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Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

Évora, Portugal – November 6, 2017: The Church of St. Francis and the Chapel of Bones

Departing Lisbon by bus on the morning of November 6, a short journey of 83 miles (134 km) brought us to Évora, a city whose small size – about 50,000 people – belies its importance in Portuguese and world history.

Évora is the capital of the Alentejo, a historic province of Portugal that comprises most of the southern half of the country, from just east and north of Lisbon to the Spanish border and south to the Algarve, the much smaller southernmost province of Portugal. Today it is divided into multiple districts; the town of Évora is the capital of one of them.

Évora has a long history; it was a flourishing city in Roman times. Conquered by the Moors in 715, it was retaken by Christian forces in 1165. During the medieval and Renaissance eras, it became a veritable metropolis, sharing the residency of the royal court with Lisbon, and serving as a major center for the arts and humanities. Évora became the seat of an archbishopric in 1540, and acquired a university (run by the Jesuits) in 1559.

According to some sources, Vasco da Gama was given the command of a squadron to sail to India in 1497 in the royal palace at Évora.

Évora is a very attractive city, clean and well-maintained, with many beautiful public and historic structures, some of them colored in rich rose-pink like the Court of Appeals (Tribunal da relação) pictured above, most of them whitewashed with lemon-yellow trim.

Our first stop in Évora was the Church of St. Francis (Igreja de São Francisco), a Late Gothic-style edifice with Manueline and Renaissance features, reflecting the long period of its construction (1475 to the 1550s). It is quite imposing, seemingly as large or larger than the Évora Cathedral, which we saw later. It has an arcade in front, formed by seven arches with different forms (semicircular, pointed or horseshoe arches), a typical blend of Gothic and Moorish elements. On the tympanum above the Manueline-style door is a pelican, emblem of King João II, on the left, and an armillary, emblem of King Manuel I, on the right.

Inside the church seems even more spacious than from the outside. It has a single groin-vaulted nave which is said to be the largest of its kind among Portuguese churches. The chancel (or sanctuary), begun in the early 16th century, and the altar, added later in the century, are Renaissance in style, with some Baroque additions.

The transept contains elaborate altars with gilded sculpture and paintings by Flemish artists. Along the sides of the nave are twelve open chapels, built into the alcoves between the buttresses of the walls.

However, the Church of St. Francis is best known not for its unique design or its magnificent Renaissance artwork, but rather for an adjunct chamber, reached through a passage on its south side: the Capela dos Ossos, or Chapel of Bones. This is a large (18.7 m (61.4 ft) long and 11 m (36 ft) wide) room, the walls of which are completely decorated with human skulls and bones collected from an estimated 5000 corpses exhumed from Évora’s medieval cemeteries. By the 16th century those cemeteries had expanded to the point where they were taking up valuable land needed for other purposes. To simply remove and discard the remains of people interred there was considered sacrilegious, so the local Franciscan monks built the Capela dos Ossos and filled it with their bones as a memento mori – a reminder of the ephemerality of human existence and the need to prepare oneself for the afterlife. It is not recorded whether any of the people thus exhumed objected to having their bones appropriated for this purpose; in any case we didn’t hear any complaints from them.

The Capela dos Ossos is also the European headquarters and meeting place of Skull and Bones, an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. As is well known, this society is a branch of the international secret order known as the Illuminati, which controls the world. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the USA, is a member of Skull and Bones, as was his father, George H. W. Bush, 41st president of the United States and so is John Kerry, 2004 presidential candidate and Secretary of State. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s sidekick, was also a member.

The Capela dos Ossos is reached by a side passage embellished by wonderful tilework as well as a rather ordinary picture of St. Francis. The door to the chapel itself bears an inscription in Portuguese reading “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos”, meaning roughly “We bones which are here await yours.”

The bones arranged on the walls are held in place by cement; the vaulted ceiling is devoid of bones, except for some skulls on the interstices, but is elegantly painted with death motifs.

By the way, if you believed anything in the paragraph about the Yale Skull and Bones Society, other than the part about the presidential memberships, you must be very gullible.

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Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

Sintra – Pena Palace, November 5, 2017

Looking back, I can hardly believe we managed to see and do so much in one day – to see Lisbon’s King Edward VII Park, Belem, Jeronimos Monastery and Rossio Square in the morning, then Sintra and Pena Palace in the afternoon. Surely it must have taken two days to see all these sights! But no, the date-time stamps on the photos don’t lie; we did them all on November 5, 2017.

Sintra was an optional excursion on our Go-Ahead tour, but it was not optional for us; we had to see it. The previous year, on a visit to Bend, Chuck and Elouise Mattox had taken us to the Cafe Sintra in Bend, and introduced us to the owners, who were in fact from Sintra; and having learned something about the place, there was no way Sandie and I could not take advantage of an opportunity to go there.

Because Sintra is one of the most magical places on Earth. It is located in the mountains up above Lisbon, and commands marvelous views of the countryside all round. The town of Sintra is itself quite charming, but the major draw for tourists like us – 3.2 million of whom visited the area in 2017 – is the area’s castles and palaces. The major ones are the medieval Castle of the Moors (Castelo dos Mouros), the Portuguese Renaissance Sintra National Palace, and Pena National Palace. We visited only the last of these. I wish we could have seen the others, and I want to go back again and do so; but we would have needed more than one afternoon, or one day, to do that; I am grateful for having been allotted one afternoon of my life to see Pena.

