{"id":207,"date":"2018-11-11T22:26:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-11T22:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/petersontravels.com\/?p=207"},"modified":"2024-06-13T13:12:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T20:12:05","slug":"palace-of-ajuda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/petersontravels.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/11\/palace-of-ajuda\/","title":{"rendered":"Palace of Ajuda, Lisbon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right before we left for our trip I told a bunch of friends about this blog.\u00a0 Our good friend Fred Daniels responded back that he had a contact in Lisbon that could give us a tour of the Palace of Ajuda.\u00a0 We said “sure, set it up!”<\/p>\n

So we show up at the palace yesterday and Cristina, Fred’s friend, meets us in the reception area.\u00a0 Everybody in the place is treating her with the utmost in respect…..and that’s when we find out she is the curator of the palace, and has worked here for 30 years!<\/p>\n

The history of this palace is pretty interesting.\u00a0 After the earthquake of 1755, King Joseph, who survived, decided that brick buildings were not for him.\u00a0 He built a huge wooden building so that if an earthquake struck he’d be impaled by shards of wood rather than buried under bricks and mortar.\u00a0 Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift.<\/p>\n

So King Joseph, he of the fear of bricks (also known as being buried alive), had a closet case of taphephobia (you have google, look it up).\u00a0 So King Joey dies in 1777 and his daughter Maria takes over and says “enough of this wooden house shit”.\u00a0 She had apparently read the Three Little Pigs as a child.\u00a0 So she starts building a real palace.<\/p>\n

In the middle of building (1809 to be exact), a bunch of Frenchies under the direction of an imp named Napolean invade Portugal.\u00a0 The Royal family says “I can run faster than you can”, and promptly moves everybody to Brazil.\u00a0 The Frenchies find no royalty to force into submission, and head back to the land of heavily seasoned snails.\u00a0 Even in the absence of the Royal family, the construction of the palace continues.\u00a0 If only we had contractors like that today!<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until 1862 that the latest Royals took up residence here.\u00a0 The queen, Maria Pia, was responsible for most of the interiors in the palace.\u00a0 Her husband, King Luis, gave her full control as long as he was allowed to smoke.\u00a0 She took advantage of that and made the palace her own.<\/p>\n

They are still restoring the palace to this day, as we couldn’t go up to certain sections of the 2nd floor, but Cristina took us everywhere she could, even some spaces that were closed to the public that day.\u00a0 We saw one large crowd there taking a guided tour.\u00a0 Otherwise the place was empty, so if you want to avoid the crowds, this is a pretty cool spot to check out, particularly if it’s raining!<\/p>\n

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Odd that the two thrones look identical.\u00a0 You would think the Queen’s would be more demure?\u00a0 Maybe Maria Pia wore the pants in this kingdom?<\/p>\n

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This is the ball room, right off of the throne room (you can see the thrones in the background).\u00a0 Don’t ask me about the significance of Atlas holding up balls in the ballroom….I have no idea.<\/p>\n

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These are really cool pieces that I want!\u00a0 If anybody sees them for sale somewhere let me know!\u00a0 Particularly the moon sticking it’s tongue out!<\/p>\n

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I only got one photo of Cristina, and only from behind.\u00a0 I need to do a much better job of identifying the hosts of these adventures!\u00a0 This shot is of the winter room, where they would bring plants inside so they could enjoy them without freezing their butts off.\u00a0 That is a bird cage in the background.<\/p>\n

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Thank you to Cristina!\u00a0 Looking forward to your SF visit in February!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right before we left for our trip I told a bunch of friends about this blog.\u00a0 Our good friend Fred Daniels responded back that he had a contact in Lisbon that could give us a tour of the Palace of Ajuda.\u00a0 We said “sure, set it up!” So we show up at the palace yesterday … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Palace of Ajuda, Lisbon”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-portugal-spain-fall-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t