Lovely Lisbon, Portugal

We took a long weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. What a nice city; we enjoyed it more than we'd hoped.
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Bit of trivia... Lisbon is one of the nine cities claiming to be built on seven hills (according to Wikipedia; and yes... Worcester, MA is on that list too!).
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Here is a pic I snapped of the Portuguese flag.
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Below is the National Theater which use to be entirely under the Tagus River. The Portuguese submerged bundles of pine boughs under the water (similar to the oak Venice is built upon) to create the dry ground seen today. The tiles in the center of the square represent the ripples of the Tagus that use to run right there. We went on a walking tour our first afternoon is Lisbon. One place we went was the Casa do Alentejo. It's an old cultural center that use to be a mens only gathering place. Now they play fado music regularly, have two dining rooms and is open to the public every day.

Our last night in Lisbon, Jay had the most succulent plate of wild boar here. The dining room didn't open up until 7:00 p.m. but there was live Fado being played and the room was full of people dancing. It was so nice to see elderly Portuguese couples out dancing. Gingas is a locally brewed liquor of the gingas fruit. It's like a bitter cherry. This drink was thought to have medicinal qualities. Even today, Portuguese people drink a small glass regularly to ward off illness. Little old ladies even have their weekly gingas after each Sunday mass.

The picture below shows nearly 100% of the shops real estate. It's been open in this location since the mid 1800's and run by the same family.

Here is the inside of an old church we stopped at on our walking tour. Much of it was destroyed in the 1775 earthquake which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale. They left the inside to show just how old this church is. Our tour took us up the Santa Justa Lift connecting the Baixa and Bairro Alto. It's an elevator built in the early 1900's to make it easier to ferry goods up to Bairro Alto. From up top, we got a great view of the Castle of São Jorge. The weather really was perfect.
Atop the Elevador de Santa Justa there is a small cafe where we heard our first local Fado music played. Here is a short video of what we heard.

Below is the most well known literary cafes in Lisbon. Poet Fernando Pessoa use to frequent this cafe. He has a bronze statue outside with an empty chair next to him. He was very introverted and did not allow company to join him while he sat and read or wrote.

Pessoa was kind of an odd duck. He had a number of different personalities from which he would write. Literature buffs have studied his work and found the distinct individual personalities to have very little overlapping. He just might have legitimately had multiple personalities!I sent someone a postcard of this tree below. This picture proves my claim in the card... we DID in fact get a drink right there!

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It was just beautiful. We took a short break here on our walking tour to use the restrooms and catch a drink. Jay had a Super Bock, which is the local Portuguese beer.
Here's a video of us in the number 28 Tram. This is the most famous tram in Lisbon. It runs through the Alfama and to many other beautiful spots in Lisbon.

This is the old Lisbon train station. It's got a very unique style. Everything else we've seen in Europe was built in either Gothic, Baroque, Roman or Renaissance style. This building is in the Manueline style which we hadn't seen before. It's greatly influenced by the elements of the sea and incorporates many naval symbols.

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Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do the building justice. It's really something unlike anything we'd seen before.
Here is the view down the rua Augusta in the Baixa to the Praça do Comércio. That square at the end of the street served as the "airport" of Lisbon when people use to arrive by boat.

Here we are having lunch just north of the Alfama. We had just come from the large Saturday market at the Feira da Ladra. We didn't see anything we really needed, but enjoyed walking around and doing a little window shopping. It was like a large flea market.

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We had a traditional salted cod cake plate and a VERY under cooked hamburger. Jay finished off with a glass of red port.
We happen to catch the Lisboa Down Town 2007 (you can choose English on their website in fine print on the top left) on Saturday while we were walking around. We were on our way to do some shopping and ran into this day long, single rider, timed downhill mountain bike race!

They had sectioned off a narrow track that wound through the narrow streets and down long stairways. It was WILD!

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Below is one of the riders jumping a sponsor car half way through the course.

Here's a video of one rider going right down the stairs. There were nearly equal numbers of men and women competing. These riders were fearless!

We took a day trip out to Sintra and Cascais. Below is a picture of the Pena National Palace. It was again, so different from anything we've seen in Europe so far.

Here is a window overlooking a gate into the palace. Our guide explained how there were symbols of earth, wind, water and fire in the images below.

Mid-way through our day trip, we went to the Cabo da Roca just outside Sintra. This is the absolute western most point in all of Europe. It was really windy here.

One of the last stops we visited on our day trip was the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). The water rushing in and out was cool. Give people a tiny view of just how powerful the ocean is.

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We got some really great local pastries at a small shop here. We think the name of them was Queijadas Finas de Sintra.

So two resounding thumbs up on Lisbon. The people were really friendly, we highly recommend the walking tour with www.insidelisbon.com. Tonia was our guide and she was great. Very fun, accommodating and informative.

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We usually take a walking or bus tour to start a visit to a city. We find it gives us the lay of the land and an idea of what we want to come back and visit.