The last part of the trip was traveling to Figueira da Foz, a town on the coast of Portugal. The Embassy was awarding seven Portuguese students a trip to the US for their achievements in science. We attended the Science Gala that night and Abby had to get up on stage to make a brief presentation of what the awards were for and call each of the students' names.
The awards dinner was held at the casino, and they had dancers as entertainment. We couldn't really figure out what they were dressed up as, but they had elaborate masks and costumes and chanted while they danced around everyone's tables.
Here is the view from our hotel room. Figueira da Foz has one of the widest beaches I've seen. That is a lot of sand!
A nice surprise waiting for us in our hotel room
The town itself didn't have too much to see, so the next day we decided to head back to Lisbon and get lunch along the way. However, Abby's GPS stoppped working, and while we thought we were staying close to the coast, we ended up taking a different route. Because of our error we got to visit one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in Europe - Fatima. In 1917, three children claimed to have seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary, who revealed to them three secrets. The Catholic Church declared the spot a holy site in 1930, and the Pope had just visited a week earlier to perform mass in front of a couple hundred thousand of the faithful to celebrate the anniversary of the apparitions. So pretty good timing on our part seeing as we weren't even planning on visiting Fatima.
The three children to whom the Virgin Mary appeared
The shrine today, called the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary
Abby has a book that lists the best restaurants and places to stay in Portugal; this book is also where she found our cute hotel in Seia. It's named "Boa Cama Boa Mesa" or "Good Bed Good Table". We really want our own copy, but there are none to be found in Lisbon. It seems they produced a very limited number of copies and they were all snatched up immediately. One of the restaurants that won Portugal's "Golden Fork" award just happened to be in Fatima, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. It was a tiny place outside of town that you wouldn't even spot from the road. I love those types of places. And the meal was fantastic. We just might have to steal Abby's copy of the book.....
No comments:
Post a Comment