Pena Palace (Palácio da Pena) is a bit reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland, but that is only a pale shadow of Pena. The closest analogue I can think of is Neuschwanstein, the fairy-tale residence of the mad king Ludwig II of Bavaria. I’ve never been to Neuschwanstein (it’s on my bucket list), but Pena predates Neuschwanstein by several decades.

In 1836 the reigning Queen of Portugal, Maria II, married a German prince, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg. According to Portuguese law, a reigning queen’s consort could only become King after the birth of an heir, which occurred in 1837. In 1838 Ferdinand, now King Ferdinand II, acquired an old monastery, originally built by Manuel I in 1511, on the hill above the town of Sintra. It had belonged to the Hieronymites, the same order that Manuel had selected to manage the monastery in Belem, but it had been deserted since 1834, when the government had dissolved the religious orders in Portugal. Ferdinand was enchanted with the place and set about refurbishing it as a summer residence for the royal family, but soon he turned it into a project for a whole new palace, conceived in the spirit of 19th-century Romanticism. He hired a German architect, Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, an aficionado of Rhine castles, to do the design, but himself took an active part in the work, introducing medieval, Islamic and Renaissance features and borrowing heavily from Manueline motifs.

The designers preserved as much of the original monastery as possible, including the cloisters, the dining room, the sacristy, and the chapel. To this they added the Queen’s Terrace on the southern end of the east wing, and a new clock tower. But then they added another entire wing, called the New Palace, yellow in color, contrasting with the Old Palace, which is mostly red. They also created a vast park surrounding the palace. You cannot go directly to the palace entrance; you have to debark from your bus at the entrance to the park and walk or take a shuttle tram the rest of the way to the palace itself. We took the tram.

Even the tram does not take you all the way to the palace, but stops in a glade a little way off, providing the unexpected advantage of being able to obtain great views of the palace while walking the short distance to the gates.

The first gateway opening into the palace complex is called the Door of Alhambra, or Alhambra Gate, so called because its design is said to have been inspired by the Gate of Justice in the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Like the Gate of Justice, it features a double horseshoe-shaped Arabesque arch, Moorish tiles and Islamic symbols, in addition to elegant ceramic tiles. On the keystone of the arch is a carving of a human hand, the symbolism of which I’m still trying to ascertain. I particularly enjoyed the gargoyles in the shape of crocodiles which protrude from the corners of the arch. I call them “crocagoyles.” On top of the gate is a terrace with a walkway; tourists stroll casually along the terrace, oblivious to the threatening crocagoyles below.

After passing through the Alhambra Gate, we found ourselves in the Coach House Terrace, where visitors to the Palace would have alighted from their horse-drawn coaches in days of yore. There we made a 180 degree turn and proceeded up a ramp to the Monumental Gate, which was apparently designed to emulate a Renaissance castle gatehouse. It has been disparaged as “a somewhat ridiculous looking fortified portal” executed in a “mishmash of styles,” but I thought it perfectly suited the fantasy-castle setting. Diamond spikes front the archway, and two cylindrical turrets called “bartizans,” ostensibly designed to function as sentry boxes, are perched on the top corners, with five coats of arms between them. Going under the rounded archway, we crossed a fake drawbridge leading into the entrance tunnel and the residential wings of the Palace.

At this point we emerged onto a terrace fronting the central section of the palace, which consists of the restored monastery with its neo-Manueline facade.

Here we encountered what I consider the single most striking feature of Pena Palace, an absolutely bizarre, idiosyncratic, and delightful creation, the Triton Arch or Triton Gate. Looking at the many pictures Sandie and I shot of it from various angles, I cannot cease to be amazed that anyone could conceive such an outlandish chef-d’oeuvre.

In Greek mythology, the Triton was a minor sea god, a son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, usually depicted as having the upper parts of a man with a fish’s tail, and holding a trumpet made from a conch shell. The Triton at Pena Palace does not hold a trumpet. He is seated on an oyster shell on the wall beneath a bay window. A tree or vine appears to be growing out of his head, with a profusion of branches and leaves extending up to enfold the window above. Instead of a trumpet he holds two branches of the tree on either side. He does not look happy, but then I wouldn’t be happy either, if I had to sit on an oyster shell holding up a tree growing out of my head FOREVER. He looks down upon the terrace with a snarling, menacing, utterly hostile gaze, as if warning visitors away. But he did not deter us from entering the palace under the arch below.

In the course of researching the myriad features of Pena Palace, I’ve come across a few disparaging descriptions. One critic in particular characterized it as “a heavy handed mish mash of different architectural styles….looks like several castles smooshed together…a schizophrenic whirlwind of onion domes, turrets, crenellation, and fanciful sneering gargoyles.” Regarding the interior, the same reviewer, among others, advised skipping it: “Don’t let anyone tell you it’s a “must do.” It’s not….Like the outside, none of it really matches or is in a cohesive style. It’s rather amazing that someone wanted it all under the same roof.”

There’s some truth in this; the palace is indeed a manic hodge-podge of disparate and sometimes incompatible styles; but to me that’s part of its charm. I don’t demand coherence when it comes to architecture. Palaces built over the centuries, like the Alhambra in Spain (as we’ll see when we get there), often acquire various and sometimes clashing constructions. King Ferdinand II, who had Pena built over the course of a decade or two, could have striven for unity and coherence, but the result would have been less remarkable and exciting, and most likely pedestrian and boring. There are plenty of other nineteenth-century European palaces where one can find consistency, conformity and adherence to sometimes sterile conventions of design. I like Pena Palace as it is – a wild romp of the imagination, a free exercise of creative energy. It’s a nineteenth-century precursor of Disneyland, where someone’s wildest dreams became reality, and in my view it beats its descendant hands-down.

