Belém is a historic district in western Lisbon, Portugal. It served as safe anchorage for traders and the departure point for early explorers like Vasco da Gama and was, for a time, the centre of Portugal's maritime power. Today it’s home to two UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower. Having already spent our religious points and not seeing the point of visiting a monastery dedicated to giving “spiritual support” to the seafarers (not sure what they mean by that however), we went for the tax collector’s tower. Belém Tower guarded the entrance to the estuary and served as a ceremonial gateway for returning fleets. Architecturally, the tower blends Gothic (soaring, pointed and ornate), North African (geometric and ornate), and Renaissance (symmetry and proportion like Romans and Greeks used to do it) elements. It’s a busy mismatch of sculpture on the outside and vaulted ceiling on the inside.
The day started with breakfast at 📍The Folks. A specialty coffee shop according to our research but the coffee game wasn’t good that day at the very least. The food itself was okay but not enough for us to choose to return for our next breakfast in Lisbon. We have a list of potential brunch places, no great loss there.
Entering the Belém tower requires that you pre-buy a ticket for a specific date and time. Our research pointed us to picking the last entry for the day (16:30) as it tends to be less crowded. It did leave us with a good portion of the day to fill. We had a plan to fill it. First step: Cinnamon rolls. We have three places on our list for great rolls and picked one for today 📍Rolls Duo. They were already out of the classic rolls and we picked “themed” flavours (passion fruit and crème brûlé). The breading was soft and light but we were really looking for cinnamon goodness and that wasn’t it.
We like to say we travel for food and the museums, gardens, hiking and city exploration are things to do between meals. Giving our first meal a good try with two different establishments and the best grade we could give is “okay,” we were hoping for better “in between” than that.
A couple of streets over from 📍Rolls Duo there’s the 📍Jardim Botânico de Lisboa (the University of Lisbon Botanical Gardens). We thought it would be a good opportunity to meet flowers and local plants. The garden was well designed, small but with enough space to meander a little;l. It’s also more of a tree garden than anything else, most trees have name tags and provenance info. Flowers are very rare. It is separated between a free and a paid section. Like an action movie without much of a story, the free “trailer” for the garden has all the content (flowers and the impressive tree) with the 5€/person portion doesn’t have much of interest that the trailer doesn’t have. We choose to think of our entry fee as financing for the free portion of the garden.
After the garden we went to the 📍Cais do Sodré station and boarded the next train to Belém. From there we walked the short way to the 📍Centro Cultural de Belém. This example of 1990 modern architecture was constructed to host the 1992 European presidency and now hosts, amongst other things, the architectural and modern art museum. We were there for the modern art. As most museums, they advertise the art from well known artists (Picasso, Warhol, …). For most places it’s like a reverse ingredient list, the first one they name has the fewest pieces, the second one a little more, etc. They had, obviously, more local participants to the movements than the big named artist. Modern art in a modern building is already a good mix and their museology was on point. We especially appreciated seeing more work from female artists.
After the museum we made our way to the 📍 Belém Tower. When thinking tower the image of the towers in Bologna comes to mind, even the leaning tower of Pisa (don’t go there, it’s a waste of time). The former is almost a 100m tall and the latter is a little more than 50m; the Belém tower is 30 meters, essentially four stories tall. While smaller in size the architecture is rich in detail. It’s fresh out of a big restoration project and it shows. As we visited the tower we also learned why they limit visitors. It’s not because the tower is small (which it is) or because there’s limited floor space (which there is), it’s because there is a single set of very narrow winding stairs between each level making them a one way affair without line of sights to incoming people. Put a 100 people in there and it would be total gridlock.
Finished with our visiting duties, we stopped by 📍Pastéis de Belém to get the ancestor to the pastel de nata, boarded a train back to Lisbon’s city centre and picked up some pastel from 📍Castro. We wanted to be well equipped to compare the “original” to the, now country wide, sensation. Turns out the original is less sweet and more buttery. The difference isn’t huge and it would likely be easy to mix one for the other if not told which we’re getting. All good stuff in our book.
Dinner was at 📍Ofício. It’s a contemporary Portuguese restaurant, by that they mean they take classic Portuguese recipes and give them a more modern twist. They are not trying to get all fancy in deconstructing recipe or dishes. They focus more on using modern techniques but keeping the flavour intact. They do it beautifully. We had, to date, the best meal of our trip there. We may have a couple of misses with breakfast but definitely ended on a high note.