New Lisbon

Savor the artistic delights of the Gulbenkian Museum. This legacy of the exquisite taste coupled with the immense wealth of a grateful Calouste Gulbenkian contains superior art.

Be right near the action only if you’re a soccer fan. All too modern, our sort of two-bedroom apartment rental was a 5-minute cab ride from Portela Airport and a 20-minute walk to Campo Grande station right next to the Alvalade Stadium, recently renovated for the Euro2004 soccer competitions.

Visit the site of the World Expo 1998, Parque das Nacoas and its Oceanario; magnificent in design and execution - just don’t go on weekends!

Go off the beaten path to the Museu de Cidade for its exhibits of Roman excavations and map of pre-earthquake Lisbon, located in a serene 18th-century palace and gardens oasis in the bustling modern section of the city.

Quick Tips:

The Lisbon Card costs €12.75 for 24 hours, €21.50 for 48 hours and €26.55 for 72 hours, not as cheap as guidebooks lead you to expect Lisbon will be. But as Lisbon becomes a more a modern EU country, like Ireland before it, its prices will rise.

I used Fodor’s "Lisbon" for its compactness (fits unobtrusively in purses) and its excellent map. However, it does not cover fine details that really matter, like emphasizing you need to show your passport to purchase the Passe Turistico (transportation-only pass).

As usual, I found Rick Steves’ "Spain and Portugal" useful for its straightforward judgments as to what was worthwhile seeing, but disagreed with his judgment regarding Pena Palace in Sintra.

With experience, I’m finding the Eyewitness Travel Guides by DK Publishing help me prepare visually; I just wish they weighed less so I could tuck them in my purse, as their excellent pictures and street-by-street depictions of important areas of a city, as well as their extensive coverage of museum and historical site plans, provides specific orientation that helps compensate for a traveler’s linguistic limitations.

Best Way To Get Around:

The trams are fun! Even though our tram to the Castello wasn’t "the little engine that could" get us to the top, we enjoyed close-ups of the Alfama that we couldn’t further explore, as we got sick midway through our stay with some unidentified respiratory bug that passed from son to father to me.

Similarly, the tram to Belem allowed us to observe the sights at Praca do Comercio and beyond into Belem because we weren’t whizzing by them. Most public transport was packed to the gills with passengers. The sights in Lisbon are much more spread out than they appear to be on a map, mainly because the Metro was often crowded; most lines don't run east to west and you often wait for another train and the congested traffic in the city slows trams and busses down.

Yet, our day trip out of Rossio Station to Sintra went as smooth as glass and the trains weren’t crowded at all, though Rossio Station was a bee hive coming and going.

We didn’t use a funicular, so I can’t comment on them except to say that I observed that they were usually full with a queue waiting in front of them.

www.geocities.com/lisbonflat

When we arrived at this apartment, the owner Helena Vaquinhas remarked how lucky we were to have missed the lousy weather of the previous week. Her fluency in English was thus quickly established.

When we told her the airport cabbie had charged us €21 for the ride that took five minutes, she was outraged. To console (?) us, she said some previous renters had paid €35. "No more than €5 euros," she affirmed. She has added a special caution about cabbie rip-offs in her guest e-mail information. She teaches English, so her clear information was helpful to us in finding our way around this non-center city neighborhood.

Positively, the beds were comfortable, the washer in the kitchen took care of clothes dirtied in Granada where our rental had lacked a washer, the shower water was hot and plentiful, and all was quite modern in this circa 1980s apartment in a storied complex of many all-alike buildings located around a concreted center plaza. Around the corner we could walk the equivalent of three long blocks to Villa Lambert, a mini-mall with a Modelo Bonjour supermarket, dry cleaners (which we used - very good), ATM, and three restaurants, one of which was a Straw Hat from which we took away pizzas and cokes for three (€12.50) the night of our stimulating trip to Belem.

This location is ideal for going to Parque das Nacoes, the Museu da Cidade, Alvalade Stadium (site of some of the Euro 2004 Games), and the Gulbenkian Museum complex to the south. It’s quiet at night and very safe, as only tenants and guests can enter the building.

A large wall closet in the entry hallway had an ironing board, iron, and a portable clothes-drying rack that came in handy, as the apartment did not have the hanging structures from the dining nook window’s outside walls that I saw installed on many apartments in the complex. The TV received BBC and CNN and lots of tourist brochures were stashed in a basket in the kitchen. Our bedroom had been converted from a living room, and so was large enough to contain a sofa and two beds as well as a convenient coffee table and large armoire with hangers for clothes. Our son’s bedroom had two beds and its own small TV. We didn’t cook but the kitchen was perfectly outfitted for real cooking and serving. The price was a reasonable €90 a night for three.