And we didn’t skip the interior, which we found just as fascinating as the exterior. In the next post, I’ll deal with that.

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Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

Jerónimos Monastery, November 5, 2017

On the night of 7 July 1497, Vasco da Gama and his crew gathered in a dilapidated church in Belém to pray, before departing on the voyage that would take them to India and launch a global commercial and colonial empire. The church was then maintained by the monks of the military-religious Order of Christ (formerly the Templars), who provided aid and comfort to mariners passing through Lisbon harbor.

But the Portuguese king, Manuel I (r. 1495-1521), had already determined to replace the decrepit old church with a monastery which would become the final resting place for himself and his successors of the Portuguese royal dynasty, the House of Avis. In subsequent years, flush with cash obtained from taxes on the spices brought back by da Gama and his successors, Manuel began construction of the new monastery in a new, sumptuous and ornate fashion which became the national style of Portugal, known ever after as the Manueline. But he selected a different religious society, the Order of St. Jerome, to manage the monastery; thus it became the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, or Jerónimos Monastery, the Monastery of the Hieronymites. However, the new monastery church continued to be known as the Igreja (Church) Santa Maria de Belém.

The monastery was not completed at the time of Manuel’s death in 1521. Construction was resumed in 1550, but stopped again after Philip II of Spain seized the Portuguese throne in 1580 – he was spending all available funds on his new monastery-palace near Madrid, the Escorial. Yet some work was done even before the restoration of Portuguese independence in 1640, when the monastery regained its pre-eminence, becoming the necropolis for the new Portuguese dynasty, the House of Braganza.

The National Museum of Archaeology (Museu Nacional de Arqueologia) and the Maritime Museum (Museu da Marinha) are housed in the western wing of the Jeronimos Monastery, which had been the monks’ dormitory. Lisbon’s Naval Planetarium, an adjunct to the Maritime Museum, is located nearby. I would have been happy to explore all of these, but the time available limited us to visiting the Church of Santa Maria de Belém. It was a good choice, because the Church proved to be an artistic wonderland.

We entered the Church through its west portal, the main entrance, at the rear of the church, which is aligned east-west, with the choir and altar at the east; there is also a south entrance, which is quite spectacular, but it was closed.

The original architect, Diogo Boitac, designed a three-aisled structure with five bays (recesses) under a vaulted ceiling. In 1517 a Spanish architect, Juan de Castillo, took over; he was responsible for providing the church with a unique single-span ribbed vault supported by six slender columns, 25-metres (82 feet) high, decorated with ornate floral elements in Renaissance style.

Castillo also discarded Boitac’s plan for a three-bay transept with supports in favor of a bold, innovative single-vaulted transept unsupported by any piers or columns. The result is considered a masterpiece, one of the finest examples of Manueline architecture.

This impression only deepened as we moved through the church. The nave or central section, where the congregation sits, is of the same height as the aisles to either side of it, enhancing the spacious appearance of the church. At the east end is the chancel or sanctuary, the section of the church reserved for choir and clergy, separated from the nave by steps. The chancel also contains the tombs of King Manuel I and his successor King João (John) III and their wives.

I am fond of stained-glass windows. The Church of Santa Maria de Belem, being a Late Gothic/Renaissance edifice, has a number of them and Sandie and I tried to photograph as many as we could.

Santa Maria has an organ, which is nothing special as organs go, but it sits underneath a splendid stained-glass window and next to the glorious south transept. Castillo’s unsupported transept vault, lacking support by piers or columns, gives the impression of floating in the air.

At the ends of both aisles are alcoves with altars and images of religious figures such as Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. Jerome.

In the lower choir, near the end of each aisle, are the stone tombs of Vasco da Gama and of Luis Vaz de Camões, considered Portugal’s greatest poet, who celebrated the voyages of discovery in his epic Os Lusiades.  The tombs are the work of a later age, carved in the late nineteenth century by the sculptor Costa Mota, but in a neo-Manueline style that blends in seamlessly with the rest of the monastery. Vasco da Gama’s remains were relocated to his Jerónimos Monastery tomb in 1880. The same was ostensibly done for the remains of Camões, except that they had been lost in the earthquake of 1755, so the bones in Camões’ tomb are almost certainly someone else’s.

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Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

Lisbon, Portugal – 4-5 November, 2017

Sandie and I flew into Lisbon on the morning of November 4 and were met by a jovial native of Madrid named Manuel Sueiras, who would be our tour leader. He dropped us off at our hotel, the Novotel Lisboa, and encouraged us to start seeing Lisbon on our own, while he rounded up the remaining members of the tour group, who trickled in as the day wore on.

We hopped into a taxi and went to lunch in central Lisbon, somewhere on the Avenida da Liberdade, but we were too tired from the long flight to follow Manuel’s suggestion any farther, so we returned to our hotel and acquainted ourselves with its amenities, primarily the bed.

We took it easy until later in the day, when everyone assembled in the hotel lobby for our introductory meeting, followed by an inaugural banquet at a nearby restaurant, the Pano de Boca. The name translates literally to “cloth of mouth,” in other words “napkin,” or its more elegant French equivalent, “serviette.”

