Museum Day

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was born and spent his childhood in Istanbul. He traveled extensively and lived in London and Paris later in life. The museum named for him consists of over 1000 artworks from his private collection. He began collecting ancient coins when he was very young and continued collecting art throughout his life. He came from a wealthy family of merchants and learned the art of negotiation which he used to set up the first oil industry in Iraq. He was once the richest man in the world. The last years of his life were spent in Lisbon.  In his will he gave the art collection to Lisbon with the stipulation all the pieces had to be under one roof. A foundation was created and the collection became the museum in 1969.

The collection of art in extraordinary. Ancient coins in pristine shape, ancient whole pottery pieces, not the shards you often see. The art is beautifully displayed from various cultures and time periods. The museum is small enough so it's not overwhelming.  Some of the Egyptian pieces were collected by Howard Carter. 

We didn't take too many pictures in the museum because each item was worth photographing. The museum also hosts special projects, art classes and other activities. 

There are lots of great museums in Lisbon. Since our time was short, we decided the last museum we'd go to was the tile museum. Azulejo tile is popular throughout Portugal. The colors are mainly blue and white. The tiles were popular in Spain and The Netherlands and gained popularity in Portugal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Simple designs became more ornate and included more colors as the art developed. We have been seeing the tiles since  arrived, decorating walls, in buildings and sometimes covering entire houses.

The tile museum is closed from 1 until 2. We bought tickets and asked for a restaurant recommendation. We were able to eat outside at a restaurant/bar where locals eat. The waiter had limited English but he worked hard to make sure we got everything we wanted. He carefully marked the available dishes but after he took our order into the restaurant, some of the dishes were not available but we happy with what we got. 

Parts of the tile museum were added on to a convent from the 15th century. The tiles are displayed in a chronological order. There are entire walls displayed. I was disappointed that the origin of the displays were not listed since there were entire walls that had to be taken from somewhere. 

a contemporary sculpture in the modern section

the Chapel from the convent

Besides sightseeing and eating, we spent some time trying to figure out the washer/dryer combo. Several loads washed but didn't dry. When I decided to do a load that would do both or just dry, we read the instructions that were left for us. I even got the manual online. What we learned was a picture of the sun must appear to indicate drying. We pressed all the buttons which turned out to be a big mistake. This is not the first time I have failed at European laundry, even breaking the machine sometimes. On the way out, we asked a worker to fix it while we were gone. He kept saying it would work if we didn't press start and just shut the door. Wrong. When we came back, the load we left was damp so something was accomplished. We tried another load but nothing happened so we asked the young man to come and fix it. He had to call someone to figure it out. It turned out by pushing every button we had activated a permanent child lock. He had to flip the breaker to reset it. He set a program and I put in a load. 4 hours, 38 minutes later, the load was washed and dried. Joyce also did a load on the same setting.  It took over 6 hours. Yes, I realize I wrote more about the laundry than 2 museums.

We ate on Commerce Square for our last dinner in Lisbon. Then we went back to pack.

Bye to Porto