Today Rosie and The Operator are exploring Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal. Home of 500,000 city dwellers and 3.5 million inhabitants in the wider metropolitan area. The actual scale of the city of Lisbon is huge! Making everything we want to see so spread out! Rosie, as usual, has underestimated it incredibly, taking for granted we could walk everywhere like every other city. How on earth are we going to see everything we need too!
Meet Jose who has come to the rescue! We ran into him on the street the night before. He is a tuk tuk driver, a speaker of perfect English, a passionate Portuguese history buff and appreciator of the fine arts. He is going to show us around the city for the next 4 hours taking us to all the sights we want to see and show us the sights we don’t know about, door to door!
Perfect, The Operator is relieved he does not have to deal with tram, bus and metro timetables and routing, this is just going to be too easy….and fun.
Jose beckons us to jump into the back of the tuk tuk as it rolls past our meeting point in the tail to nose city traffic and just like that we are off to our first stop in the suburb of Belem on the banks of the Tagus River.
The Torre de Belém sits on the bank of the Tagus River and is the beautiful face of Lisbon, its image appears everywhere and is on everything. The tower was built in 1514 as part of the defense system at the mouth of the River and also as a ceremonial gateway to the city. It is truly beautiful and so old looking when we are standing on a modern sleek concrete wharf looking down on this ancient piece of history.
A little further along the same wharf is the Padrao Descovrimentos (Monument Of the Discoveries) it looks at first like a huge statue which is shaped like a ships prow. The monument celebrates the golden age of Portuguese seafaring and the contribution the country made to the discovery of new lands far and wide.
It is more than just a statue, you can catch a lift to the top of the monument where you can look down to the foot of the monument at the giant map of the world in the middle of the compass that shows all of the places the Portuguese sailed to and discovered in their heyday of the 15th and 16th Century.
Across the road from the Monument of Discoveries is the Monastery of St Jerónimo. Rosie said nothing was small in Lisbon and the view of it from the top of the monument agrees with that. By the way this building is actually double the size you see in the photo, Rosie couldn’t fit it all into her frame.
Built in 1501 – it is ornate and beautiful, up to 1500 monks lived and studied here at any one time. The Monastery ran for over 400 years until the order was dissolved in the mid 1800s. How can Rosie and The Operator be so unlucky, the day we go sight seeing is the day of the week that most of the monuments and churches are shut. Just our luck.
Still on the Belem wharf this modern new museum on the riverfront is shaped like a shark. Credit to the architect, Rosie thinks he has done a great job, the grey tiles on the top really do look like skin…all that’s missing is some teeth.
Our last stop in Belem is for coffee! At the most famous Pastel de Nata (pastry tarts full of eggy custard) bakery in Portugal! This bakery has been going since 1837 and is said to be the first to bake this eggy delight, and yes, they are delicious! The pastry is so crunchy and light and the custard….just perfect.
When we left the shop, the queue was down the road. They claim to sell 20,000 pastries per day, all baked from the original recipe from 1837!
Lisbon even has its own Golden Gate Bridge. Under it is the LX Factory, a trendy development of renovated industrial warehouses that have been turned into shops, restaurants and galleries.
OMG – Rosie is in heaven, the street art painted in and around these old industrial warehouses is amazing. Park up that tuk tuk Jose, Rosie is going for a wander and going to take some pics! We might be here a while…..
This piece of street art is by the artist Bordalo II. He creates huge 3D animals….out of trash. He was the artist that did the bee at the LX Factory above.
This piece of art below is constructed over a couple of floors on a terrace building. It’s amazing. Now you see it …… now you don’t. The artist recycles rubbish he finds on the street as his medium….viewed from the side…it looks like a pile of trash……..front on….Hello Mr Racoon
The pieces of rubbish car body, children’s toys, pipe, wooden doors etc have all come to life. One mans trash is another mans treasure. Rosie would never have seen this art if it wasn’t for Jose and his knowledge of the city, plus he also tailors his tours to what his clients like…
This picture is of Basilica Estrela and a typical Lisbon tram, a park is across from the Basilica and everyone was enjoying the spring sunshine in one of the only central green spaces. Jose the tuk tuk driver dropped us at one gate…we wandered through the park and he picked us up on the other side…now that is service!
The City Of Lisbon is built over seven hills…there are many elevators and funiculars to ferry folk up and down the steep bits, this is one of the funiculars. They glide so gracefully and silently with just the occasion ding ding of their bell to alert wandering tourists to get out of their way. We are back in the city and starting to get a little higher up…the riverfront we were just on is now in the distance.
We were getting higher and higher up the great hills of the city and there are little look out points everywhere. Jose stopped at a couple for views out over the city. At this one was a closed church and peeping inside the doors, look what Rosie found! Stunning eh?!
The Gothic Cathedral Of Lisbon with its stunning plain, blocky, Gothic facade was built in 1147 and was unscathed in the infamous 1755, 8.5 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed three quarters of Lisbon. Rosie and The Operator did a quick recky inside and the light was stunning.
We whizzed by beautiful parks, monuments and buildings, Rosie cannot remember the names of all of them on the tour…Lisbon really is that big!
Madonnas house in Lisbon, it is huge and is a former hotel. Her son has a contract with the Lisbon football team so she has been living here for the last couple of years…apparently she is in the process of selling up as there are not enough parties here in Lisbon here for her…
We saw quirky houses and Jose even took us to the Hilton where he used to work…to show us the amazing art collection there…oh, how the other half live!
We passed more monumental sized street art and stopped in the best places to photograph it too.
Jose finished our tour today by our request on top of the highest of the seven hills of Lisbon to take in the view from the Mirador da Senhora de Monte – Our Lady Of the Hill. The day was perfect, the view magnificent and we had decided to say goodbye to Jose and wander home ourselves downhill.
Halfway down the hill Jose had recommended a local restaurant to have lunch at. The blue tiled building is where we sat, outside on the street under the umbrellas. The Operator had grilled sardines…..a Portuguese speciality. Rosie had Shrimp and Rice….just like a beautiful risotto but abit wetter.
We wandered down narrow steep streets and found ourselves in small squares, and discovered some incredible views peeping between buildings out over the city. We didn’t know really where we needed to go, only that we were heading back towards the river and down hill.
We discovered some more amazing street art along the way then, we popped up in our neighborhood on the Rua Augusta.
Through the great Arch of Triumph we went, and right down to the rivers edge where we stood on the riverbank looking back towards the Praca do Comercio – Commerce Square.
This was once the site of the Royal Palace which was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake and Tsunami. The area was immediately rebuilt by King Dom Jose I in this symmetrical horseshoe design and became the center of all commerce in the newly built city, housing the government buildings and the port authority. The great equestrian statue is of King Dom Jose I himself.
This was the end of our day out in Lisbon….to be honest we saw a lot, but still didn’t even scratch the surface of this huge city. Because of its size and how spread out it is, the city does loose a little of its charm and is not one of Rosie’s favorite cities….but, it was beautiful non the less and we had a fantastic time here.
Tomorrow we are driving to Seville in Spain to catch a flight to Fes, Morocco. We are very excited, and nervous to be spending a few days in this exotic city and country.