It was already dark when we walked to the restaurant. On the way we passed several interesting landmarks, most notably the Lisbon Central Mosque. This is a very distinctive ultra-modern structure, inaugurated in 1985, and is Europe’s third-largest mosque outside Turkey. It features a highly unusual spiral-shaped minaret. We also encountered a sinister figure, known as The Masked Malefactor, who stalks Lisbon at night; some say that he is the Portuguese equivalent of El Zorro, California’s version of Robin Hood. His photograph is included in the gallery following. But he did NOT write the graffito in the next photo, which reads “Portugal – um país venoido aos estrangeiros.” I’m not sure what the author of this oeuvre was trying to say – my best guess is “Portugal – a country sold to foreigners”. If so the fourth word should be “vendido”. But the graffitist wasn’t necessarily fully literate. Neither am I in Portuguese, but I wouldn’t make that mistake.

At the Pano de Boca the libations flowed freely and we were introduced, among other delicacies, to the Portuguese national dish, bacalhau, which is a preparation of dried, salted cod. It can be prepared in many different ways; some say there are over a thousand recipes for bacalhau. (It should be noted that Portugal is credited with the highest consumption of fish per capita in the European Union.) I enjoyed my fill of it at the Pano de Boca. I’m usually happy as long as the wine flows freely, as it did on this occasion, but it was a special treat to experience my first taste of real Portuguese cuisine.

Next day, refreshed from a night’s rest, we embarked upon our tour of Lisbon. I should mention that in each place we visited, in addition to Manuel, we had a local guide who was intimately acquainted with the attractions and expounded upon them in exquisite detail. In Lisbon our local guide was an attractive blonde woman whose name I unfortunately cannot remember, but I haven’t forgotten her vivacity and eloquence.

One of the first things to know about Lisbon, which most people aren’t aware of — though I myself am well acquainted with it from reading Voltaire’s Candide — is that on 1 November 1755, All Saints Day, Lisbon was struck, and essentially destroyed by, one of the greatest earthquakes in recorded history, a magnitude 9 temblor. The earthquake and the resulting tsunami and fires caused up to 50,000 deaths. As Voltaire noted in Candide, the earthquake struck in conjunction with an auto da fé conducted by the Portuguese Inquisition, which might have been taken to signify divine displeasure with the persecution of heretics; but that didn’t happen, any more than the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 persuaded Philip II that it wasn’t part of God’s plan to suppress heresy in England and Holland. However, at least the Marquis of Pombal, who presided over the restoration of Lisbon after the earthquake, did abolish autos-da-fé in 1773, though the Portuguese Inquisition itself was not terminated until 1821.

Quite significantly, King Joseph I and his chief minister, the aforesaid Marquis de Pombal, saw the destruction as an opportunity to build a new city free of the constraints of its medieval inheritance; they adopted a design which envisioned expansive public squares linked by broad avenues, lined with structures built to be earthquake-resistant. The results were enduring, and the present appearance of Lisbon can in large part be traced back to the Pombaline rebuilding of the 18th century.

We first visited a relatively low-key, indeed almost tranquil, location – the Parque Eduardo VII, or King Edward VII Park. The eponymous king was not Portuguese but English, and the park was named for him because of a visit he made to Lisbon in 1903 to reinforce Anglo-Portuguese relations and reaffirm a long alliance between the two countries — Britain having been Portugal’s staunch ally against France during the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier. The park constitutes a long north-south rectangle, at the north end of which is an observation deck with an expansive vista southward down to the Tagus River. There also is a monument, Ao 25 de Abril (“To the 25th of April”), which commemorates the Carnation Revolution of 1974, when the authoritarian Estado Novo regime was overthrown. Over it flies the largest Portuguese flag in the world.

At the south end of the park stands a monument to Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal. He was a scion of the country gentry who rose from obscurity to become head of the diplomatic service, and eventually the chief minister of King Joseph I (r. 1750 – 1777). He secured his pre-eminence primarily by his management of Lisbon’s recovery from the earthquake of 1755. He was for the most part a proponent of the 18th-century Enlightenment, and implemented significant reforms, over the opposition of reactionary aristocrats. He also gave his name to the style of architecture associated with the reconstruction of Lisbon. We encountered numerous examples of Pombaline architecture during our excursions around the city.

Present-day Lisbon has a population of half a million (545,000) within the city limits, but the greater Lisbon area is home to over three million. It is patently one of the great cities of the world, one of the oldest European capitals, and was the hub of a great colonial and commercial empire from the sixteenth century down to the mid-twentieth. For my part, I found it to be a beautiful, prosperous and richly endowed metropolis. Before moving on to focus on the specific major attractions, I’m presenting a panoply of random landmarks and scenes Sandie and I captured on camera – mostly from the windows of our tour bus – as we wended our way around the city.

I’ll make just a couple of notes on these random shots. The Ponte 25 de Avril, or 25 April Bridge, spanning the Tagus River, was built in 1966 and originally named for Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled as dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Salazar died in 1968 and his Novo Estado regime was eventually overthrown in the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, so called because people drove out Salazar’s successors by throwing carnations at them, just like Pepperland citizens got rid of the Blue Meanies in the Beatles movie “Yellow Submarine.” The Salazar bridge was then renamed the 25 April Bridge. Later another bridge was built across the Tagus, a much longer one, upstream of the 25 April Bridge; it is named after Vasco Da Gama.

We frequently encountered election posters sporting the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party of Portugal. I remarked to our guide that I thought we had pulled all the Commies’ arms and legs off at the end of the Cold War, but she informed me that Portugal still has a vibrant and vital Communist Party. (I don’t recall seeing any such posters in Spain, though.)

