Fabel's

Although we saw a lot of really neat places in Lisbon, my favorite place by far was the monastery we found when we got lost. We were actually trying to find the cathedral in Lisbon and followed the wrong signs, which lead us to this monastery. We decided that if would be worth the 2 euro and check it out. It was very pretty and had beautiful artwork throughout the entire building, but my favorite part were the rooms with Aesop’s fables. In these rooms there 

were huge depictions of Aesop’s fables all made of tiles that were about 4x4 in size. Off to the side, there was a plaque with the fable in 4 languages, Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. My favorite was the fable called “The Untrustworthy Guardian”. The fable was written:

       “A dealer of iron went on a trip and gave one hundred pounds        of iron to a neighbor for him to keep. When he

 returned, he        went to collect the metal, but the neighbor said that he didn’t        have it any more because a mouse had eaten it. The dealer immediately decided to teach the liar a lesson. He kidnapped his neighbor’s son and then said the boy had been taken by an owl. The boy’s father said, “How do you expect me to believe that owls can do a thing like that?” The other answered, “In a

 country where a single mouse can eat one hundred pounds of        iron, don’t you thing it’s possible for owls to carry off a child who doesn’t weigh half that?” The father understood the moral of the story and returned the iron so that he would get his son back.”

 

I loved the moral of this story so I took a picture of the tile          depiction. Not only is it neat to have to story, but then you can see the art of it as well. A definite must see if you get a chance to visit Lisbon. The monastery is called Monterio de São Vicente de Fora and a cheap, and very interesting.