Expo '98, misleading names and foreign languages. Lisbon, 31.11.15-4.11.15

During our last day in Lisbon we explored it in a different fashion: rather than walking in the historical center, we visited more modern parts of the city. From Estufa Fria and Gulbenkian Museum, which both lie to the north-west of the historical center, we headed towards the eastern corner of the city, to the Park of the Nations.

Here everything contrasted with what we'd seen before.

 

It is no surprise because in 1998 this part of Lisbon greeted millions of visitors who came here to attend the Lisbon World Exposition. The Expo '98 commemorated 500 years of Portuguese discoveries. Half of a millenium before, in 1498, Vasco da Gama arrived in India. Nowadays two colossal сonstructions, named after the great voyager and situated in that part of Lisbon, remind us of him. They are the longest bridge in Europe extended for over 17 kilometers

and the tower, currently serving as a hotel.

The tower is joined to Oceanarium by a cable car system.

I was less impressed by Lisbon large-scale public aquarium than by the one in Saint Petersburg which I visited about 8 years before. However, Portuguese house of aquatic animals has its appealing features. You can see not only an aquarium there but also the reconstructions of penguins, sea-otters and other non-fish marine animals habitats. 

Turning back to the first association with the word "oceanarium", here is the potpourri of what attracted me the most:

Masters of disguise

Winning hide-and-seek versus an octopus

Jellyfish, adds lighting to your photos for free

Potpourri of fish inside the potpourri of photos

Sea corridor

The only large creature finning slow enough to take a picture of it

Probably, there could be more pictures but speedy sea animals were not the only problem for the quality of photos. Taking a picture becomes challenging when there isn't enough light, and, unfortunately, jellyfish don't inhabit each part of the large aquarium to make the photos brighter.

   

The last memory from that place, which I'd like to share with you, refers to a penguin. Unlike those which stand motionless on one of the above photos, that one was floating along a closed path in the aquarium among other sea inhabitants incredibly fast, faster than any other creature in Lisbon Oceanarium. I knew that penguins are skilful swimmers, but never though that they are so cool!

Let's leave the oceanarium and come back to fresh air. It's worth noting that outside it's warmer than inside the building (it's November!). Strolling through the Park of the Nations you can encounter lots of funny objects: like these "chanterelles", 

that volcano fountain (see wiki to understand why it reminds a volcano when works at full power),

and these thematic benches.

Let's transport ourselves from the Park of the Nations to the place concluding the list of sights we planned to visit in the capital of Portugal. This is Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, or the National Museum of Ancient Art. If you refer to the Wikipedia article about it, you'll read that the English translation of the name of the museum is misleading in that the collection includes no museologically "ancient" works of art, but rather holdings that are simply old or "antique." We didn't know that beforehand, and hence were surprised that the oldest displays here belonged to the Middle Ages and the most modern ones pertained even to the XIX century. Like for every other museum of such kind several exhibits drew my attention, while most of them just blended with each other and didn't leave any traces in my memory. Here is what impressed me:

Pay attention to St Augustine's vestments

Yes, nothing lies on the table

Two-headed fountain

It was getting dark, and our amazing trip to Portugal came to its end.

In the previous post I skipped the first half of Monday (2.11.15). I will cover it in the last part of my travel journal next week. To conclude this week story, I would like to share one more reminiscence.

You know, I'm a big fan of languages. I even tried to learn some Portuguese before the travel but failed: phonetics occurred to be too complex for me. The other drawback is that the most part of available sources refer to Brazilian Portuguese, but it differs from European Portuguese in many aspects relating to pronunciation. However, we experienced inconvenience just in two or three cases. Most Portuguese whom we met spoke English, so there was no language barrier. 