From King Edward VII Park, we moved on to the Belém district, the site of some of Lisbon’s most famous and historic monuments. The most iconic, one that is always pictured in travelogues (including this one), is the Torre de Belém, officially the Torre de São Vicente.  It was built by order of King Manuel I (1469-1521), as a fortification to reinforce the defenses of Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus River, and completed in 1519. It proved its worth, or lack thereof, in the succession crisis of 1580. Two years prior, in 1578, Sebastian I, the childless King of Portugal, had foolishly undertaken a crusade in Morocco and was killed in battle. His uncle, who succeeded him as king, was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic church, and died two years later, also leaving no heirs. King Philip II of Spain, whose mother was a Portuguese princess, then claimed the throne and sent the Duke of Alva with an army to enforce his claim. The garrison of the Torre de Belém surrendered after only a few hours of resistance, causing Philip II to refer to it as “useless” and order plans drawn up to replace it with something more substantial (which never materialized). From that time the Torre was used as a prison until 1830. In the later 19th century it fell into decrepitude, but was extensively restored in the 20th.

The Belém Tower was originally built on a small island in the Tagus, just off the riverbank, but in the centuries since then development has moved the shoreline toward the island, so that it now appears to be a mere peninsula, or rather peninsulette (if that’s a word). Along with the Jeronimos Monastery and a few other sites (most of the rest having been leveled by the 1755 earthquake), the tower is considered one of the principal examples of Manueline architecture (King Manuel I having been its chief sponsor), a sumptuous style characterized by complex ornamentation in portals, windows, columns and arcades. Starting with Portuguese Late Gothic, it incorporates elements of various other styles, and initiates a transition to Renaissance architecture.

The line to get into the Tower was rather long, and one woman apparently tried to circumvent it by using her cloak as a parasail. It didn’t work.

The Torre de Belém is on the north bank of the Tagus; from there we had a wonderful view of the river and is south bank. It was easy to imagine Vasco da Gama departing in his caravel on the voyage that would take him to India, initiate a global colonial empire, and establish Lisbon as one of the great commercial centers of the world.

A short walk from the Torre de Belém one encounters what looks like an old biplane equipped with floats to land in the water. This is a British-made Fairey III-D Mark II seaplane named the Lusitania (“Lusitania” is the Latin name for Portugal). It serves as a monument to Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral, two Portuguese aviators who completed the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic Ocean in 1922. They set out from a naval air station near Belém Tower and island-hopped over the Canaries and other Atlantic islands toward Brazil. Upon reaching the first islands in Brazilian waters, they tried to land in rough seas, but the plane sank. Fortunately, the aviators were saved by a Portuguese cruiser which had been sent to support the mission. Another Fairey III, named the Pátria, was sent from Portugal, and they were able to resume the journey. Unfortunately, engine failure brought them down again in the middle of the ocean, and the Pátria was lost; this time they were rescued by a British cargo ship. This time the Portuguese government dispatched a third Fairey III, the Santa Cruz , aboard another Portuguese cruiser. After it arrived they resumed their journey, and the third time proved to be the charm. They made landfall at Recife, Brazil, and flew on to Rio de Janeiro, arriving on 17 June 1922, arriving two and a half months after their departure on March 30. The Santa Cruz, the only one of the three planes to survive the journey,  is now housed in Lisbon’s Maritime Museum, which we did not visit; a very realistic replica of the original Lusitania was made to put on display near Belém Tower.

I can’t help but marvel that less than half a century after the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, jet airplanes were making nonstop flights across entire oceans and continents, whereas four centuries separated the first circumnavigation of the globe and the invention of the airplane, and thousands of years lapsed between the invention of the sail and the voyages of Columbus and Magellan. Technological progress has accelerated at an astounding pace. Will it continue to do so, and if so, what will the future be like?

A propos of voyages, no less significant than those of Columbus and Magellan were those of the Portuguese, who began the Age of Discovery and were the first actually to reach the East Indies. Their exploits are commemorated with the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, or Monument to the Discoveries, which stands a little way down the shoreline to the east of the Tower of Belém. Unlike the Tower, it is a modern creation, originating in 1939, when a temporary version was created for an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of Portugal and the 300th anniversary of the restoration of its independence from Spain. That version was demolished after the exhibition closed, but a larger version was completed in 1960 in connection with the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), who sponsored the early Portuguese voyages of discovery.

Both the original and the current versions of the monument are the work of the Novo Estado regime of Antonio Salazar, and as such are an idealized version of the Age of Discovery, glossing over the myriad hardships suffered by the explorers during their voyages, not to mention the torments they inflicted on the peoples they encountered. The monument is a huge concrete slab, 52 meters (171 feet) high; it takes the stylized form of a caravel, the type of ship used in the early explorations. The base represents the hull of the ship, with a statue of Prince Henry standing in front, and the top of the monument depicts the sails. Lining the sides of the “hull” are statues of various significant figures connected with the voyages of discovery, including Bartolomeu Dias, discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama, discoverer of the sea route to India, Luis Vaz de Camões (Portugal’s greatest poet, who celebrated da Gama’s voyages in his epic poem Os Lusiades), Ferdinand Magellan (who was Portuguese, though he sailed under the flag of Spain), and Pedro Cabral, discoverer of Brazil. There are 33 figures in all; in addition to the major explorers, they include members of the Portuguese royal family, scientists, artists, cartographers, and missionaries. Some of the people represented are only remotely connected with the discoveries, such as Philippa of Lancaster, an English princess who in 1387 married King John I of Portugal, thereby becoming Queen of Portugal. The marriage cemented what was to become an enduring alliance between England and Portugal. Queen Philippa was also the mother of Prince Henry the Navigator.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the monument is hollow and contains a 101-seat auditorium, a theater and several exhibit halls, as well as a staircase affording access to the top of the monument. We didn’t know that because for some reason the interior was closed the day that we were there; otherwise I would have attempted to climb to the top and photograph the great views that are available there.

