Our flights had no problems getting us over here (aside from some choppy weather over the Atlantic; an in-flight entertainment system that not only didn't work in offering any entertainment but also flashed periodically from the back of the seat in front of you; and despite landing 40 minutes early, sitting on the tarmac and ultimately arriving 5 minutes late due to a "baggage search" on the plane parked at our gate). We deplaned and went inside the terminal, where we were faced with, and I am not exaggerating, by far the longest and slowest moving immigration line I've ever seen. (Maya was doing great, but she was going on about 6 hours of sleep, so we didn't expect her to last long.) After standing in line for about five minutes and moving about five feet (all of which I am sure were just due to people packing themselves together more tightly), a woman tapped Tim on the shoulder and said "English?...she is with you (pointing at Maya)? This way please." And moved us from our original line (and I wish I could have taken a picture of this line; it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stationary people long) into a line with just four people in it. We soared through that and then grabbed our luggage and a taxi and headed to the hotel.
Of course, it was only 10am, so the hotel was far from ready for us. We dropped our bags and went to grab a bite and find something to do with several hours. We found a little self-service coffee shop with great views:
Then we decided to figure out how to get on the "#28 Tram" for a spin around the key tourist sights. This required finding a station that sold tickets (which turned out to be unnecessary, since we could have bought them on the tram) and then finding the tram, both of which turned out to be less intuitive than they sound. Here's Maya riding along on the ticket buying journey:
The tram ride turned out to be a great choice for us weary ones; it was pleasant to sit and let the cool breeze keep us awake. And we got moved to the front of the tram line with a baby, too. We got highlights of lots of the sights we're planning to see over the next several days. We also got a sense of the extreme hills in town (Maya's getting used to saying "up, up, up" and "down, down down") and how narrow some of the streets are (at one point the front right corner of the tram was within six inches of the building on the right and a corner jutting out on the left was within six inches of the left hand side of the tram). Tim snapped some photos leaning out of the window in particular tourist fashion:
On the way back on the #28 tram, we hopped off about halfway back. Here's Tim's artsy shot of the #28 tram and another from our walk:
We wandered down to the Praca do Comercio; one of the postcard pictures you may have seen of Lisbon. Unfortunately, the Praca is under construction, so it's not quite as picturesque, but the Arco da Victoria was lovely:
We came back to the hotel in the afternoon for a little rest and some showers. Then we headed out for an "early" dinner (we practically had to beg a restaurant to serve us at 7pm). We wandered down from the hilltop (yup, that's right, I picked a hotel that turns out to be tiring to get to at the end of a day) to the Alfama neighborhood. They're already preparing for the Saint Anthony festival at the end of the week.
Here's a map of the Alfama neighborhood and two suggested walking tours (one in red, one in green). (As if you could remember the route after the first turn.)
We also had time to wander over to the Se, the main cathedral in town, where they were just beginning mass. The singing was beautiful. We plan to get back there to take some more photos when it's a little less obtrusive. Here are the front doors for now:
All over town, there are numerous buildings that are completely tiled on the facade. (Yes, with basically 4x4 tiles, or whatever the metric equivalent is.) Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to really hold up all that well. But it's easy to see the charm:
Of course we forgot the GPS on the morning walk, but we did remember it in the evening. Click here for the evening's route and photos in EveryTrail.
1 comment:
I was surprised by the pictures. Lisbon looks more like a village than a city. Surely there are skyscrapers somewhere?
Post a Comment