All language subtitles for Rick.Steves.Europe.08of11.Portugal.Lisbon.and.Algarve.720p.Divx6.Ac3.www.mvgroup.org-eng

Hi I�m Rick Steves,
back with more of the best of Europe.

This time we return to Portugal.

Stick around.
With a little luck�

we�ll catch one of these.

Portugal has centuries of history and culture

chiseled into its grand buildings
and ground between its salty cobbles.

It was once a global superpower

with a vast empire stretching from Africa
to Brazil and all the way to the Far East.

Then it was the poorest nation in Western Europe.

Today it�s thriving once again as
an equal partner in the European Union.

In Lisbon we�ll delve into
a colorful capital rich in history.

We�ll sing with locals buried deep in the old town,

sip coffee on stools once warmed
by great Portuguese poets,

covet slinky art nouveau jewelry

and marvel at the architectural heritage
of the age of discovery.

Then we�ll head for the �lands end� of Europe

where we�ll fish for octopi

and savor the freshest of seafood
on the south coast of my travel dreams.

Portugal and Spain fill the Iberian Peninsula,
sharing the oldest border in Europe.

From Lisbon we travel south to the Algarve,
checking out the resort city of Lagos

and Cape Sagres, before settling
into the fishing village of Salema.

We�re starting in Lisbon, a city of about 600,000
on the yawning mouth of the Tejo River.

With its huge port welcoming ships
from around the globe,

this city of Magellan and Vasco da Gama
still feels like Europe�s gateway to the world.

Lisbon�s mile-and-a-half long suspension bridge,
one of the longest in the world

was built in 1966 by the same company
that built its cousin in San Francisco.

A towering statue of Christ overlooks
Lisbon from across the Tejo River,

stretching his arms wide
to symbolically bless the city.

Lisbon is a ramshackle
but charming mix of now and then.

Old trolleys clatter up and down its hills,
bird-stained statues mark grand squares,

taxis rattle and screech around cobbled corners

and well-worn people hang out
in Art Nouveau caf�s.

Survey the city�s charm on a trolley.

Sleek new ones glide while vintage models from
the 1920s shake and shiver through the old town.

Climbing steep hills, and somehow
weaving within inches of parked cars,

they offer sightseers cheap and
breezy views of this great city.

Lisbon�s history goes all the way back
to Roman times.

But the city's glory days were
the 15th and 16th centuries,

when Vasco da Gama and the gang sailed
around Africa, opened new trade routes to India,

and making the city one of Europe�s wealthiest.

Portugal�s Age of Discovery fueled an economic
and cultural boom time in the 1500s.

In the early 1700s,
the gold and diamonds of Brazil,

one of Portugal�s colonies,
made Lisbon even wealthier.

The scarred pillars
of the rebuilt church of Sa� Domingos

evoke the worst calamity in Portuguese history.

On All Saints� Day in 1755,
while most of the population was in church,

a tremendous earthquake struck the city.

They say candles quivered
as far away as Ireland.

30,000 died as two-thirds of Lisbon was leveled.

It was three disasters
in the space of a few horrible minutes.

After the quake, fires raged through the city,

then a massive tidal wave into the harbor.

The city was reconstructed under the energetic
and eventually dictatorial leadership

of its Prime Minister:
Marqu�s de Pombal.

The new Lisbon was built
on a progressive grid plan,

with broad boulevards and square squares.

And today, the city, with its Pombaline squares
newly buffed and a financial boost

from its membership in the European Union,
seems better organized,

cleaner, more prosperous
and people-friendly than ever.

And, with some of Europe�s lowest prices,
Lisbon is easy on the budget.

Lisbon�s castle of St. George
was first built by the Muslim Moors

who swept in from North Africa and
conquered this region in the 8th century.

After Portugal�s King Afonso Henriques
beat the Moors in the 12th century,

the castle became a royal palace.

Later, the king moved
and the castle fell into ruins.

While the castle is a barren shell,

it�s surrounded by a peaceful and inviting park
with the city�s best viewpoint.

Lisbon�s salty sailors� quarter, the Alfama,
tumbles from the castle to the river.

It dates back over 1,000 years to Moorish days.

The tangled street plan here is one of the few aspects
of Lisbon to survive the great quake of 1755,

helping make the Alfama
a cobbled playground of Old World color.

The Alfama�s urban-jungle roads are squeezed
into a maze of confusing alleys.

Bent houses comfort each other
in their romantic shabbiness.

The air drips with laundry
and the smell of clams and raw fish.

With the help of my friend
and fellow tour guide Claudia da Costa,

a wander through the Alfama
takes on some meaning.

I just love this place�
see everybody is just here.

Everybody knows each other you see�

You can leave the door open
because they know each other.

Here you don�t have police because
they protect each other. It�s like a big family.

It�s very, very nice.