We did however enjoy the open square on the north side of the monument, which features a Rosa-dos-Ventos (compass rose) 50 meters (160 feet) in diameter, with a 14-meter (45 feet) wide mappa mundi depicting the routes of the voyages of discovery. The cost of constructing the square was donated by the government of the Union of South Africa. Different types and colors of limestone, including a rare variety found only in Sintra – a town north of Lisbon, which we visited in the afternoon – were used to pave the square and constitute the compass rose. The result, to me, is a work of stunning elegance, which I was unable to capture with my camera in its full glory because I had no tear gas grenades handy to clear away all the people on the square who churlishly thronged on it, blocking the view.

Looking west down the north bank of the Tagus from the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, we caught sight of the Museo de Arte Popular (on the right in the picture below) and the tall Farol de Belém (Belem Lighthouse), with the Torre de Belém between them.

Across the Tagus River, just to the right of the southern terminus of the 25 April Bridge, we caught sight of a tall structure with what looked like a cross on top. The cross turned out actually to be a statue depicting Christ with arms stretched wide, as if to embrace the city of Lisbon. The statue is 28 meters/92 feet tall and stands on a pedestal 82 meters/160 feet high. It is part of a complex known as the Santuário de Cristo Rei (Sanctuary of Christ the King), which itself stands on a hilltop 133 meters/436 feet above the Tagus. It was built in the 1950s as an expression of gratitude by the Portuguese for having been spared the horrors of World War II. The monument has been compared to the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was its inspiration.

Our next stop, after the Padrão, was the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Jerónimos Monastery), another landmark associated with the Voyages of Discovery. Since this post is already overly long and cumbersome, I’ll start a new one to accommodate the proliferation of photos we took there.

Categories
Democratic Republic Of Congo

Istanbul, February 24, 2023: An Unexpected Layover

We flew from Cleveland to Boston on American Airlines on February 22, 2023. We were scheduled to fly from Boston to Kinshasa via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, and we arrived on time to catch our flight. But when we checked in at the Turkish Airlines ticket counter, we encountered a hostile ticket clerk who, for reasons still unknown, seemed determined to hinder our departure in any way possible. She found a pretext in Jay’s COVID card, which recorded his latest booster shot but not his original vaccination, and refused to let him board. After a bit of heated wrangling, we signed an agreement with the airline which involved a promise to get Jay vaccinated at Istanbul airport in return for being allowed to board.

Thinking our troubles were over, we arrived at Istanbul on time.  Then the task was to find the COVID testing office.  We had 3 hours.  Plenty of time, right?  We asked for directions beaucoup times, and often the directions conflicted.  In any case, it was outside the security perimeter, which meant going through immigration and customs. We finally found Passport Control, bought our Turkish visas, went through customs, and reached the COVID testing site.  They promptly informed us that the test took 1-1/2 hours.  Well, you guessed it.  We were at the complete opposite end of the airport from the departure gate, outside Passport Control, outside security, and had little time to make the flight.  Daryl had joined us at IST, and he tried to convince the agent to hold the flight for a few minutes longer.  They told him to get on the plane and closed the gate. 

We went back outside Passport Control to Ticket Services and received our next shock: $480 apiece to rebook the three of us.  Add the COVID test in ($500), and we had now incurred almost $1900 in needless charges. 

By the time we finished rebooking our flights, it was late and we were frustrated and tired.  We could either wait at the airport until the following evening or find a hotel.  Near the airport exit were a series of rooms all in a line under a sign reading, “Hotels”.  They were populated by men who smiled at us and gestured for us to come over.  That should have been warning enough, but we were tired, right?  So we went over to one of them and told them we needed a hotel.  They nodded enthusiastically and suggested that we combine it with a tour the next day.  There would be a shuttle cost, but that would be absorbed into the tour cost.  Since Istanbul is over a half hour away from IST, we agreed.

The hotel was on a quaint, narrow street in the city.  The building was pretty small, and the rooms were smaller.  Two single beds.  Oh yes, Jay got his own room at no additional charge (they had probably padded the charges enough to make that possible).  We didn’t care, getting horizontal was the priority.  Next morning there was a complimentary breakfast, which was quite good.  The van picked us up, and off we went on our “tour”.  

Istanbul is one of the most storied cities in the world, with a history stretching back to the 7th century BCE. First known as Byzantium, it was renamed Constantinople in 325 CE, when Emperor Constantine the Great made it the new capital of the Roman Empire. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic invaders in the fifth century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire until 1453, when it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the capital of the new Turkish Republic was established in Ankara, but Istanbul, as the city was renamed in 1930, remains the economic and cultural hub of Turkey; with over 15 million residents, it is home to 19% of the country’s population.

Of all the countless marvels of Istanbul, the one above all not to be missed is the basilica of Hagia Sophia, or Aya Sophia as it is known in Turkish. Hagia Sophia was built in the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I and completed in 537 CE. At the time it was the world’s largest church and remained so until the completion of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville, Spain, in 1520.

The name Hagia Sophia does not refer to any particular saint but rather means “Holy Wisdom,” alluding to Jesus Christ.

Over the centuries Hagia Sophia has undergone many changes, as a result of both natural disasters and human events. The first and greatest disaster was collapse of the dome in 558. The dome had to be completely rebuilt, but the result has survived, with some reinforcement and repair, down to the present day.