As her comprehensive web site details, she and her husband first rented out the apartment for the Lisbon World Expo of 1998, and they sometimes rent it out by bedrooms, as these rooms have separate keys. When searching for apartments in Lisbon, I found this rent by the room an option at an already booked apartment in the in-between location of Saldanha Square that would have been a closer-in location.

Open Tues.-Sun 10am-5pm; 3 euro adults; free over 65, students and teachers, and on Sundays. Tel.217 823 000 ; www.museu@gulbenkian.pt.

The Gulbenkian is a museum lover’s ideal - small enough to visit in three hours, but full of varied, priceless collections of masterworks by master artists and craftsmen. This is the MUST-SEE for museum-lovers in lovely Lisbon. What is so striking is the presence not of quantity, but quality of art and craftsmanship.

The first object I laid my eyes on, exhibit 1, Room 1, was a 4,000 B.C. Egyptian bowl that wowed me with its pure style and non-deteriorated state. You could use it today. The last objects I saw, in the basement, were the colorful, dazzling glassware and jewelry of Rene Lalique, who was Gulbenkian’s friend . In Room 5, there’s an exquisite Armenian jewel box; in Room 8, Rembrandt’s Portrait of an Old Man and Pallas Athene, and Rubens’ Portrait of Helene Fourment enthralled me.Then there’s Houdon’s shimmering sculpture, Diana, a breathtaking creation that Gulbenkian was fortunate to buy from Soviet owners who thought it was obscene and needed money.

Favorite rooms for me were Room 13, with its English collection of Gainsborough, Romney, Lawrence, and Turner masterworks, and Room 15, with its pristine works by Monet, Degas, Cassatt and Singer Sargent, as well as eloquent Rodin sculptures. That’s the effect of this museum; when you start to list your favorites, you find you are forgetting to mention another, and the list grows. Manet’s Boy Blowing Bubbles, was missing when we visited here, but, lo and behold, a few days later, we saw it in Madrid at the Prado, borrowed for that museum’s special Manet exhibition .

Gulbenkian spent his 86 years here on earth pursuing enormous wealth from brokering oil sales, so he could pursue acquiring the best in paintings, sculpture, furniture, rugs, tapestries, screens, and more from diverse ages and countries. In gratitude for Portugal giving him sanctuary as well as tax concessions (and a residence from which they evicted a Portuguese noble!) during World War Two, bachelor Gulbenkian bequeathed his enormous fortune to his adopted country.

From this museum’s spacious, wood-paneled reception area to its bookshop, where we bought for €13 ($15.83) five posters of some favorite paintings in the museum’s European Collection, to its classy adjoining café, where we lunched on the terrace that faces the extensive gardens that contain numerous sculptures, this museum is a delight. While we ate our excellent lunch on the terrace, we saw several children having fun leaping around the gardens.

Later I discovered that this user-friendly museum has a Centro Artistico Infantil, a FREE child-care center that is open from 9:30am to 5:30pm for ages 4 to 12. This boon for museum-going travelers with children has its entrance off nearby Rua Marques de Sa de Bandeira. Without a doubt, I consider the Gulbenkian a splendid museum that is a premier Lisbon sight.

We’ll never forget our visit to this city museum of Lisbon. Memorable is the huge model of pre-earthquake Lisbon and extensive archaeological exhibits of Roman excavations. Unfortunately, all of the exhibits are described only in Portuguese and the female receptionist and male guard my husband questioned about one of the Roman exhibits did not understand English, or my Spanish either.

This museum is filled with paintings, old prints, and skillfully mounted exhibits on Lisbon’s history; the thorough care with which everything is displayed cries out be enhanced by brochures and/or descriptions in other languages to make its wealth of information more accessible to visitors.

Despite this linguistic barrier, we enjoyed touring this museum not only for its careful exhibits, but also for the faded, neo-classical beauty of the Palacio Pimenta, where it is housed. The Palacio needs paint, polish, and repair of its lovely 18th-century façade. But in many rooms are glorious azulejos appropriate to the room’s original use. Dom Joao the Fifth used this palacio as a summer retreat when he couldn’t get away further from Lisbon to his Sintra Palacio Nacional. Campo Grande, the large field, was the "boonies" during his day, a rural area on the northwestern fringe of the city of Lisbon. As the photo shows, the entrance leads to a large courtyard where one could dismount from a horse or carriage and then extends further into the gardens.

These unexpectedly lovely gardens show signs of some maintenance, but have the potential to become glorious again. The darkened marine fountain with a mermaid statuary was the initial focus of our attention as we strolled through this charming oasis of old Lisbon. Abruptly, the air rang with frantic but commanding shouts from a woman who emerged from a gallery on the edge of the gardens. She was objecting to the way a truck driver was backing into the gallery’s driveway.