What's more interesting is that I managed to use my favorite foreign language (French, of course) during those days. Actually, Lisbon and its suburbs are flooded with tourists from France. Moreover, in some districts you'll hear no language but French because every citizen there is a French migrant (retiree in most cases). According to Wikipedia, French is the second popular foreign language in Portugal, much more popular than Spanish and almost as widespread as English. If you're curious about the explanation of that phenomenon, take a look at this article (check it out anyway, it mentions an interesting song). Coming back from the intra-european migration to our journey, I should say that while for the first time I used French just to ask a tourist in Sintra to take a photo of us, the second case was funny (and even shorter than the first one). We were going to enter the church belonging to Jerónimos Monastery, and somebody of the staff stopped us to warn about the morning service inside. She asked us: "Français?" (certainly, that's the first question every tourist should be met with. Do they speak French or not?). Can you please think of the weirdest possible answer? Well, I replied: "Non" (yup, in the French manner).

Finally, 4.11 in the morning an airport officer gave me my passport back telling me "Spasibo" instead of "Obrigado". Too unexpected for 6 a.m. 

Music, birds and closed doors (1.11-3.11.15, Lisbon)

On the way back to the historical center of Lisbon we acquainted ourselves with crushes in local public transport. If you're curious about details, believe me, there are no differences from Russia. There were so many passengers in the bus that we couldn't squeeze through the crowd. Hence, we joined the ranks of unintentional stowaways. I had an impression that for almost half of the passengers it was impossible to reach the ticket reader.

Finally, we got to the destination, Sé de Lisboa. Several weeks ago I described its exterior as dull and dissapointing. The main thing was not to become too upset about that and not to forget to enter. We came in and were rewarded for that. Like the relatively small number of visitors, we were lucky to listen to fascinating pipe organ music. Personally, I adore this kind of music but only inside the cathedrals. I feel something magical in that combination, something that I can't explain verbally. In contrast, listening to the same music in a philarmonic hall, on my iPod, etc. usually makes me sleep.

Next morning we got out of Lisbon for the second time, but let's skip those hours for now and return to them in one of the oncoming posts. In the afternoon of the same day we were back and continued exploring Lisbon. We traversed the Eduardo VII park notable for its unusual appearance,

and finally found Estufa Fria, a tiny garden hidden inside the large park. Unfortunately, we were a bit late: Estufa Fria was closing within an hour and was already closed for entrance. It was getting dark, some time to walk around the city still remained but we didn't have any other plans for that part of Lisbon. So we sat down not far from the garden entrance and started scrutinizing the map trying to find the place to spend the rest of the day. Suddenly we heard a strange sound. I was sure that there were no people around that place just a few minutes ago. Actually, there were still no people. That sound belonged not to a human being but to...

Just imagine how surprized we were! A peacock walking in a public park with ease, not frightened of people at all. Have you seen anything like that anywhere else? It was an amazing end of the day!

Tuesday morning we returned to that part of the city. This time the garden doors were opened. Estufa Fria appeared to be a nice cozy place inside, but nothing more than that. My verdict is the following: it's a good point to respite on the way to some other sight but definitely not a must-visit landmark. 

After chilling out in that garden full of exotic plants, we walked towards the next point of our route, Gulbenkian Museum. Instead of familiarizing ourselves with its art collection, we learned that Tuesday was a day off there. Once again, like twenty hours before, we were met by closed doors but this time we haven't the next day to revisit the same place. One more location to keep in mind for the case if I find myself in Lisbon sometime in the future.

Stopped by a closed door? Look around for a huge bird! (you'll find it, proven twice)

I was unable to find what does this bird stand for. The man in front of it is Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, a British businessman and philanthropist of Armenian origin. The museum, which didn't let us in, was founded in conformity with his last will and testament.

Falling to get into some place has a hidden benefit. That way we save time for the remaining plans (and only walk outside a bit more but who will complain about it?). Read about those plans in the oncoming posts. Until next week :)

Queues and umbrellas. Belém, 1.11.15

Last time I left you near the painting called "Man Playing Snooker and Thinking of Other Things". Unfortunately, nobody tried to solve the riddle. But hey, don't tell me that the part about the snooker is unguessable. If you have ever seen the game, you have an approximate notion of the colors of the balls and their meaning. Where else can you meet the set of circles colored that way?

