Lisbon — Day Four
After two days of being toured out, it was time for a bit of freestyling. It did still start on a bus though. A regular Lisbon public transport one, taking us down to one of the main squares in the centre of the city. Whilst waiting for it to turn up I was admiring the doors and doorways as I usually do (yes, I know I’m strange), and I saw this one close to the bus stop.
Noting the number twenty-five above it, I spent the rest of the day looking out for any other doors or doorways with the number twenty-five above them. It was a surprise just how many streets there were where the numbers stopped at twenty-three, or upon which the number twenty-five was missing from above the doorway where number twenty-five should be. Still, I got plenty for the little side project that had popped up in my head.
We were on the bus to the end of the line at Rossio, and from there we started the long slow ascent up through winding narrow cobbled streets and steps up (and some back down again thirty yards further down the same road).
Some of the streets in this area have poignant pictures attached to the walls, some project which took photographs of those who live, or used to live in the houses there and they have been reproduced onto boards in an almost sepia colour, the history from inside the walls being displayed on the outside of them.
There were a couple of stops to do some shopping for tat. The usual, pens, postcards, fridge magnets. But we made it up to the castle entrance.
Which was a lunatic asylum. The queue was stupidly long, and there appeared to be three different sub queues and people changing between them because they didn’t know which one was the correct one to be standing in.
We weren’t desperate to go inside the castle and so we wandered the streets around the castle complex at the top of the hill. We saw (and heard) peacocks. Only for some dicks to come along and deliberately spook the peacock so it expanded its tail feathers as a defence mechanism. There really are some stupid humans around.
There are also Azulejos on walls everywhere in many different patterns and assorted colours (which triggered another thought for another little set of photographs for a project).
Before we stopped for a drink in a café called Tram 28. (Named for the tourist tram which rattles up the narrow streets to the castle and always looks like a sardine tin on rails.) The inside looks as if it has been built from two trams pushed together. A drink turned into lunch and a postcard writing session before we headed on.
And it isn’t everywhere where you are going to find a Tram Burger.
Across the little square was a church, we went in one side and out the other, and briefly thought about going up the tower, but a rude German family pushed in, and we saw the cost, and decided against it.
Instead we continued wandering around the narrow streets, gradually making our way down and out of the castle complex.
We then did a bit of retracing steps, following a bit of the route down from the castle to the cathedral which we had taken on the waking tour a couple of evenings before. I nipped into the cathedral to get a fridge magnet and a brief dodge of raindrops before heading on.
And out the other side we were then walking on street not previously travelled. More narrow streets, little alleys, steep staircases up, and down, between all sorts of buildings.
Unlike the planned grid of the centre of the city, this part of the city, Alfama, the oldest part, a lot of which survived the earthquake of 1755, wouldn’t know a grid if it hit it found the face with one of the cities beloved sardines. It is wonderfully winding, and you might spy where you want to be heading, only to find a couple of minutes later that it is in a totally different direction to the one you thought you were heading in. We pick up a couple of pastel de natas to help us along the way.
It is in this style we wander the streets before eventually finding our way up to the church of St Vincent. Which is absolutely huge. And wants to charge for you to go in.
But they, as the cathedral did, have some doors available for you to go in and sit in the back two rows of the nave of the church and get a long-distance view of the inside of the church (easily overcome with a zoom lens).
The intermittent showering has turned into constant drizzle, and the back two rows of the church were a brief interlude, we stop at a café to, if not dry off, then at least stop getting any damper. A drink and a pit stop later, and it is back out.
It is still raining. We make it down to the former church of Santa Engracia. This baroque church is no longer a place of worship. It now houses the Panteao Nacional (The National Pantheon).
This time we do pay to get in, a prolonged break from the rain will be good. The building houses the cenotaphs and tombs of famous and influential figures from Portuguese history.
It is a serious space, but I can’t help it if my head is the opposite of a serious space, and seeing this name on one of the cenotaphs, I can’t help but ask does it also contain a hot dog, and a jumping frog.
