TODAY’S TOURING
Museums, shopping, and churches:
- Gulbenkian Museum
- We took an Uber to the museum
- Toured standard exhibits but not any special exhibits, which was enough to reach our limit
- Shopping
- Uber to Trinidate Square for shopping & walked downhill back to hotel
- Marty bought cork purse
- We bought chocolate gifts
- Churchs
- Sao Roque
- Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation
- Our Lady of Loreto
- Luvaria Ulisses – smallest and oldest glove store
We took our daily rest and espressos back at the hotel. Also, hotel maintenance:
- Fixed non-working room phone
- Worked on the room thermistat that ran forever in air conditioner mode. We had to manually turn the air conditioner ON/OFF to regulate the temperature in the room
Dinner was at Lugar Mercado.
REFERENCES
▲▲Gulbenkian Museum (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian) (Rick Steves)
This is the best of Lisbon’s 40 museums, and it’s worth the trip for art lovers (two miles north of the city center). Calouste Gulbenkian (1869-1955), an Armenian oil tycoon, gave Portugal his art collection (or “harem,” as he called it) in gratitude for the hospitable asylum granted him in Lisbon during World War II (where he lived from 1942 until his death). The Portuguese consider Gulbenkian an inspirational model of how to be thoughtfully wealthy: He made a habit of “tithing for art,” spending 10 percent of his income on things of beauty, and his billion-dollar estate is still a vital arts foundation promoting culture in Portugal. The foundation/museum, with its classy modern building set in a delightful garden, often hosts classical music concerts in the museum’s auditoriums.
São Roque Church (Rick Steves)
Step inside and sit in a pew in the middle to take it all in. Built in the 16th century, the ▲ church of St. Roque—dedicated to the saint who protects the faithful from disease and plagues—is one of Portugal’s first Jesuit churches. The painted-wood, false-domed ceiling is perfectly flat. The acoustics here are top-notch, important in a Jesuit church, where the emphasis is on the sermon (given from twin stone pulpits midnave). The numbered panels on the floor were tombs, nameless because they were for lots of people. They’re empty now—the practice was stopped in the 19th century when parishioners didn’t want plague victims rotting under their feet.
Luvaria Ulisses (Frommer’s)
Set in an Art Deco gem of a building in the Chiado, this is the last shop in Portugal that sells gloves, and only gloves, a tradition dating from 1925 when the store was founded. Although new styles have been introduced, the glove-making technique itself is decades old and all the goods are still handmade. The shop will even make gloves for you if your tastes veer to the exotic. Satin, wool, and all types of leather (lamb, calf, game, pig, even antelope) are available, as are every color in the rainbow, though simple black and brown are most popular. This unique shop is also known for its legendary small size.
