It’s the start of week seven and we’re in the big city of Lisbon. Every day seems to start as an adventure. All of the day-tripping campers wend their way to the bus stop; but which bus stop? Which bus? It’s a muddle of languages, smiles and slightly anxious glances. Are we on the right side of the road? Are you going where we’re going? Will we recognise this stop on the way back? But as always, a bus arrives and the driver sorts us out.
We hopped off in Praça da Figueira, purchased a 24-hour transport ticket at the lottery shop and then set off on foot! We wandered down the Rua Augusta to Praça do Comércio on the Tejo riverbank; it’s a large square with lovely buildings on three sides and open to the water on the fourth. With most of the streets being so narrow the space suddenly seemed huge and wonderfully fresh. On the opposite shore of the river stands Jesus, no not literally, but the enormous 28 metre Cristo Rei statue, a copy of the one in Rio de Janiero. It stands out so clearly and gives the city quite a focal point to look across to.
Next, we hopped on a bus that took us through the Alfama district up to the Castelo de Sao Jorge. The entry queue was enormous, so we continued wandering and found a nice café to sit for a drink and some time to make decisions on where we wanted to go all day. One pasteis de nata later, we got ourselves lost in the maze of streets, uphill, downhill and round and round.
I bought Rodney a belated birthday present of a T shirt with sardines on it and we had a lovely long informative chat with the young, artistic shop owner. Everywhere there were colourful decorations strung across the streets and hanging on houses. Temporary bars were being set up down tiny back alleys and he explained to us that the following day was Portugal Day and on the 13th it would be St Anthony’s Day, which is Lisbon’s special day, so the whole week becomes a bit of a fiesta, especially in the Alfama district.
We squeezed on to a rickety old tram down to the Cathedral and had to stand at the front, which was great, because we had a driver’s eyes view of the ride. By lunch time we could hear Fado music drifting out of windows and bars, and the smell of sardines being grilled, drifting out from the many restaurants and cafés. We parked ourselves at a table outside the Restaurante Maritimo das Colunas and, while I ate a couple of pieces of grilled swordfish, Rodney managed to intricately debone four sardines who all looked at him as he was wielding his knife. Suitably sated we meandered back uphill to visit the castle. We spent long enough plodding around inside to be ready to enjoy an ice cream sitting by the parade ground walls looking out over the Tejo and all the little houses below.
When we left the castle a small bus was waiting outside, so we climbed aboard and enjoyed the very bouncy ride over cobblestones down to the Praça da Figueira. We were tired, but as we had really only investigated the Alfama district, we decided to amble along the Avenida da Liberdade with its occasional designer shops and wondered who still has enough money to spend on the overpriced goods inside; but then most of them were completely empty of customers. By the time we reached the huge statue of the Marquis de Pombal in the middle of a roundabout at the far end, the avenue turned out to be about a kilometre long and we really didn’t fancy walking all the way back down the other side; so we tried to catch a metro; annoyingly I couldn’t get the machine to accept my ticket. This meant we had to walk half a kilometre before we could find a bus stop and a bus that would take us back to the 714 bus stop for the hour’s ride back to the campsite.
Tuesday. Portugal Day. It’s a public holiday, but thankfully the buses are still running and the 8:50am bus had us back in the Praça da Figueira by 9:30am. With another travel card in our pockets, we boarded the whacky Elevador de Santa Justa, we rode it to the top for another nice view over the city and then we walked back down. We strolled around the Chiado district for a while, bought a pair of baggy trousers (for me) and then wandered round to the Elevador da Glória; this one looked less like an elevator and more like a funicular, which it is. At the top, old Saint Pedro had a nice belvedere park with yet another good view across the city to the Castelo de São Jorge.
We ambled through the Bairro Alto district for a while and then stopped on the Rue Garrett in Chiado for yet another pasteis de nata; I’m going to look like one of them soon, but I’m thinking of it as research to find the best one. On a whim (or maybe an overdose of pasteis de nata) we jumped on the first no.28 tram, to see where it would take us. The driver called “finis” at Basilica de Estrella. There was a religious service going on inside the church, so we strolled over to the Jardim da Estrella and enjoyed dawdling under the wonderful variety of trees and appreciating the colours of all the flowers. On our next tram down to the Bairro Alto district, we managed to get a seat and then we discovered the Miradoura de São Pedro de Alcãntara with its view of yet another angle over Lisbon and the Tejo.
On the Elevador da Bica we were the only passengers! So we had our own personal ride down the very steep track and at the bottom we boarded another tram back to Praça da Figueira, followed by yet another tram up to the Cathedral for a spot of lunch. Unfortunately we picked a bad restaurant, or we should have just stuck with the fish, anyway it was our first bad meal in Portugal, so we’ll forget that one.
You might think we must have seen enough by then, but no. Two more tram rides took us out to the Belem district of Lisbon, which was previously a harbour from where many ships sailed to search for new lands and continents. It is now a long promenade with various museums and monuments. We trooped past the very extensive Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, with ice creams in hand and took a long look at the Monument of Discoveries which is really quite impressive with Prince Henry The Navigator pointing the way out to sea.
Our next stop was over at the Museu Berardo inside the large modern stone Cultural Centre. We shuffled around the exceptional collection of modern and contemporary art, with most of the big names represented there; Warhol, Picasso, Mondrian, Pollock, Modigliani, etc, etc. As always seems to be the way with modern art, some of them were brilliant, or interesting and some just made you wonder how they got away with calling it art. Why did Salvador Dali think that making a painted wooden lobster and putting it on a Bakelite phone would be attractive, but somehow it looks….. interesting. However, the plain flat square of black paint did nothing for us and we thought of painting our own and doing a switch. I don’t think they’d notice there was a fake hanging there. I can’t remember who the artist was, but I bet he’s still laughing in his studio.
We walked further along the embankment to the Torre de Belem, a rather fancy tower built in 1515 in the middle of the Rio Tejo. After the earthquake in 1755 the river altered course and it now stands beside the north bank of the river and is much visited by tourists. Thirsty and definitely foot sore by now, we sat down outside the Café do Forte Belem and clinked our glasses in farewell to Lisbon. Finally we found a 714 bus to take us back to Eileen and then struggled to sleep with legs that ached and ached. We loved Lisbon and everything it had to offer; we’ll definitely try and get back for another visit in the future.