I tried to look elsewhere as my hubby proceeded to take photos of the interchange between this lady and the truck driver. When she became aware of my husband she began to alternately glare in his direction and in that of the beleaguered truck driver, who was backing up and going forward in a series of maneuvers meant to alleviate her anxieties we surmised.

My husband was a good distance away from her unlike the driver who finally satisfied her with his parking after about 10 minutes of such back and forth moves. Abashed at my husband’s photographing her, I also was trying to suppress laughing at this whole scene of female command by the Madeline Albright look-alike before me. Goodness knows that if I’d laughed out loud as I’d wanted to, she probably would have turned her forceful glare on me!

Daily 10am to 8pm; €9 adult and €5 seniors (65 or over), students, and children under 13.

Getting to the Oceanario in the Parque das Nacoas, the scene for the World Expo in 1998, is an interesting excursion in and of itself. You take the Red Line Metro to Oriente and then walk through the immense Vasco da Gamma Mall. This mall is the creation of the famed Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, and is a cantilevered marvel that looked eerie on a misty, rainy day. As the photos show, the murals in the metro station also underline Portuguese pride in da Gama.

We were jolted with surprise when we exited the Metro and saw throngs of locals shopping away their weekend just like many Americans. It’s a 10-minute walk to the Oceanario right on the waterfront (naturally) and to the northeast of the Mall. The ticket queue was 20-minutes long, filled mostly with Lisboetas and their excited children.

This building of stone and glass is stunning, designed by an American architect, Peter Chermayeff, and compliments the modernity of Calatrava’s metro station.

The huge 13-million-gallon tank is filled with about 25,000 fish and marine animals. This Oceanario is not the world’s largest; apparently, there’s an aquarium in Osaka, Japan that holds that distinction.

But, frankly, it’s astounding, and, on a day when there weren’t the overwhelming crowds we encountered, we would have been able to appreciate more fully the mesmerizing and soothing sight of so many species swimming along before us. Instead, the Oceanario was very hot and crowded. Cries of, "Mira! Mira!," rang out incessantly through the darkness as conscientious parents tried to draw the attention of their young children to the indisputably excellent visions before them. The darkness of the lower viewing levels exacerbated my claustrophobic unease – already high because of crowds and stifling heat! DO NOT GO ON WEEKENDS unless jostling, dense crowds don’t affect you aversely.

I felt much better viewing in the areas exhibiting recreations of the eco-systems of the Atlantic, Antarctic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. All was not in darkness, but in plentiful light, and with delights such as observing playful otters. Skillful depiction of the flora of the various regions gave you the sense of moving into sharply diverse oceanic atmospheres.

This most memorable remnant of the Expo is a must-see in Lisbon. We just chose a crowded day, unwisely but necessarily - it was our last day in Lisbon.

In addition, our son was just recovering from a flu-like bug he’d picked up, and both my husband and I were coming down with it. After we left this landmark, we strolled around the Parque, for the rain had abated. The sweeping river view and spaciousness of the plazas served as welcome relief. Most cafes were closed, but in nearby Vasco da Gama Mall, there were more than a sufficient number of open eateries.

Since the adoption of the euro, paying for an apartment rental has become an easier task. Nevertheless there is still more involved than in simply renting a hotel room, particularly if you are renting from a private individual, not an agent. Renting from an individual owner is often cheaper (no middleman), the apartments are often more homey, and we’ve rented enough European apartments to feel more confident in doing so. Our Iberian trip was our fifth trip to Europe and the first in which we rented all apartments, or a house, in four cities.

Unlike Barcelona and Granada, apartments in Lisbon were few and most already booked by August ; thus we emailed the owners of our fourth choice, the Quinta do Lambert apartment, rather late on September 3, for October 7th through 11th. Our availability query gave our dates of arrival and departure and the number of adults and inquired: availability, price, amount of deposit, and preferred method of paying the deposit and balance on arrival, $350. Response followed about five days later with the terms: at €90 euros a night, 5 nights equals €450 euros, plus €225 euros refundable deposit, a total €675 euros.

My husband then proposed sending double-signed American Express Travellers Cheques for $350 to cover deposit and usual variable but "always there" fees. When she agreed he sent the checks via US Global Priority Mail to her home address. We would pay the balance due in euros when we arrived at the apartment where we were to meet her.

We then mailed our specific flight number and arrival time on Iberia from Madrid.
Fine? Not exactly - when we left San Diego on September 29th, we still had not received confirmation that she had received the deposit. This trip was sans laptop, so on Sunday in Granada, we went to an internet shop and my husband sent her a message confirming all arrival details for Lisbon.

