Lisbon with Pats

27/01/2025

A culinary adventure on the Lisbon coast: Cascais, Estoril and Sintra

The elegant towns of Cascais, Estoril and Sintra have plenty to offer, from romantic royal palaces to the best of Portuguese cuisine

25/01/2025

👉 Some very very important people but with no memory

This amazing tile panel brings together artist Sara Maia and writer Valter Hugo Mãe, in dialogue, between tiles, paintings and words.

Identity and memory are two crucial keys to understanding our sociocultural context. Some questions that can be asked to try to understand who we are and whether this plural is actually the expression of multiple identities.

Maia’s work and style focus on the narrative aspect and embeds a caustic and subtly ironic look at the small and large dramas of our society, decoding traditional morality by demystifying its false values and behavioural patterns.

Close to the imagination of an artist with the international standing of Paula Rego, Sara Maia has been successfully treading her own path where the violence of certain images is joined by the grotesque and the fantastic of a dispassionate gaze, creating images of a contemporary theater of cruelty. And a sharp and critical eye is absolutely essential to create memories!

23/01/2025

👉 Pats the Explorer.

Researching and discovering more on the 25th of April bridge, its history, facts and curiosities, inside one of its main supporting structures.

Fascinating, indeed, even scary sometimes. Exciting, definitely, but perhaps not the experience I would recommend for the fainthearted suffering from vertigo (see my face)! 😉 🤭

20/01/2025

20/01/2025

52 places to visit according to NY Times. Coimbra, Portugal, is the 11th on the list! 🇵🇹

Where will the new year take you? Kick-start your travel plans by selecting favorites from our annual list.

18/01/2025

Windows of Sintra. Enjoy your weekend!

16/01/2025

👉 Silence! Fado will be sung.

Fado is a unique genre, known as the "Portuguese Soul". As well as being a music genre Fado means "destiny" or "fate". It has a sound so pungent and touching that won't leave anyone indifferent. It's often said that Fado makes the cobblestone streets cry. In other words, melts the coldest of hearts.

📷 Camilla Watson
Silver gelatin on wood, liquid emulsion

🎤
Amália Rodrigues
Esmeralda Amoedo
Ana Maurício
Argentina Santos
Fernando Maurício

14/01/2025

👉 The Magnanimous (and the) Hot Chocolate

In the 1700s it was usual for the monarchs to offer banquets and festive dinners served with great pomp. Through the list of expenses, it’s possible to know the ingredients purchased for these parties: large quantities of meat, and eggs (for sweets), wine imported from Italy and France. In addition to alcoholic drinks, tea and coffee were served and, the sensational drink of the time, hot chocolate.

Brought from Central America by the Spanish conquerors, hot chocolate was a huge sensation in European nations from 1600 to 1799, becoming the favourite drink of royalty, nobility the wealthy and refined bourgeoisie. When Princess Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain, marries Louis XIII of France in 1615, she teaches the French Court how to drink chocolate, a fashion that will intensify, in Versailles, with Louis XIV. Spain and Portugal became the main suppliers of cocoa. In Portugal, chocolate only entered traditional sweets and dessert recipes in the 17th century, being first published in ‘Arte de Cozinha’ (‘Art of Cuisine’), by Domingos Rodrigues, cook of the Royal House of Portugal.

In this miniature painting, Portugal’s Sun King, King John V (D. João V in Portuguese), at the height of the Baroque period is surrounded by an intimate entourage, composed by relatives, aristocrats and artists from his Court, appreciating the chic and elegant drink of the time: hot chocolate.

Like a photographic snapshot, seven figures look directly at the observer, including the Italian painter represented with his palette and brushes. Despite the relaxed and jovial atmosphere of the scene, the heavy etiquette and hierarchy of the King John V’s Court are present in the structuring of the composition, which is divided into two halves, with the three figures with the greatest hierarchical weight on the left side.

On the table, cups, utensils for preparing and serving coffee and chocolate. The relaxed atmosphere shows the particularly happy moment of this period in King John V’s life, vibrant with projects, visions and influences, surrounded by aristocrats and Italian artists that would inspire the king’s strong legacy onto Portugal’s history, culture and architecture. And what way of conveying it rather than having a cup of hot chocolate, the coolest hot drink of the time?

🎨 A. Castriocto, Tempera on Ivory, 1720

11/01/2025

How 40 Million Cork Wine Stoppers Are Harvested A Day 🇵🇹

Half of the world's cork wine stoppers come from Portugal's cork oak trees. These trees are so important to the country's ecosystem and economy, they're prot...

08/01/2025

👉 The sky is the limit.

‘The church of Santa Isabel it's like a gemstone inside a dark box with a somber gray lid’ referred the Swiss artist Michael Biberstein addressing this unique art intervention before starting the project.

The abstract painting depicted at the vaulted ceiling brings to this 18th century church in central Lisbon a celestial and spiritual feeling like never before experienced.

Happy New Year!

06/01/2025

Journey through the last moments of Portuguese monarchy in just four minutes. 🇵🇹

In the early 20th century, the Portuguese monarchy encountered a series of challenges that significantly impacted its stability. Domestically, political stru...

03/01/2025

👉 The Markets of Lisbon

Lisboans always loved to eat and, on the whole, ate well. Lisbon’s markets offered an abundance of fruits year-round, including pears, figs, limes, melons, pomegranates, pears, peaches, sweet oranges, carobs, apples, plums, grapes, and apricots.

Chestnuts were roasted and sold in the streets; and although vegetables like sweet potatoes, peas, and beans were grown in private gardens throughout the region, the Lisboans were, by nature, carnivorous. In the city’s meat market, one could purchase beef, lamb, goat, rabbit, pigeon, duck, turkey, chicken, and pork.

But it was seafood, then as now, that dominated the city’s 18th century cuisine. In a society that forbid meat on Fridays and fast days (when only a single meal of fish and vegetables was permitted), seafood served both a religious and a biological need.

In Lisbon’s riverside fish market—which many considered the finest in the world—one could find mackerel, sole, eel, hake, lamprey, sea bass, scabbard, as well as oysters, goose barnacles, scallops, clams, crabs, octopus, cuttlefish, and squid—though the humble sardine, when in season, was by far the most ubiquitous and probably the most beloved of all Lisbon’s aquatic food staples.

Roasted on street corners by women in colourful shawls, sardines were cheap and nutritious, the daily meal of soldiers, sailors and tradesmen, as well as most of the city’s poor.

Salted codfish (bacalhau) was also heavily consumed. Caught by Portuguese fishermen in the cold waters of the north Atlantic, the faithful friend (as it is affectionately called in the country) was dried and generously coated with salt to preserve it during the long ocean transport – combining Portugal’s tradition of salt production since the Middle Ages.

Sardines and especially cod, then as now, are still strong in Lisbon and Portugal’s cuisine.

01/01/2025

Journey through Baroque Lisbon. Happy New Year! 🥂

It arrived in Portugal later than the rest of Europe but also manifested itself here in full exuberance.Subject to the concerns of the Counter Reformation an...

30/12/2024

The Guardian readers’ favourite travel discoveries of 2024. Guess which one is the first on the list? 😉

From the wild wonders of a national park in Ireland to a perfect pastry in a Portuguese surfing town, our tipsters revel in surprises on their travels

28/12/2024

Windows of Lisbon. Enjoy your weekend! 🧡

26/12/2024

👉 New stock of Lisbon with Pats tote bags just arrived...

It would be rude not to be seen with one on the streets of Lisbon or anywhere else in the world.

Historic Gardens and Japanese Camellias in full bloom make a wonderful setting!

📷 Thank you for the photo, Mark.