Here you have St Anthony.
St Anthony is

the local patron saint and the fishermen�s patron saint
because fishermen live here.

And then you have plastic bags filled with water

because we say these keep away the flies.

Does it work?

It works!
No flies?

In the Alfama traditions are strong.

If a woman loses her husband,
she will wear black for the rest of her life

and if some reason she wants to stop wearing it,

I think her neighborhood would question her
about her respect, about her love

for her husband or son, because traditions
are very, very strong here.

And traditions survive
in the passionate music called Fado.

We�re having dinner in a restaurant which serenades
diners with the folk music of Lisbon�s back streets.

This is an experience
I like to recommend in my guidebooks

rustic Portuguese cuisine seasoned
with this unforgettable music.

The Marqu�s de Pombal�s
rebuilt center of Lisbon

called the Baixa, is today a flat,
inviting shopping area of grid-patterned streets.

The main boulevard is
pedestrians-only Rua Augusta.

The uniform post-earthquake or �Pombaline�
architecture is utilitarian.

It is decorated only with wrought iron and tiles.

In the years after the earthquake
Lisbon did a lot of building without a lot of money.

The Santa Justa elevator was built
to connect the lower town with the high town.

It was constructed in 1902,a few years
after its inspiration� the Eiffel Tower.

The Rossio train station brings in
workers from the suburbs,

and a funicular works hard all day,
hauling people from the lower town

to the characteristic Bairro Alto or high town.

While in the high town we�re visiting
the Port Wine Institute

where you can sample Portugal�s
most famous beverage in clubby comfort.

While here, you can select from a menu
of 300 different ports, most available by the glass.

Port differs from wine in that its fermentation process
is cut short by the addition of pure alcohol,

which fortifies it. Even so,
there is great diversity amongst ports

What should we try?
Give us two glasses please.

Two glasses, OK. I recommend tawny 10 year.
It�s excellent wine�.

it�s very good wine�tawny 10 year.

A ten-year tawny is a blend of ports
of various ages averaging 10 years old.

What do you eat with this?

With ice cream it�s excellent
Ice cream ?

Yes, ice cream or with pastries it�s very good

I can imagine it with ice cream.

Hmm this one looks like it would match up well
with a complex Rocky Road

or perhaps a pralines and cream�

Down the street, the church of San Roque
was built by the Jesuits in the 16th century.

The acoustics here are top-notch, important
in a Jesuit church where the emphasis is on the sermon.

The ceiling, while flat and made of wood

is painted to give the illusion
of marble arches and domes.

The Chapel of St. John the Baptist is one of the
most costly chapels per square inch ever constructed.

It looks like it came right out of the Vatican�
because it did.

Made in Rome out of the most precious materials,
it was used for one papal Mass.

Then it was disasembled
and shipped here to Lisbon.

While these look like paintings,
they are actually intricate mosaics.

A Vatican specialty, mosaics were used to avoid damage
from candle smoke that would darken paintings.

Coffeehouse junkies have a near-religious experience
nearby at the grand old A Brasileira caf�.

This caf� retains some of the ambiance
it had back in the 1920s and 30s

when it was the literary
and creative soul of Lisbon.

It was the hangout of avant-garde
poets, writers, and painters�

and it�s still a good place for
a cup of coffee and a pastel de Nata.

The beloved poet Pessoa still sits outside.

Lisbon, the capital of the Portuguese-speaking world,
is a melting pot of its once vast empire.

Immigrants from former colonies
such as Mozambique and Angola

have added diversity and flavor to the city,

making it as likely that you�ll hear
African music these days as Portuguese Fado.

This is a great taxi town. Cabbies stick to their meters
and are generally good-humored.

Rides are cheap and decals on the window
clearly spell out all charges in English.

Especially if you�re sharing costs,
Lisbon�s cabs are an economic time-saver.

We�re heading Lisbon�s top art museum.

The Gulbenkian Museum offers one of the most
enjoyable museum experiences in all of Europe.

The cool, uncrowded, gorgeously lit museum displays
only a few exquisite works from each epoch.

Visitors stroll across the globe through
five millennia of human history,

appreciating our ancestors by seeing
objects they considered beautiful.

Five thousand years ago, Egyptian civilization brought
an unprecedented refinement to humankind.

This feline-topped coffin held
the mummified remains of a cat.

Mesopotamian reliefs remind us
that it was in the Fertile Crescent

(present-day Iraq) that writing was invented.

Centuries later, but still long before Christ,
the Greeks took civilization to new heights.

This vase, decorated with scenes of
half-human satyrs chasing human women,

reminds us of the rational Greeks' struggle
to overcome their barbarian, animal-like urges.

The collection helps bring to life
the mysterious world of the Moors

who ruled this part of Europe
through the Middle Ages.

They came from an Arabic and Muslim realm
where ornately-patterned tiles

and fine glass lamps decorated
mosques and palaces.