In 1204, as a result of various machinations by the Venetians, who by then had become serious trade rivals to the Byzantines, an army of Western Europeans embarked on the Fourth Crusade but ended up besieging Constantinople instead of Jerusalem, and under the leadership of the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, they sacked Constantinople and plundered many of its treasures, not excepting Hagia Sophia. Nevertheless, the basilica survived, as it did the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Sultan Mehmet II the Conqueror turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, which was how it came to be surrounded by four minarets. The Ottoman regime made various changes to the interior, such as plastering over the Christian-themed mosaics depicting Jesus, Mary and the saints in accordance with the Islamic prohibition on representations of humans and animals. After 1935, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic which replaced the Ottoman sultanate, declared Hagia Sophia a museum, the mosaics were restored to public view. (Since the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reconverted Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 2020, the mosaics and other Christian images have to be covered with curtains during services.)

The picture of Hagia Sophia included here is a stock photo because the one I took didn’t turn out very well.

At the other end of Sultanahmet Park from Hagia Sophia, where the Grand Palace of the Byzantine emperors once stood, is another majestic structure, the Blue Mosque, officially known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. When in the early 17th century the Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military reverses at the hands of the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire and the Safavid Persian Empire, Sultan Ahmed I, the namesake of Sultanahmet Square, saw these setbacks as an omen that he was losing the favor of Allah. In order to win it back, and to reassert the glory and majesty of the Ottoman empire, he decided to build a new mosque that would rival Hagia Sophia as a work of art and engineering. The Blue Mosque, begun in 1609 and completed in 1617, was the result.

Next stop was the Topkapı Palace, home of the various Sultans of the Ottoman Empire until the mid-nineteenth century, when a new and more modern palace, the Dolmabahçe, was built on the Bosphorus.  We also visited the mausoleum of the sultans and their sons.  It is considered a holy place, so shoes must be removed inside.  I was in the midst of removing my shoes and didn’t realize that I had placed my shod foot on the upper step.  Immediately someone said “No shoes inside!” and a woman swatted me on the side.  Oops!

Next we went to a candy shop.  This was when my realization of what we had gotten into became clearer.  Very friendly people, and they all knew each other.  We were given several samples of Turkish Delight and various teas, and then the sales pitch began — very persuasive, aggressive, and assuming we wanted everything.  We had a pretty good bag load of stuff at the end of that experience.  Good quality stuff, but quite a bit more than I figured on buying.

The final stop was the Bosphorus.  The picture I am including is a stock photo because the location the guide took us to for pictures was uninspiring.  The guide probably chose it because there was a bazaar nearby, to which he gestured with a smile.  We walked through the bazaar quickly, looking neither to the right nor the left (except I did keep my eyes on the driver).  I leaned over to him and told him we were ready to return to the airport.  He looked a bit surprised but did not attempt to persuade us otherwise.  Into the van, and a half hour later we were let off at the airport.  I cannot tell you how relieved I was!

Built in 1970-73, this is one of several great bridges over the Bosphorus in the Istanbul area. The mosque is a Baroque Revival piece commissioned by Sultan Abdülmecid I and built in 1854-56. It is noted noted for its high bay windows, which are cunningly contrived to stage a “light show” using both sunlight and reflected light from the water.

Back at the airport, our flight to Kinshasa was listed on the departure schedule along with a bevy of others, many of them to exotic destinations which we have never heard of (and neither have most other people). Where in the world, for example, are Astana, Ercan and Minvodi?

Finally, a few hours later, we were on our way at last to Kinshasa.

Categories
Democratic Republic Of Congo

A Wedding in Kinshasa – February 25 to 28, 2023

Just to clear up one possible point of misunderstanding, one must be aware that there are two Republics of the Congo – one north of the Congo River and the other south of the river. The one north of the river is a former French colony, part of what was once French Equatorial Africa, and is now named the Republic of the Congo, but to distinguish it from the country south of the river it is often called Congo-Brazzaville, since Brazzaville is its capital. The country south of the Congo River is officially named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, usually abbreviated DRC. It is by far the larger of the two (108 million people to 5.5 million), and is in fact the second largest country in Africa by land area (Algeria being the largest). It has at various times been known under other names. In 1885 King Leopold of Belgium occupied the area and turned it into his own private property, infamously putting the population to work as slave labor and committing horrific atrocities; in Orwellian fashion he named the country the Congo Free State. In 1908 Leopold was induced by international pressure to give up his personal rule, and the country became officially a colony of Belgium, and was then known as the Belgian Congo. It won its independence from Belgium in 1960, taking the name Democratic Republic of the Congo. The first few years of independence saw a period of instability, which was resolved in 1965 with the seizure of power by army colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu (later known as Mobuto Sese Seko), who with the support of Western powers established a dictatorship which ruled the country until 1997; he changed the country’s name to Zaïre. After the fall of the Mobutu regime the name reverted to Democratic Republic of the Congo, as it remains today. The capital city, which under Belgian rule was known as Leopoldville, was renamed Kinshasa in 1966, and that has not changed since. It is now a city of 17 million people.

Our first impressions of Kinshasa were mostly about the depth of poverty. We were surprised to find that such a great metropolis lacks a modern airport; the terminal is a decrepit building looking like a 70 year old gas station that has seen no care in all that time.  One gate, no jetway. 

There is a saying that applies to much of Africa:  “The ground is your trash can”.  There is no waste disposal service in Kinshasa and no outside trash cans.  Places where people congregate fill up with trash quickly.  So what is their solution?  That’s right – burn it.  And much of the trash is plastic.  Considering that there are trash fires all over, imagine the toxic compounds that everyone is breathing every day.