Thus, when we arrived in Lisbon after our Granada to Madrid and Madrid to Lisbon flights around 12:30pm, we were a bit up in the air. I clutched the note with the Lisboa Tejo’s telephone number just in case something had gone wrong. But, when my husband phoned the apartment; all was well; she had received the deposit and was waiting for us. My husband had secured enough euros at the AmEx in Barajas Airport in Madrid to pay the balance due in cash euros.

Apprehensions eased, we dashed out to meet the taxi rip-off! Experienced travelers we are but we had been awake since 5am that morning, Helena was waiting, and we were at the mercy (non-existent) of a polite, handsome, young, English-speaking cabbie who dripped congeniality. Oh, yes, he knew where Quinta do Lambert was; he assured us it was, "A very nice area. Rich people live there." Within minutes, we arrived at the complex where I finally became suspicious of all his "friendly" chitchat when he insisted on carrying a couple of our bags (our son had the others) right up to the downstairs entry door (thus moving us away from where we could have seen the charge on the meter). The tab was €21 euros (for a €5 euro ride).

Cabbies who pick you up on arrival to a city know you’re exhausted when you arrive; you are vulnerable and not thinking as logically as usual. Especially when you have a non-hotel rental, you know someone is waiting for you, and there’s pressure not to dilly-dally at the airport. My advice? If the owner doesn’t advise you of costs and best way to travel from the airport, ASK; prevent yourself from being overcharged. In Lisbon you can get a taxi voucher ahead of time. Check out ww.portugaltravelguide.com/ for details on this program that caps airport to city taxi rides at €22.90. This voucher is conveniently sold at the Turismo de Lisboa booth in the arrivals terminal. The city is divided into three voucher zones for transport ranging in price from €10.97 to €22.90. For apartment renters, sometimes cabs from the airport are the only option. In bigger, more sophisticated cities like Barcelona and Paris, you can often use public transport if you deliberately pick your rental location close to a metro or rail station with direct or one-stop access to the airport.

On the less than positive side, the apartment complex was so cookie-cutter that it was all too easy to try to enter the wrong apartment, as had one victorious and inebriated Irish soccer player from a group our apartment owner had recently rented to. Futilely, he had tried the key on the neighboring little old ladies’ door at 3am or so. Enraged when the door didn’t unlock, he had then pounded on their door to awaken one of his roommates (he hoped) ‘till the ladies had become emboldened enough to open their door. The ladies had lodged a well-justified complaint to Helena, and the apartment door is now clearly marked with her husband’s name to distinguish the rental from its neighbors.

Strangely enough, during our five days’ residence, we heard not a murmur of noise from the little old ladies’ apartment or from any other apartment of the 10 on our floor, nor did we see any of the building’s numerous tenants, despite our frequent comings and goings. Modern, but impersonal, and definitely lacking charm, the apartment is efficient and in carefully maintained, good shape, but I preferred the creaky charm of our Carmen in Granada where I often saw the next-door neighbors and their dog out on their patio and flowers, not concrete, surrounded us.

To get to the Campo Grande Metro we had a 20-minute walk and, then, another 5-minute walk along an above street enclosed walkway, dense with graffiti. Although we avoided the crowded Metro before 9:30am, and stayed elsewhere all day to avoid spending all our time on transports, we often found the Metro crowded. This is an ideal location for rabid soccer fans, but I think we would have seen more of Lisbon’s important old sights if we had stayed in a small hotel nearer downtown in the mid-point area around Parque Eduardo VII or in an apartment I found near the Estrela Basilica that, alas, had already been booked for our days.

In addition, restaurants were few and far between in this area. In the Modelo Bonjour Mall, there was a Brazilian cafeteria-style restaurant that was always almost empty (usually NOT a good sign) whenever we were there grocery shopping. Besides the Straw Hat we resorted to one tired night, there was a mall shop that was mostly take-away for pastry and sandwiches. A circular walk of the neighborhood yielded up the information that the residents loved soccer, as the streets flanking Alvalade stadium were thronged with soccer organization headquarters and lots of crowds, but no open sit-down restaurants.

As a traveler, I look for something different from home. That’s part of why I shun American chain hotels and prefer to rent apartments or locally run small hotels. As a Southern Californian, I also love having some outdoor space, a balcony, garden, or terrace where you can get fresh air and watch street life. In the Lisbon apartment, I felt closed in and encased in depressing regularity. These outer stretches of northwest Lisbon had buildings built quickly to accommodate an influx of ex-colonials who returned to the home country when the remnants of the Portuguese empire gained independence in the ‘70s and ‘80s. To natives like our airport cab driver, these complexes represent prosperous comfort; to me they represent regimented seclusion. It’s a matter of taste and the price you are willing to pay for modern amenities.