In the 1500s, Portuguese sailors
began trading with China.

Among the many treasures they brought home
were blue-and-white Ming ceramics

which became all the rage, inspiring the Delftware
of Holland and Portugal�s azulejos tiles.

The creativity of medieval Europe
was devoted mostly to its Christian faith.

Foldup altarpieces eight inches tall
helped travelers worship.

Early Bibles and religious books
were richly decorated.

Illuminated manuscripts like these were some
of Europe�s finest pre-Renaissance art.

Later, Renaissance and Baroque painters celebrated
God�s creation in the faces of ordinary people,

whether Ghirlandaio's fresh-faced young maiden,

Frans Hals' wrinkled old woman
or Rembrandt's portrait of an old man,

whose crease-lined hands
tell the story of his life.

Gulbenkian�s collection of furniture once actually
owned by French kings is a royal homeshow.

It shows off the Louis XIV style, ornate,
with curved legs and animal-clawed feet,

and the Louis XVI style, straight-legged,
tapered and more modern.

Follow the progression of Europe�s increasingly
refined styles from stormy Romanticism

(like this tumultuous shipwreck by Turner)

to Pre-Raphaelite dreamscapes
(like this Mirror of Venus),

to the glinting, shimmering
Impressionism of Monet,

Renoir and the Englishman John Singer Sargent.

And finish your walk through
Gulbenkian�s garden of manmade beauty

with the nubile Art Nouveau glasswork and
jewelry of the French designer Ren� Lalique.

A trolley takes us along the waterfront from
downtown Lisbon to the Bel�m District,

a stately pincushion of important sights

from the days when Portugal
was Europe�s richest power.

Bel�m survived the big earthquake.

Because of that, Portugal�s suddenly safety-conscious
and rattled royalty chose to live out here

in wooden rather than stone buildings.

To this day, Portugal�s royal palace
stands behind these walls.

The adjacent royal stables now house
one of Europe�s top coach museums.

In 1905 the last Queen of Portugal realized cars would
make horse-drawn carriages obsolete.

She decided to preserve her
fine collection of royal coaches here.

The museum shows 70 dazzling carriages
in the queen's elegant old riding room.

The oldest is the crude and
simple coach used by King Philip II

to shuttle between
Madrid and Lisbon in around 1600.

This coach had no driver�s seat;
its drivers would actually ride the horses.

With bad roads and crude leather-strap suspension,
the ride was slow and rough.

You�ll have to trust me on this,
but if you lift up the cushion,

you�ll find a potty hole,
also handy for road sickness.

Tracing the evolution of coaches
through the next century,

you�ll notice the decoration
evolves along with the comfort.

The Portuguese coat of arms indicates
this carriage was part of the royal fleet.

The ornamentation includes a folk festival
of exotic faces from Portugal�s distant colonies.

The lumbering Ocean Coach
is as ornate as it is long.

At the stern, gold figures symbolizing the Atlantic
and Indian Oceans holding hands,

reminded all of Portugal�s
mastery of the sea.

Just down the street is the Jer�nomos Monastery
with Lisbon�s most impressive church.

King Manuel, who ruled around the year 1500,
built this giant church and monastery

as a thanks for overseas discoveries.

Manual financed the construction
in part with �pepper money�

a five percent tax levied on
spices brought back from India.

He built all this on the site
of a humble sailors' chapel

where seafarers prayed before embarking
on their frightening voyages.

The style of Manuel's church?
Manueline.

This uniquely Portuguese style
reflects the wealth of the times

and the many cultural influences
of the Age of Discovery.

Manueline decoration is ornate,
featuring motifs from the sea.

This style is on the cusp of the Renaissance.

Unlike earlier medieval churches,
the interior is more open.

Palm tree-like columns are slender,
rather than massive,

and the side isles are as lofty as the nave.

The interior is decorated with
more age of discovery motifs:

monsters evoke the mystery
of undiscovered lands,

a totem pole of faces
celebrates Portuguese conquests,

artichokes, eaten for vitamin C to fight scurvy,
remind of hardships sailors faced at sea

and the ceiling, a boy scout handbook of knots,
trumpets Portugal�s technical expertise.

This is Vasco da Gama�s tomb.

In 1497, he spent an evening praying
here for a safe voyage.

The next morning he set sail with four ships,
caravels like this, and 150 men.

His mission? To find a direct trade route to the vast,
untapped wealth of Asia.

When he succeeded (sailing around Africa),
sea trade eclipsed overland trade with Asia.

And almost immediately, Italy�s trade plummeted,
Portugal�s trade sky-rocketed

and Europe�s seafaring countries along the Atlantic,
England, Holland, Spain and Portugal

emerged as economic powerhouses.

With all that prosperity came money for art.

These lacy Manueline cloisters,
my favorite in all of Europe

are the architectural highlight of Bel�m.

