of teenagers laughing uproariously to secure their pecking orders, to couples obliviously lost in their own romantic fantasies, to beaming mothers pushing strollers, to the leather-clad Hell's Angels, apparently in town for some kind of international convention.


Back in the center of the city, we wandered the narrow alleys of Chiado to hear some fado, the traditional ballad-style music of Portugal. While the restauranteurs plied us with Vinho Verde (green wine) and amazingly delicious sheep's milk cheese, throughout the night several different singers took the "stage" (a tiny space cleared for them among the tables). How to describe fado? It is acoustic, a single singer backed up by only a guitar and a 12-string Portuguese guitar. The singer really makes the genre, though. Fado means "fate" in Portuguese, and the music is tragically soulful, longing, nostalgic. It is simply captivating. A fado singer belts out a song in a way that entiwines you in not only the sound, but also the mood. It is music meant to be sung in small, smoky, candlelit places, with the smoky, haunting melody lingering in the air. It is primal music, music of the torturous, inescapable emotional maelstrom of the human experience. Fado is also about love, but not love as we like it to be in pop music, vapidly beautiful. No, fado speaks of love - and life - as it really is: complex, confusing, terrible, tragic.... and worthwhile. Worth everything, worth clinging to in a tooth-and-claw struggling-for-survival kind of way. An evening of fado is dreamlike, cathartic, mysteriously life-affirming.

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Sintra lies only a 45-minute train ride from Lisbon but seems like it belongs to another world. It is a charming town with a meandering network of shady tree-filled parks and grand palaces nesled in the hilly countryside. It is also being discovered by the masses and its hilly streets are blooming with kitschy tourist shops, but it is only a small blemish on the mystique of the place.
Historically the country playground of the royalty, Sintra boasts a number of palaces, some more accessible than others. While the famous Castelo dos Mouros perches high above the city (a very steep 3-km trek), the Palacio Nacional de Sintra is right at the center of town, dominating the skyline with its unique twin chimneys. The palace mixes the Manueline Gothic architecture with Moorish influences for an amazing array of carved stone archways, winding towers and hand-painted tiles.


The amount of charm possessed by this quiet hillside village is almost ridiculous. Wandering its streets, a traveler encounters photogenic vista after photogenic vista, in handpainted tile murals, interestingly ornate building architecture, tropical gardens, and views stretching out across red-tiled rooftops.


A roadside tiled fountain beckoned to thirsty travelers and proved an apparent favorite haunt of locals, as one guy pulled up with a car-trunk filled with plastic containers that he proceeded to fill from the fountain, one after the other, a task that he was still occupied with when we passed by a second time hours later.

Wandering along in a near-dream state induced by the hazy picturesqueness of the town and the ever-present sunny heat, we came, accidentally, upon a most amazing place: the Quinta da Regaleira. Long a country estate of various nobility, it was purchased in the early 20th century by a wealthy visionary, António Augusto de Carvalho Monteiro, who, with the help of a gifted architect, Luigi Manini, transformed the place into a garden of wonders. Monteiro, a doctor by trade, was really a philosopher and mystic by nature who believed in alchemy and mythology and all kinds of mysteries. According to the sketchily-translated brochure from the Quinta de Regaleira (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Monteiro envisioned his property as a sort of Garden of Eden. "The paradise is materialised in coexistence with the inferious - a Dantesque subterranean world - in which the neophyte would be guided by the Ariadne thread of Initiation. A full sensorial and environment-conditioned approach has been devised to represent and impart the experience of the Initiation quest... through a symbolic garden where one may feel the Harmony of the Spheres and scrutinize the alignment of an ascent of consciousness."

Monteiro's mansion is now a museum dedicated to explaining the symbolism of the estate's many chapels, towers, gazebos, grottoes, statues and other features. The architectural blueprints for every feature are displayed in the mansion, their precision and attention to detail simply mind-boggling.

Towers and turrets seem to be generally beloved in Portugal, a staple feature of all architectural masterpieces, and Monteiro took this love of towers to an extreme level, with turreted features all over his garden. On the mansion he had his own Alchemist's Tower, which he gaurded under lock and key from unwelcome guests while he resided there. Today visitors can tromp up and down the tower's spiral staircase as much as they want. The view is, of course, spectacular.


But did Monteiro realize his vision of a spiritual landscape that initiates visitors to a new plane of consciousness? The place is certainly imbued with an atmosphere of surreality. We traipsed through the garden, occasionally following the map in the brochure but more or less just wandering and marvelling at it all. It was a place where you could spend hours and still not see everything, around every corner there seemed to be something new and even more fantastic. I wanted to explore the labyrinthine network of caves and grottoes but we didn't have any source of light, and the darkness, once we had traveled a few feet in, was amazingly, petrifyingly thick and impenetrable. In conrast to the brightness of the sun outside, entering the grotto was like running into a brick wall.
Eventually we came upon the Initiate's Well, a feature I had noticed on the map and felt a growing curiousity about. It turned out to be, in fact, a well, but a well with a spiraling staircase leading down its sides to a bottom that seemed incredibly far away. We dared each other to go down those stairs, joking at first, but then... it became more and more appealing. I jested that I needed to build up courage, so we rested on some convenient nearby benches, eating sandwiches we had brought along.

Then we descended down into the well, spiraling ever deeper, ever earth-ward. The sunlight , so bright at the surface, quickly lost power, and the way became increasingly darker, and wetter. Water seeped from the walls and trickled down the narrow stone steps. I found myself with one hand on the slick wall beside me for guidance, descending slowly in near-complete darkness. And then, sooner than expected, we were at the bottom. We stepped out into the middle of the well, on a tiled mosiac that seemed to represent compass points, and looked up at the perfect circle of light above. There was a certain eeriness, yes, spirituality, in the symbolic crossing from light, to dark, to light.

But before I could really focus on this mysterious feeling, meditate upon the experience, there were voices and heavy foot treads of a larger group of tourists, loudly making their way down into the well, and the mood was broken. That was the only fault of the Quinta de Regaleira, really; too many people are interested in this intriguing place, and it doesn't give up its secrets to the masses.