portraits

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Sintra, Portugal - as cute as it gets!

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The previous post in this series is here..

Our day 2 in Portugal was a bus tour to Sintra, then to Pena Palace, Cabo de Roca, and Cascais.

This first post is about the first part of the visit to Sintra. A cute hilly town.. we were picked up early from the square outside Baixa on a viator guided tour, and it was an hour plus bus ride to Sintra. We passed an aquaduct that was an engineering marvel (for any time)!

Got to listen to some history of the Moorish people who used to rule Portugal. We got to spend an hour walking around this place with a stop at a local pastry shop, Lord Byron’s cafe and a walk around the steps to the Musuem. We also got to walk up to Uniao das freguesias de Sintra… there was no time to go through it.. just walk outside it. It was a half mile hike up the hill and we had just enough time to go to the top and be back. We crossed some landmarks like Lawrence hotel..

A few pictures..

Two photo galleries.. one in landscape

and one in portrait format

A video highlights reel of this part of the trip..

The next leg of this tour on the next post..

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Our first day in Lisbon

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Yes.. this is part of a missed series of blog posts on the 25th wedding anniversary trip.. that trip itself is nearing its anniversary.. so I better write about it before it becomes murky.

We flew from Prague to Lisbon first thing in the morning. The previous post in this series is here..

We took a Taxi from the airport that dropped us off in the Baixa area (cars were not allowed inside this main road that leads to the gate. Had to roll our carry on suitcases on the cobblestones for a good 20 minutes and reached our hotel. It was cute and cozy. Bepoet was the name. We put our things in the room and promptly came down to see as many things as we could for the rest of the evening and night. Given how crazy we are when it comes to covering points on city tours, have to break this into multiple posts..

We got a map and finally decided to walk to the first stop, the cathedral. I did impress a bunch of church goers with my backbending ability while holding an iPhone steady to take this almost 270 degree pano shot.

After we walked around the cathedral up a slope, there was a bus that could take us around all the spots. We decided to help a local girl with her tuk tuk business and had her take us around the city. First we went up to the vista point on the local hill, and from there we made it to Belem. Sangeetha has already been to Lisbon before and she also turned into a tourguide. I was getting a stereophonic guided tour at some point. On the way we saw the replica of the golden gate bridge, a replica of the Jesus from Rio.

A gallery of landscapes photos from this leg of the tour

and a portrait gallery

Once at Belem we visited the Vasco de Gama monument, the Belem tower and a church. We only caught the museum from a distance as there was no time to visit the museum. The lady was on the clock and the museum was closing. After this we were going to stop to eat something special. Both the guide and San hyped this up to no end.. that on the next post..

but before that.. a video highlights reel of our start to seeing Lisbon!

at first glance, Lisbon is a city like no other city we have visited before!

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Budapest by Bajaj Auto - aka Tuk-Tuk tour

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The previous post in this series is here..

The day in Budapest was going to be spent in two parts. The morning was a 4 hour Viator Tour of the city’s highlights in a Tuk Tuk (It was actually a Bajaj Auto that we use in India!). Our guide was a very nice person who was a local and spoke good English. He had the whole thing planned nicely. He asked us what we wanted to see in the four hours and we told him to hit most of the highlights and if time permitted, show some quaint stuff. He was to drop us off at a lunch place.

We also told him that our train to Vienna was at 6:30 PM and we had already checked out of the Astoria and left the luggage in the cloak room. He promised us information while dropping us off at the end of the tour!

Right after we left the hotel we got to see how the whole city had been flooded and rebuilt. While he was explaining this our guide got to understand us a little better. He knew that if he wanted to make us happy, San would need me to take great pics of her throughout the tour!

We passed the Central Market building to see the Szent Gellert spas. This place was just amazing! It is included in the local healthcare plan! We did not have time to do any medicinal bath here. Someday if we spend more time in Budapest, will definitely have to try this.

The ceilings and tilework here is magnificent! The spa staff and our guide were impressed with my back bending capability while holding an iPhone steady in hand !

This was followed by a trip to the Citadel area. They are building a new monument here and making this area a new tourist attaction. We went past the construction area to get some views of the Danube and the buildings on either side from the top. We were in an expensive area of Budapest on the hillside and we got to have some ice-cream and drinks at a fancy bar/coffee shop which is a hangout of the rich and famous there.

Then we went to the Garden of Philosophers which was nice and quiet and there were more views! This was my favorite view of the day!

Then we went behind Matthias church and quickly took some photos with the tuk tuk.

This was followed by a long ride to go around to the entrance to the church area. This whole area is beautiful. We got a history lesson and took some photos.

Then we went back down to the banks of the Danube and caught views of the Parliament building, went across a few famous bridges, the Opera house and Heroe’s Square. It was unfortunate that there was some work going on there and a lot of scaffolding. I have visited Budapest in 1996 as a grad student while enroute to Eger in Hungary to present at a conference! This was San’s first time. Hindsight being 20/20 should not have hyped this square to her before the trip!

We drove on Andrassy road for some time taking in the way this road goes for miles with trees and beautiful lamps on either side with famous government buildings lining it.

Our guide dropped us off at the Tratoria Toscana as we wanted some Vegetarian Italian food to play it safe. We said our byes and he told us that the Central market building we had visited earlier was just a 10-15 minute walk from the restaurant.

We ate a heavy and nice lunch and walked to the Central market to shop for souvenirs. This place is a maze..so many shops to check out and so many good eats as well.. We were already full from the lunch and had to just pass all of them by…

Our plan was to go have an afternoon Chai at. local Indian place. We walked a good 30 minutes to this place only to find out that they had a 100+ people party coming from India and were not accepting any guests. Wish we had known. . . However, the owner said they have a smaller place which was another 30 minute walk that would possibly serve us tea. So we walked through the city to find Delhi 6. We were both tired after all that walking and following maps through small streets. The chai made up for it.

Then we made the long walk back to our hotel. They let us use the restroom in the lobby area and we just sat there for another 30 minutes to catch our breath and rest before calling an Uber to take us to the train station. We had practically walked to the train station and back earlier!

The trains in Europe are awesome! Very punctual, clean and well behaved passengers! There is a lounge in the Budapest train station if you have a first class ticket. So we went and spent an hour plus there. The staff were very courteous and kept bringing us croissants and juice and hot cocoa! They beat US airports hands down!

A video highlight of our day in Budapest…

and just like that we were off to Vienna..

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