In the Berardo Collection Museum we saw one more thing which is worth mentioning. The temporary exhibition featured movie "The Secret Agent" presented in a very unusual way. Several screens are used. They work synchronously showing the same episode of the movie but not the same frames. Each screen allows us to see the scene from a new viewpoint. Just imagine, you are standing between two large screens, each of which shows a person looking ahead, presumably at the opposite screen. Actually, these are two interlocutors talking to each other while you are standing between them feeling how their glances run through you. No virtual reality headsets, no holograms, nothing else related to the last word in technology, nothing but six screens and skillful cameraman can put you "inside" the film.    

I realized that what I like in such museums as Museu Coleção Berardo, is that even if you don't feel any attraction to nine exhibits out of ten there (just like I didn't), the tenth display turns out to be a wonderful source of inspiration. However, after wandering in the museum for some time, you gain everything what you can from its riches. So did we. 

It was time to explore the most famous Belém landmarks, Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém. We went outdoors. The weather was... guess what? Yup, it was still raining.

Do you remember this photo from the second-to-last post? 

Let's take another look at the tower.

That was how we decided not to visit Torre de Belém. We don't enjoy rain so much to stand in a line in such weather.

Turn around. Jerónimos Monastery looks lonely from a distance. 

Believe me, it's, actually, in a good company of umbrellaed tourists :) That's how we decided not to enter the second of the most attractive Belém sights either and went back to the center of Lisbon. There was a lot of places that we planned to visit, that's why wasting time in queues wasn't a great idea.

Do we feel disappointed about not seeing things which, probably, deserved attention the most? On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, such bad luck gave cause for coming back to Lisbon some day in the future on the way to the main destination. To Sintra, of course.

Drizzly weather, museums' best friend (1.11.15)

First November morning was rainy. We headed to Belém hoping that the weather would ameliorate soon. When we got off the bus, it still wasn't fine, so we decided to start exploring the southwesternmost part of Lisbon by visiting the museums.

The Navy Museum comprises two large areas. The first one is full of scale models of Portuguese ships as well as of various attributes of navigation belonging to different epochs. My first perception was that the museum exposition is interesting. However, soon it appeared to be monotonous and thus boring. I suppose that those who are fond of maritime things would state the contrary, but we don't belong to them.

The displays located in the second building are much more attractive for the average tourists like us. This is no surprise. No matter how great are the models, originals are always better.

In the same room you can find a couple of early Portuguese aircrafts.

As a short summary, I'd say that the second part of the Navy Museum is worth visiting, while the first one should be turned into much more entertaining one. I'm sure, it can be.

After leaving the museum, we rushed for the next one since it was still raining. I'm not a big fan of modern art, that's why I didn't expect much of the Berardo Collection Museum. Most of the exhibits proved my expectations to be true. Still I found several striking displays.

Have you noticed eighteen striking displays on the photo above? ;) Oh well, just kidding.

What about the car coming out of the wall? Don't you find the concept great?

Below you can see one of the eleven known examples of Salvador Dali's "Aphrodisiac Telephone". Moments before I made this photo, I admitted (probably, for the first time in my life) that surrealism can be amazing!

This poster reminded me of a task my classmates and I got in the 4th grade (almost eleven years ago!). The teacher asked each of us to create an interactive three-dimensional theatrical scene from an ordinary box. Scissors, paste and paint were our only instruments, threads, multicolored paper and a box itself - our only materials. My mom created a beautiful work depicting an episode of "The Little Prince". Just an hour ago she assured me that I also took an active part in drawing the background, i.e. the stage set. I don't remember that detail at all, but let it be so :)

In conclusion, I'd like to pose you a riddle. What is the title of the artwork below? ;)

Well, I don't expect you to guess the exact name. Just try to surmise what words does it contain. No googling and other cheating (e.g. visiting the museum), of course! All the necessary information is on the photo. Your conjectures are welcome in the comments.

Next week I will reveal the title and will offer you to continue following us in Belém as well as in the other corners of Portugal's capital. Stay tuned!