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| 7/13/18 Pena Palace, Sintra |
Our
Portugal travels included the three main cities of Lisbon, Porto and
Coimbra (coming up soon). In addition, we also made a couple of day trips – one
to Sintra from Lisbon, and one to Guimarães from Porto.
Sintra
is known for its well-preserved and restored castle and palaces – the Moorish
castle, Pena palace and Sintra palace. After an easy train ride from Lisbon, we
bought a convenient bus pass in town that took us to all three heavily
touristed sites.
Despite
the bus ride, getting to the Moorish and Pena sites still required substantial
hiking and therefore time. My only regret in Sintra was that we stopped first
at the Moorish Castle and stayed a bit too long. By the time we arrived at the
far more interesting and colorful Pena Palace, we were low on time and energy
and didn’t get to see as much of Pena’s interior as we would have liked. Sintra
Castle, too, received only a cursory glance (and an unenthusiastic, unfinished sketch).
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about travel sketching (and travel in
general), it’s that it’s impossible to see everything, and even more impossible
to sketch everything. We always have to make choices.
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| 7/13/18 Moorish Castle, Sintra |
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| Pena Palace, Sintra |
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| Pena Palace |
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| Sintra |
On
our last day in Porto, we took a day trip to Guimarães, and this time Suzanne and Jane joined us. Inland compared to Porto, Guimarães was much hotter,
which was a sketching challenge for me. In retrospect, I think I would have preferred
another day in cooler Porto instead (and certainly there’s no end to sketchable
scenes there).
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| 7/22/18 Guimaraes |
Still,
Guimarães has its own charms, including a quiet ambiance and an amazing Gothic cathedral
with a café right outside of it – and a wedding inside! Trying to show the church
and its adjacent café in the same composition, but standing too close because I
wanted to stay in the shade, I ended up with the most ridiculous composition
that shows none of it well!
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| 7/22/18 Guimaraes |
Chastised
by that experience, I stuck with small thumbnails and detail insets of the
massive Guimarães Castelo structure, where we all battled heat and ants in the
grass while we sketched. It was a relief to relax afterwards with a snack under
a shady umbrella.
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| Guimaraes Castelo |
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| 7/22/18 Cooling off at a cafe (not too bad of a sketch of Jane, right? ;-)) |
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| Mini sketchcrawl with Suzanne and Jane |
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| Guimaraes town square |
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| A wedding was ongoing inside as I sketched. |
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| Guimaraes Castle |
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