We then walked the short distance to the Gulbenkian Museum and adjacent Modern Art Museum. Spent all morning wandering the exhibitions in both museums. I especially loved the Lalique items in the Gulbenkian.
We settled in the Gulbenkian Museum's cafe for lunch. I had a very enjoyable large glass of red wine with mine and we then headed out into the grounds. We comandeered one of the giant bean bags set out by the duck pond under bright yellow canopies that had Portuguese poetry printed on them, and settled down for a snooze.
Having thoroughly chilled out and watched the ducks watching us, we decided to head back to El Corte Ingles to buy the "man bag". To describe it as a department store is to understate El Corte Ingles. The lower ground floor is a supermarket, the upper floors include the usual department store stuff like clothes etc but there are also a couple of cafes, a restaurant and a multi-screen cinema. We went up to the restaurant on the top floor for a quiet drink, a Galao for me (milky coffee) and a hot chocolate for Sonia that turned out to be pure melted chocolate in a cup! We decided to "stay local" for our evening's entertainment so we bought tickets for the Tom Hank's film Angels and Demons on our way back to the hotel.
After freshening up (and downloading the 90+ photos taken in and around the museums), we headed back to El Corte Ingles for some food in one of the cafes. The movie was an interesting experience as it was mainly in English but with Portuguese subtitles. This was fine until you get to the bits where characters speak French, German or Italian and the subtitles are, of course, Portuguese. The cinema seats were very comfortable and there were only three or four couples in for our screening.
We finished the evening in the hotel bar chatting to Manuel the barman and having a nightcap before stumbling up to our room.
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