First day in Lisbon was great! We arrived around 2 pm and set out immediately to explore. Walked into town following our map and found the gates with no problem. The architecture is wonderful, very varied and stretches across the ages. They are currently re-doing the square where the city gates are so you couldn’t see the view from down there. We then trucked up the hills to the church and castle stopping for an ice cream to revive ourselves. Wow, spectacular views of all sides of the city! Took a few photo’s and then toured the remains of the site. We were able to walk all around the parapets. We’d discussed doing a bus tour, so hopped on the “hop on hop off” bus that runs around the city and rode it for about an hour. Went by the main plazas, down the important streets with parks along them and saw the bull ring. It was on it’s last loop of the day so we decided to come back to the boat for the evening. Arrived around 8:30 pretty tired, had a quick dinner and bed…logged 12 kilometers of walking for the day…our new nifty pedometer tells us so!
It is currently 8 am and we are off to finish off the city.
Back from a day of exploring. Most importantly we made it to the monastery Jeronimo. It was fantastic, better than any we have ever seen before. Took several pictures, they should be posted. We also went to the Museum de archeology. They had Roman artifacts, Egyptian and local. Very interesting to see how the locals worshipped the “cult” Gods of the time, very similar to the Greeks. After these two places we caught our “hop on” bus over to the Alfala district (where the castle is) and walked up and down the little winding streets that run all through it. It was loads of fun, we were a little lost at times but it added to the mystique. After we tired of that we stopped at a café and had a pitcher of Sangria along with some local appetizers then finished it off by splitting a meal of fried fish parts (yes, all parts were included) of different of varieties of fish. It was very interesting, at times disgusting, yet adventurous all at the same time. We finished off Lisbon with a walk back to the ship. Today we logged 14.38 kilometers.
-Cheers!
