Lisbon: Thursday

Thursday Tim and Maya started by going to Estrela garden and this great playscape:

There's graffiti everywhere in Lisbon:

They then wandered over to look at the Basilica da Estrela. There was a service going on, so they only got pictures of the outside of the church:



We all met for lunch again. After lunch, Jamie went back to the hotel to work on her talk for Friday, while Tim, Maya, and I caught a ferry across to Calihas and Almada, mostly to see the Cristo Rei statue. Here are some shots from the ferry:

This bridge is (besides a small difference in length) exactly the same as the Golden Gate bridge:

We walked a ways along the water, and then took this elevator up to Almada proper, thinking we could walk to the Cristo Rei from there.

We couldn't figure that out, though, so after some nice vistas, we headed back down the elevator:




We ended up grabbing a bus (I did later see the walking path, it was VERY hilly). We took the elevator up to the observation deck on the Cristo Rei, for some superb views. We could even see all the way back to Sintra where we went on Monday (see the two castles on the hill):








We headed back into the city, and walked into the city center, past the city hall:

We caught the #28 tram back up the hill towards our hotel, to find showers before dinner. We went with Jamie to Cafe Buenos Aires for dinner. It was fabulous, and the view was great.

Lisbon: Wednesday (Happy Anniversary!)

Wednesday morning, Jamie and I headed back to the conference. Tim and Maya spent the morning walking up the Avenue da Liberidade to King Edward Park. I hear it was a long, completely uphill walk, so it was one to miss for me. :) Here are some photos from their sojourn. Almost all of the sidewalks in Lisbon (in any part of town we've been in) are decorated with these black and white cobblestones. It's kind of uneven underneath your feet, but it's very charming.









Jamie and I met the pair for a late lunch (Maya walked almost all the way to lunch, definitely more than a mile, and she insisted on holding only Jamie's hand the entire time:

Here's a convent we passed on the way:

Maya had her first "very own" soda at lunch:

And here are a couple more sundry views on the walk back (UP) to the hotel:



After lunch, Jamie stayed at the hotel to rest, while Tim, Maya, and I went to the National Museum of Tile. It started off to be a little dull, with several rooms of just fairly ordinary (though old!) pattern tiles, but turned really interesting, with a very ornate (and heavily tiled) chapel and lots of painted tile murals.








We had gone to the trouble of taking the subway out towards the museum and then walking the last mile and a half. After looking at the map after we got back to our hotel, it turns out that it was probably only about 2 miles (downhill) from the hotel in the first place. We ended up walking back by the pantheon and a convent on the way towards the train station, then realized we were very close to the hotel and just walked back. Here are some shots of the convent:



Our map led us astray (yes, I promise it was the map) for the first time so far, and we ended up accidentally climbing the hill up to the Graca church. (This is the church you see in those pictures from our hotel balcony.) It was a great place to look out over the city, so it was a happy accident (note the pink building in the bottom left corner of the last in this set of photos: that's our hotel):





And, it wasn't all bad, since the walk back from Graca was almost all downhill:



We decided to walk up to dinner Wednesday night to the restaurant inside the castle that sits atop the hill our hotel is on. Here are some pictures Tim took as we left the restaurant: