The sixteenth century Torre de Belém welcomes us to sunny Lisbon. Sailing up the Tagus river is a memorable experience on this trip. The Torre makes an interesting contrast to the 2016 MAAT museum which differs itself with the adjacent beautifully restored power plant. MAAT stands for Museum of Art Architecture and Technology and was finished in 2016, designed by the British architect Amanda Levete. From a distance it looks like a giant sharks head and the clever use of tiles makes the surface look like scales of a fish.
The old and quaint streets of Lisbon don’t cease to charm us and we enjoy old fashioned coffee houses, stores and trams.
Once you fancy a cup of coffee it is never far away. We happened to end up in one of Lisbon’s oldest confeitarías which turned out to be a Belle Époque artists café where many original artworks still adorned the walls. Outside we saw a bronze Fernando Pessoa drinking coffee from his bronze cup.
The old cloister Mosteiro dos Jéronimos in Belém dates from the sixteenth century and was recently restored. King Manuel had it built with money from the colonies in a time when Portugal ruled the world seas and made many discoveries.
Vasco da Gama himself spent the night here, praying with his crew before he set out to discover the route by sea to India in 1497.
Being in Portugal made us real fans of the sweet and tasty pastéis de nata so being in Belém we simply had to try the original: the Pastéis de Belém. Here the very first pastéis saw the light and the story tells that the necessary egg yolks came from the cloister where the whites were used as starch for the clothes of the monks.
In the 18th century parts of Lisbon were destroyed by an earthquake. The results can still be seen in the Convento do Carmo and it’s church.
Ai Weiwei, an artist of whom we saw an exhibition when we were with Kabaal in Copenhagen, nowadays lives in Portugal. He has his own museum in an old rope factory in Belém. Once more we were impressed by his involvement and the risks he takes by challenging social issues and promote human rights worldwide.
Join us on a tram ride in the video below