The sheer size of this religious complex is
a testament to the religious motivation that

along with money,
propelled the Age of Discovery.

The Bel�m Tower, with more textbook
Manueline decore, protected Lisbon�s harbor

and today symbolizes the voyages
that made Portugal powerful.

This was the last sight sailors saw as
they left and the first when they returned,

bearing gold and spices.

The giant Monument to the Discoveries,
built in 1960,

on the 500th anniversary of
Henry the Navigator�s death,

shows that exploring
the world was a team effort.

Standing on the prow of a ship
are royalty, poets and painters,

knights who Christianized foreign lands with the sword,
great explorers such as Vasco da Gama,

and, finally, the man who spearheaded
the push for exploration�

Prince Henry the Navigator, holding
the ship that made it possible: a caravel.

To mix in a little fun in the sun with our history,
we�re driving three hours south

to the rugged southwestern tip of Portugal�
Cape Sagres.

This was as close as you could get to the edge
of our flat Earth in the days before Columbus.

A lighthouse marks what was referred to even
in ancient times as �the end of the world�

Today, salt-of-the-earth merchants
sell seaworthy sweaters.

Fishermen cast their lines off the dizzying cliffs.

And tourists go for that
�end of Europe� photo.

Five centuries ago, Prince Henry the Navigator,
determined to broaden Europe�s horizons

and spread Catholicism,
established his sailing school right here.

This was Henry�s mission control, from where
he sent sailors ever further into the unknown.

And here he debriefed shipwrecked and
frustrated explorers as they washed ashore.

Little remains of Henry�s original
school beyond this evocative circle.

No one knows for sure its function.
Some say it was a tool for celestial navigation.

Others think it was a wind-compass, with a flag in
the middle blowing in the direction of the wind.

What ever the case, sailors came here to learn
everything they needed to know for world exploration

ship-building, map-making, navigation�

even languages and salesmanship for mingling
with the natives in newly discovered lands.

Today, Cape Sagres marks
the western tip of the Algarve.

Portugal�s south coast was once known as
Europe�s last undiscovered tourist frontier.

But now it�s well-discovered,
the darling of tour brochures

and much like Spain�s Costa del Sol�
paved, packed and pretty developed.

Lagos, with a jet-ski marina
and a beach-party old town,

is as enjoyable as a big-city resort can be.

The major town on this stretch of coast,
Lagos hides some history.

It was the capital of the Algarve
in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The first great Portuguese
maritime expeditions embarked from here,

and Europe�s first African slave market
was held under these arches.

The old town, defined by its medieval wall,
is a jumble of pedestrian streets,

funky craft shops, seafood restaurants
and sunburned tourists.

The beaches, with the exotic rock formations
of postcard fame, are dramatic.

While Lagos is pretty touristy

One bit of old Algarve magic still glitters
quietly in the sun - Salema.

This simple fishing village has just enough
B&Bs and restaurants,

a classic beach, and endless sun.

Salema has a split personality:
The whitewashed old town is for locals,

the other half was built for tourists. Locals and tourists
pursue a policy of peaceful coexistence.

Salema is still a fishing village.

Weather-worn fishermen, oblivious to the tourists,
go about their work

while old timers remember about the days
when life was �only fish and hunger�

The pottery jars stacked
everywhere are octopus traps.

They get shore leave only for a periodic
barnacle scraping.

Otherwise they�re busy at sea catching octopi.

Local fisherman, Louise,
is taking us out to check the pots.

They�re strung along the seabed just off shore

a technique that has changed little
since ancient times.

The octopus, thinking these pots would make
a cozy place to set an ambush,

climbs in and gets ambushed himself.

When the fisherman hoists him in, he hangs on,
unaware he�s made his final mistake.

The octopus is indelicately maced out of his refuge

and ends up in the village market and who knows�perhaps on my dinner plate tonight.

These days locals hook more tourists than fish.

They rent cheap and characteristic rooms to travelers.

For a little more comfort and convenience,
you can stay at Pensi�n Mare.

The breakfast is a buffet and comes with a view�

guests enjoy Internet access
and plenty of sightseeing tips�

and the living room is mostly under the sun.

For seafood lovers,
the Algarve is as good as it gets.

Salema�s handful of surfside restaurants
have a knack for friendly service,

getting white fish just right and complimenting
that with plenty of vegetables.

After a great lunch, the beach beckons

and after so much history and art,
Salema is refreshing for its lack of turnstiles.

The major activity is no activity�

stretched out on the sand.

While locals grab the shade,
tourists see how slow they can get their pulse

under the Algarve sun.

Whether in a fishing village like Salema
or a big city like Lisbon,

Portugal�s an endearing land
with a superpower past

that mixes comfortably with a charming
and laid-back present.

I�m Rick Steves.

Until next time�

keep on travelin�.