A day in Belém

/ Greg / 1 Comment

About thirty minutes by tram to the west of central Lisbon is Belém, a lovely locale we based part of a day around during our trip back in October. Belém is not for the faint of heart if you are unnerved by crowds. In the morning, cruise ships disembark and a never-ending line of tour busses congregate outside of its most popular sites. For our first stop, we avoided the crowds and visited the National Coach Museum. The collection of historical carriages here was amazing, and seeing so many in one place let us see the progression of “technology”, if you can call it that. I never really thought of carriages before, but loved the unique focus of this museum.

National Coach Museum

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Bad timing, that’s all

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I really could not have had worse luck with the soccer schedules on my trip to Portugal in October. Whether it was Europa League, Champions League or the Portuguese domestic league, the home teams of Lisbon and Porto were playing when I was in those respective cities, but in away matches each and every game. While I’ve had some really fun times at matches in Prague, Rome and Seville that will have to hold me over until my next European adventure. So, to make the best of some bad timing and with my wife sleeping in one morning in Lisbon, I took the opportunity to do a tour of Benfica’s stadium on the outskirts of the city.

Estadio da Luz, you are definitely a beauty.

Estádio da Luz

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Family on the prairies

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When Jodi’s parents visited us this past summer, there was one place they were itching to get to… the West Edmonton Mall. While the idea of visiting a mall normally induces dread akin to an upcoming visit to the dentist, the idea of a prairie road trip with family to a city that’s really grown on me sounded like a great way to spend a weekend. Another plus for me? You can’t really road trip in Canada without pulling over somewhere beside a roadside attraction, so on the way to Edmonton, here we are in Vegreville in front of their famous pysanka. Unbelieveably, at three and a half stories high and more than 5,500 pounds, it is only the second largest pysanka in the world due to some deft one-upmanship from Kolomyia, Ukraine.

Vegreville Pysanka

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Looking back on 2018

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For a host of reasons, I’ll be glad to put 2018 to bed and move on to 2019. Life threw quite a few curveballs this year, and throughout 2018, travel was a nice escape and respite. Like most years, many of my favourite moments came while I was away and exploring. Whether it be on a couple of baseball trips (New York, Philadelphia), a few first time adventures (Portugal, Calgary), some return visits to favourite places (Vancouver, Austin, Alberta’s Rocky Mountains), family-related travel (northern New Brunswick, Halifax, Edmonton, even here in Saskatoon), or the annual pilgrimage to a Riders game in Regina…. travel made me laugh, feel alive, and filled my heart and mind with memories that I’ll cherish forever.

In no particular order, here are my favourite travel memories from the past year.

1. The day brought to you by the letter M (part 1, mountains and Maize) – On a spectacular road trip into the mountains in June, I had a chance encounter with one of my favourite musicians, Andy Maize, from the band Skydiggers. He was gracious, charming, and I enjoyed the time we spent together chatting about one of my favourite bars in Canada, the Carleton, back in my old hometown of Halifax.

Me and Andy Maize

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Gary Carter and the Mets

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The New York Mets hold a strangely special, but very small, spot in my heart. One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was returning home from being out with my mom and dad on a December evening in 1984 and learning that my beloved Montreal Expos had traded my favourite player, Gary Carter, to the Mets. Feeling like a jilted lover is how I now recall how I felt that night. Whether or not it is possible for a ten year old to feel that is beside the point. I was devastated. After Blue Monday in 1981, this was the second of a long line of baseball-related traumas I experienced leading to my Expos leaving for Washington.

Time heals everything, and while I haven’t yet got my Expos back, I’ve learned to love baseball again. So when work took me to New York for a few days back in September, I added on a couple of nights to hang out in Queens and watch the Mets play the Phillies. The Mets to me are the team that got Gary Carter his lone World Series victory, and wearing this Expos hat got me into some great conversations around the ballpark.

At Citi Field

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My kind of town

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On my previous visits to New York City, I never made it across the East River to Brooklyn. When I started planning my most recent short visit, that was something I wanted to rectify. For my first foray into Brooklyn, a grey, dreary and humid Saturday morning, I hopped a subway to lower Manhattan, then popped above ground and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes when you travel, experiences don’t live up to the hype, but walking across this span over the East River was everything I hoped for. Crowds of joggers, families and tourists like me. All of us (except the joggers) stopping every few steps to take pictures and to take in the Manhattan skyline. The bridge itself is also spectacularly beautiful.

Brooklyn Bridge

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Escape from New York

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I have a love/hate relationship with New York City. The bright lights, energy and controlled chaos are exciting and alluring at first. And then as the days go by, it becomes a touch overwhelming and I find myself wishing I could find a place to hide out from it all to recharge. On previous trips, I’ve used parts of Central Park to regain a sense of normalcy – those parts where the noise from the city disappears and you feel like you’re completely surrounded by nature. On my most recent trip, while I never made it to Central Park, I found another spot to get away from it all for a spell – the High Line park along the west side of lower Manhattan.

What makes this such a special place, both disconnected from New York, but also entirely in its place in the city? Many things… and on my visit, it started with a couple dancing on a park bench as the sun set that brought a smile to my face.

Dancing at High Line Park

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Pairs well with baseball

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Champagne and salty, buttered popcorn. A deep, rich California cab and a medium-rare grilled steak. A plate of fish tacos and a margarita (or three). Some things are just meant to go together. While I’m a bit of a beer snob and can give you food pairings for just about any type of beer, I think beer may be best paired with baseball.

While sitting outside on a perfect summer night at a ballpark, a cold beer in my hand is the perfect accompaniment to the three hour drama that is a baseball game. While my Philadelphia trip was mostly about baseball, its secondary theme was definitely beer. Trying new beers at the games, sampling beers at interesting craft beer bars and breweries, and beers for the hotel. I picked up these beauties shortly after landing and cracked open the definitely non-craft Yuengling first. For me, Yuengling tastes like Philadelphia and brings back all kinds of memories of being in the city in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Craft beers in Philadelphia

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Mural mile south

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With so much time spent in Philadelphia over the years, the time around the edges of my baseball trip gave me a chance to dig a bit deeper into the city. Having previously explored museums, public art, music, sports, and food (oh, the food!), I was scratching my head during the planning for the trip on how to dig that little bit deeper.

What I came up with for a morning of exploring was a series of urban murals that are part of a public art initiative. A density of murals south of Market Street made that an easy choice and it also helped that by walking south of Market and east of Broad, I would be heading in the general direction of my favourite cheesesteak place, Jim’s Steaks, on 4th.

On a humid morning not out of place on the east coast in late July, and sweating through my shirt before I was only a few blocks out of the air conditioned comfort of my Center City hotel, I started my exploration. If you know me, you’ll know that “Gimme Shelter” by David Gunn, painted on the side of the Morris Animal Refuge, would tug at my heart strings. The shelter commissioned this beautiful mural to help tell their story of providing adoption services for abused and abandoned animals.

Murals in Philadelphia

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