We hit Portugal’s capital: Lisbon Day 1 (31 Aug 2013)

Once again the travel gods shone kindly upon us and our bus trip from Lagos to Lisbon went so smoothly that we arrived earlier than scheduled. We are so impressed with transport in Spain and Portugal.

However, in Portugal so far, Internet access has been more flakey and limited to our hotel foyers in Lagos and Lisbon  so getting blog posts written is really tricky.

Lisbon orientation

After settling into our hotel, Cyra once again took us on an orientation walk, warning us that it would be a long one. We thought our Seville orientation walk was long so were prepared for something really challenging. As it turned out, this was longer but there were more breaks, as you’ll see below. That, and perhaps the fact that we are becoming seasoned Intrepid tourers, meant that we managed it way better than we expected, even though she took us around many of the central areas of very hilly Lisbon including Bairro Alta, Chaido, Baixo and Alfama.

Anyhow, the orientation highlights were:

FOOD AND IMBIBING WISE

• A glass of the local sour cherry liqueur, Ginjinha, from the specialist bar, A Ginjinha, where it all began.
• A cup of the local Turkish-style Portuguese coffee, BICA, from one of its most popular purveyors, Cafe A Brasileira. Outside here is a statue, sitting at a table, of Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s great Modernist poet.
• Gelati from Santini’s, a purveyor so popular we had to line up for 15 minutes or so to be served … And not just with tourists.

… And we were ordered, in the nicest possible way, to not eat at restaurants with pictures in their menus! Yes, ma’am.

SIGHTS WISE in no particular order

• A quick visit to the Guinness Award Winning World’s Oldest running bookstore, Bertrand’s, established in 1732.
• A walk through Alfama, the old Moorish area dating back to the 12th century and which survived the 1755 Lisbon earthquake-tsunami-fire which killed over 100,000 people. We saw the oldest church in Lisbon, the 12th century Lisbon cathedral, the square where major annual festivities for St Anthony’s fete occur, and many lovely local restaurants including one with painted windows on the corrugated iron barrier erected when work stopped on restoration of the neighbouring old building due to the economic downturn.
• Walks through Chaido, the more upper class shopping district; Bairro Alto, one of the oldest residential, shopping and entertainment districts, now home to the main fado clubs; and Baixa, the downtown area destroyed by the 1755 disaster and completely rebuilt by the Marquis de Pombal using an Enlightenment inspired planned, grid, layout
• Placa do Comerico, the huge plaza bordering the Tagus River and marking the beginning, or edge depending on your point of view, of downtown.
• Largo de Carmo, the square outside Carmo Headquarters which was the last stronghold of the President of the Estado Novo, Marcelo Caetano (who replaced the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar). On April 25, 1974, the day of  the Carnation Revolution, the MFA (Portuguese Armed Forces), pressured Caetano to cede power to general Spínola, and the Estado Novo officially ended after almost 50 years. It is a beautiful square with jacarandah trees and an old fountain that was built in 1796 over the aqueduct.

We learnt that Portugal is Europe’s oldest country, having been established as a separate state in 1139, with period of Spanish rule during the 1500s. Portugal also initiated the exploration of the world, which resulted in the Age of Discovery. Prince Henry the Navigator was the main sponsor and patron of this exploration. Statues of and references to him are everywhere. Many of us know of course of Vasco da Gama, Bartholomew Diaz and Magellan.

Spain vs Portugal

We’ve also noticed some differences between Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese do not have as long a siesta as the Spanish, and tend to eat earlier in the evening. They apparently also like shopping malls! (Which, apparently, the Spanish don’t. We haven’t been looking for them, really, to have noticed this on our own).

Portuguese towns seem to have very different cobblestones to those in Spain and they all look the same – small squarish stones, quite shiny, some black (basalt) and some white (limestone), and often laid out in attractive patterns. For the un-initiated though they can be treacherous to walk on … even though they are pretty.

SUE … Hills, Steps, Views
LEN .. Old, Dirty, Fun

and the stills…

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and the videos…

At the BICA coffee bar, Lisbon

 

Music in the Largo de Carmo, Lisbon