A lot of the tombs now housed here were originally entombed at the Jeronimos Monastery before they were moved here in the 1960s. Reading the biographies of the people here next to each of the monuments, you can’t help but notice just how many of them went to the University of Coimbra, which must be the Portuguese equivalent of going to Oxbridge.
We are able to go up to various levels, where there are displays of reliquaries, and collected artworks.
And then we are up at the dome level. There is an exit out onto the (nearly) flat roof.
On a clear dry day, the views out over the city and the river must be spectacular. But it is neither. The April 25th Bridge and Christ the King statues are barely visible through the low cloud / rainfall. But it does seem to be easing off.
Inside the dome there is a walkway all the way around the dome. It is a long way down. My knees were going (and not just because of all the steps climbed to get up here) and the head was a bit woozy.
By the time we had made it back to ground level and had a walk around the former church and chapels looking at all the luminaries in big marble boxes (including, in a surprise to me, the footballer Eusebio), and headed back outside, it had stopped raining.
And so the wandering around continued. There are museums everywhere it would seem. To everything. In fact I think all that is missing is a museum to museums.
We find ourselves back at the river, only to turn and head away from it again and head back towards where we had gotten off the bus this morning on the search for somewhere for us to have our traditional away on holiday curry. There was a detour to find a post office so we could send the postcards we had written earlier.
Still it is trying to rain intermittently. We had seen a potential place on giggle maps and head into an alley off a side street, go up some steps for a change and find the basic looking Nepalese / Indian restaurant.
It may look basic, but the food is amazing, and it is so cheap. Two meals and two drinks each only come to thirty-one Euros. I can see why it is a 4.9 on Trip Advisor. The place is called ODAAN, it is hidden away, but definitely well worth finding.
When we come out the rain has stopped, and the sun is out. There isn’t a cloud in the sky now. And so we head for the Santa Justa lift. As we pass through the square the queue for the 28 tram is as ridiculous as it has been every time we pass here. It may be the iconic symbol of Lisbon tourism, but seriously, who wants to be Lisbon’s favourite dish — sardines — on a tram, hardly able to see out of the windows on the trip up. You’d be far better off having a slow walk up following the tram tracks and being able to see it all.
Having mocked others queuing, there is a queue for the Santa Justa lift, built near the turn of the twentieth century by a disciple of Gustav Eiffel. Only one of the two lifts in its tower are working, but the queue moves quickly enough. It connects the centre of the city with the Bairro Alto high above it.
Once at the top of the lift, the little spiral staircases up to the upper level of the viewing platform are closed, but the views out from lift level are worth the cost of coming up in it.
With the clouds having finally buggered off for the day there are magnificent views out over the city, across to the castle, and down to the river.
And behind it over the Carmel monastery which the exit from the lift takes you past.
It was one of the main flashpoints of the 1974 revolution, and it is a ruin, with little of the roof left on it. Some is used to house a museum. Unusual for Lisbon, I know.
We have been through this area on the bus but find some streets we haven’t been along to walk down (or more accurately at this point up).
The buildings are being lit up, including this theatre bathed in pink light.
There is another viewing point over the city, it is by the top of the funicular we went down in on our first night here. The castle opposite is lit up in green light, but for some reason the camera doesn’t want to know that and will only take the photo with it in an orange glow.
Once you have got past the mass of self-obsessed, selfie taking Instagrammers which plague viewpoints the world over now. Saying that we did try to take a selfie, but the reason we don’t usually take selfies is because we’re both shit at it, and the more photos I seem to have taken of me recently, the more my eyes are changing into the bastard sons of Marty Feldman’s.
The Bairro area is lined with huts serving food and drink and we grab drinks to go and head up roads we’ve been on a tour bus going in the opposite direction to.
I’m still trying to take nighttime shots of interest as we pass.
Helen mentions it would be nice to get some cheese, but there is nowhere open that sells cheese. We see a pharmacy (always a plus), and joke that it should be possible to get cheese on prescription.
We end up on another very steep downhill path, so much so they have made half the footpath into steps. At the bottom it isn’t far to get to the hotel, and time to collapse and rest.
And to try not to think that we have to go home tomorrow.
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