Sunday June 9th Belém Portugal

Sunday June 9th a trip to Belém just outside Lisbon to visit the much acclaimed Jerónimos monastery, museum, monument of discovery and the eat a world famous Nata at the original bakery.

We woke up crazy early this morning minutes before 7AM,  well early if you’ve been out on a Lisbon Saturday night dining and strolling the waterfront lanes pausing and taking in an occasional wine or coffee or tapas or whatever. However we’d completed dinner and our stroll by 10:30 just as the tempo and population on downtown Lisbon was cranking up.  

After a quick coffee con leche’ and a croissant at the nearby local coffee and pastry shop we headed to the train station to buy tickets to Belém just west of Lisbon.  As fortune smiled on us we were able to take a San Francisco style electric trolley out for the 20 minute ride to Belém. 

When we got to Belém we bought tickets to view the museum and monastery. The museum had artifacts dating back to several hundred years  BC up through modern times of about 1500. Including gold and silver coins and jewelry to about the times of Christ. Many of these artifacts were discovered in an accidental discovery back in about 1990. There was mention that this may have been from a cache of treasure meant to safeguard it from thieves and invaders. At any rate it’s amazing to see this stuff bright and shiny and looking almost new , but 2000 years old. 

The Jerónimos Monastery dates to the mid 1500s so it qualifies as old here, like a house built in the US is “old” when it’s built in the late 1800’s. The architecture is Manueline, Portuguese Manuelino, particularly rich and lavish style of architectural ornamentation indigenousto Portugalin the early 16th century. The monastery is still used today for some official functions like receiving heads of state and treaty signing. 

We then visited the Monument to the Discoveries just south of the monastery on the waterfront and adjacent to a park with the garden of Vasco da Gama. Another amazing place to visit and share the space with explorers who left Lisbon in the early and middle 1400’s. 400 years before Lewis and Clark, 500 years before John Wayne lead the Stagecoach to Lordsburg NM🧐. Zoowie. A lot of history here. 

After a sandwich and fresh squeezed OJ we went back to Lisbon to find the church of Santiago, the starting point for the classical Portuguese Camino de Santiago. We did find it but were surprised it’s not really much acknowledged and was in fact closed when we were there. However we did meet a woman from. Hong Kong ( she impressed that it’s NOT China) who is departing on the 610km Camino Portuguese tomorrow morning with her husband in tow. She was excited to meet another pilgrim and was grateful for our short conversation and encouraging Buen Camino.    We’d hoped to get our pilgrim passport stamped at this church but instead visited the main Lisbon cathedral and were able to get one there. 

We’re mostly packed an Uber taxi scheduled for 05:30 tomorrow morning when we start our 23 hour journey to the New World.