We stayed at a 4-star hotel in Kinshasa, the Royal. We found that it was host not only to humans, but to a few non-human guests as well. The latter included a male and female of an unknown species; the male wanted to mate with the female in the worst way, and she was willing, but he seemed to share the common African aversion to PDA, and kept shying away.

One of the interesting Third World experiences is driving.  I finally figured it out in Congo.  Driving is one gigantic game of chicken.  If you don’t mean it, you lose.  If you mean it, you win, unless you come up against someone else who means it.

I missed out on recording the fearsome driving tactics of some of the locals, but I shot a video of us proceeding down a street crowded with people shopping at booths set up along the curbs.  The congestion is incredible.  Oh, and those yellow vans – they really pack people in.  I would guess 25 people per van.

You’ve probably seen the shape of especially the taxis and vans.  Scrapes and dings everywhere.  Not surprising, I guess.

When we were driving down the street and were stopped by traffic, vendors would descend on us.  They sold all sorts of products – mostly fruits and vegetables, but also other things like USB cables, windshield wiper blades, etc.  Whip out the Congolese francs and make the deal.

Another thing.  When we were doing something simple like looking for a parking space (not necessarily all that simple in Congo) someone would start gesturing us to follow him.  The first thought is that he represented some of the shops along the street.  He would then tag along with us attempting to “help” along the way.  Of course we should have known.  He was just a guy angling for a tip.  Josué’s in-laws, who drove us around, would often blow them off, but not always.

We very much enjoyed our African kids.  It can be tiring but is worth it.  In some ways they are quite different from us westerners, and in other ways they are much the same. 

We did hand out gum to kids when we were out and about.  They would have preferred money, but we didn’t think that wise.  On a trip to a village along the Congo River, two 8-9 year old kids became our guides.  They ran ahead of us at least a mile and then accompanied us after we parked.  They would help us get into a dugout canoe and do anything else to assist.  I ended up giving one of them my UCLA cap.  Probably the only UCLA cap in Congo.  But when we departed the village, things changed.  One of our vehicles got stuck in the mud, and the boys helped push it out.  I’m sure, as small as they were, their help was of no effect, but they asked the driver for a tip anyway.  He refused.  From that point on, they stayed in front of the car, trotting slowly, blocking us as best they could, even risking their lives to stay ahead of us.  We didn’t get around them until we reached the main highway.

On one occasion we took a ride to a park and came across an army bus that was stuck. Jay and I tried to help push it out of its predicament, but in vain.

Josue and Sharon’s wedding took place on Sunday, February 26. It was very nice; they wouldn’t let us take pictures of it, but I nefariously shot a video anyway. Here are some excerpts from it.

Africans seem to have a bit of an aversion to public displays of affection (PDA), and Josué was no exception.  When he and Sharon started dancing, they just held hands, and the photographer then forcibly placed his hands around her waist and her hands on his shoulders, and then they danced rather clumsily after that.

The day after the wedding, February 27, we went to the wedding feast, which was held in N’Sele, a village on a river to the east of Kinshasa. It was extremely congested driving into it, with shops (portable shops) lining both sides and shoppers clogging the streets.  We finally reached an open area next to an outdoor restaurant, and we parked there.

Down to the water we went (where you saw all the trash).  As elsewhere in the Congo, there were people willing to help us find our way, assist us in finding transport, etc., of course in hopes of a bit of remuneration.

A jolly boatman paddled and poled us across the channel in a dugout canoe.

Accompanying us on the boat was Pirette, a dear friend from Cleveland, who was in Congo helping her mother.  She has a natural gift for languages.  She even knows a Namibian “click” language!

They paddled and poled us across the channel, where there were lots of women selling different species of fish, some of them quite large, as well as a very large eel, with a huge circumference (unfortunately I accidentally deleted the picture I took of it).  

They even had a live Western African crocodile all bound and gagged, so it wouldn’t eat the rest of the catch or any of the vendors and customers. It must have been a hungry crocodile.

I contemplated buying the crocodile to have it made into a new purse for JoAnne, but time was short, and other matters took precedence. We wanted to reach the river itself, but it was too far away; evening had arrived, and it was time to show up for the wedding feast.

We hopped aboard another dugout canoe, piloted by another friendly boatman, who took us back to the village of N’sele.

As we pushed off the riverbank, I was able to capture one final shot of the fish market with the sun reflecting on the water.

The wedding feast was held in the outdoor cafe near our parking place; it had the appropriate name of “Sous les Bambous.” Here the cook grilled the fish we had bought in the market.

Here we see, on the right-hand side of the picture, the restaurant manager in front, behind her Pirette and our driver, Jefferson; while on the left Daryl and Jay dig greedily into the appetizers.

The feast featured an entree of fish, accompanied by all sorts of other goodies. The fish looked like a variety of catfish, but whatever it was called in Lingala or French is lost to us.

Some of us wanted to party all night, but we had to cut short the festivities and return to our hotel, since we were scheduled to depart at 2 AM the next morning.

When we returned to Kinshasa Airport to board the plane for our return flight, Jay couldn’t find his passport.  Nightmare!  We called my son Daryl back at the hotel, but he couldn’t find it.  Not in the car.  Not with the family we had been visiting.  I had just finished telling Jay to go back to the hotel, and Daryl would take him to the US Embassy tomorrow when JoAnne announced she had found Jay’s passport in her backpack.  Whew!  I couldn’t be angry with her because I have been mixing up and misplacing papers all week!

To board the plane, we had to present our passports about six times and our COVID vax cards three times, each time punctuated by a request for a tip.  Everyone wants a tip.  We did not have anything under a $20, so they made out like bandits.