Joe Benning Photography

Travel & Photo Blog

  •   Reston, VA

A Few Side Trips in Portugal

While we were in Portugal, we took a few side trips, including Fatima, Coimbra and Tomar. Fatima is, of course, where Mary appeared to the three school children (Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto) on May 13, 1917 while WW1 was raging.  Fatima is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the […]

Read More »

Three Weeks in Lisbon

Or Lisboa, as they call it in Portugal.  After we finished sailing along the Douro River in northern Portugal, we headed down to Lisbon. A little perspective would be useful here. Portugal is a small country. The population is estimated at somewhere between 10.5 and 11 million people. And last year the tourist industry estimated […]

Read More »

Sailing Along the Douro River

When we finally arrived, we began our trip to Portugal with a Road Scholar led cruise on the Douro River.  The cruise was truly magnificent, as was the Road Scholar guide, Lucia Gomez. We got lucky with the weather which was extravagantly good, and the scenery which was stunningly beautiful along the riverbank. In our […]

Read More »

A Second Day in Lisbon

For the second day we decided to tour Lisbon proper. What is truly amazing is that Lisbon is spotlessly clean. Which is what we saw pretty much everywhere in Europe—so maybe it shouldn’t be amazing at all.  One place we visited was a former monastery of the Order of Saint Jerome that was secularized in […]

Read More »