Day 9

Day 9

Today's adventure begins at the Castelo de Sao Jorge, which overlooks the city of Lisbon from the top of a nearby hill. The Castelo was built around the 15th century, and has gone through many phases of development to the point of being almost completely rebuilt around 70 years ago after falling into disrepair. Looking at the castle on the hill from one of the squares in Lisbon, it looks a long way up, but not too far away, which implies something of a steep climb. We opt for the tourist bus and hop aboard. 5 minutes later we are at the Castle gates. Turns out if you know the way it's quite quick and not too steep. Once up the top of the hill, we pay our entrance fee (everything has a price these days) and head inside. I say inside, I really mean, past the entrance gate. The initial area is more of a set of ruins than the castle proper, we do however get some excellent views from there. We get a clear view of the large bridge that spans the channel of water on which Lisbon sits, as well as the giant statue of Jesus Cristo which I imagine is some kind of church on the other side of the water. Have a look at how far away the bridge and bear it in mind because it is relevant for tomorrow's entry.

We finally make our way to the main fortress of the castle, only to find that “adverse weather conditions” have forced the closure of all the interesting bits of the inside. We cannot glean any more information from the guardian placed at the entrance, however the fact that he shook hands with 3 blokes who were obviously his mates, and then let them straight through, combined with the fact that it was a completely clear sky and 29 Celsius, makes me think that it cannot have been too bad. Ah well, shafted again.

We have a look at what we are able to see, which includes a walk around half of the ramparts, before heading back outside. It is here that I now spot a cute feral cat taking a drink from a leaking tap, and then one of the most majestic looking of birds, although ultimately a failure as a bird because it can't fly, a peacock. The spoilsport won''t put his tail up for me though, however it is very comfortable around humans, as it ends up walking between the outdoor tables at the restaurant nearby.

There not being too much else to see with the apparently un-enterable castle, we head out, knowing now that it is easy enough to walk back down to the city. We commence our descent, and spy the trams that also travel up and down the hill (pictures taken for Dad's benefit). We stop off at a couple of old churches on the way down also, one of which apparently contains the house of somebody or other who ran the church, or something... we try to investigate further but there seems to be some sort of chanting coming from the other side, so not wanting to interrupt any secret sort of rituals we retreat, only to find that the cleaners are washing the main entry floor and have boxed us in! Luckily they let us past politely and we are on our way again. Another one for Dad – I spotted a BX Gti, whatever that is.

Next stop down the hill is the Se, which is a cathedral built by Alfonso Henriques in 1150 for the first bishop of Lisbon. Se apparently denotes the seat of a bishop. This building has been renovated over the (hundreds of!) years, but still has that old feeling about it. The inside is very impressive, containing nine gothic chapels.

After the Se we head towards the water, and to Lisbon's Praco do Comercio, which used to e the main gateway into Lisbon, via the waters of the Tagus. There are even marble steps into the water! The Royal Palace is built around the remaining 3 sides of the square. It was used as the palace after they Royal family moved out of the Castelo mentioned above in the 1500s, then became government administration offices after the 1910 revolution. There is a large triumphal arch in the square (once again not as good as the French one).

Next stop on the itinerary is the large and old elevator at Elevador de Santa Justa. We contemplate taking the trip up, but the long line for entry and the 2.60 euro fare (each) puts us off a bit. So we content ourselves with a few photos of it instead. Celina however has spotted the top of a church that looks interesting, somewhere up in the area behind the top of the elevator. We do some sneaking around and it turns out you can get up to the viewing platform that the elevator takes you up to just by walking around the back and up a hill! So toay's tight-arse tip for Portugal is – don't bother paying the fare for the lift, unless you are REALLY into elevators. Go around the back way and save yourself a few bucks ;)

The view from the top is quite spectacular, which was lucky because this was the view Celina had seen in the book and wanted to get. I got a slight case of vertigo (hello, hello), but managed to remain upright and relatively normal. We had a great view across the Baixa region of the city, almost across to the Castelo where we were earlier in the morning.

After finding the back-door way to the elevator, we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, and decided that we could walk to the next point – Belem. Belem is a little town about 6km down the road from Lisbon, and we agreed to start walking, and if we saw the bus that we could catch, we would think about catching it then.

6km doesn't sound like that much, but it still took a good hour and a bit of solid walking, during which time we were treated to many interesting sites such as the Oriental Museum, and the Museum of Electricity. Of course I made many shocking electrical jokes at the time, all of which are too revolting to repeat here.

We also walked under that massive bridge that I think I mentioned a day or two ago. This bridge really is huge, it looks like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, i.e. looks to be of the same construction, and Celina, who has seen the Golden Gate in real life, reckons this one looked bigger. It certainly looked huuuge to me.

We continue on towards Belem which is actually not far from the bridge. There are a few points of interest in Belem, the first we spy is the monument to the discoveries. I have seen this in our book but the picture is completely isolated, so doesn't convey the scale at all. I thought it might have been about 10 feet tall, it turned out to be about 10 floors tall. There is an elevator inside it that takes you to the top (if you pay the money). We decided to pass on this because there were quite a few things to do here.

Next on the list was the Mosterio dos Jeronimos. This is a rather large church/monastery in Belem that contains the tomb of (among others) the explorer Vasco da Gama. da Gama was the one who opened up trade with India for Portugal.

After seeing the monastery, we were duped by clever flyers. We had found some flyers for some sort of art exhibition that proclaimed “FREE ENTRY”, so being the fiscally responsible tightarses that we are, we grabbed a couple of flyers as the exhibition was in Belem.

When we got there however we found out that the exhibition was free anyway, and the deal with the flyer was that in exchange for all your contact details they would give you a little pin with the name of the gallery on it. This was apparently to inform you of any upcoming exhibitions at this particular venue. Given that (a) we had no real plans to return to Portugal i the near or medium future, and (b) the pin was rubbish, we decided against selling our personal information and decided just to peruse the exhibition.

I wasn't getting any of this “art” so we called that one a day and headed out. The last thing on the list for Belem was the Torre de Belem. This small fortress was built in the middle of the Tagus around 500 years ago as a “morale booster” for Portuguese sailors heading out into the world. The fact that it is today by the shore gives some idea of how much land has been reclaimed from the river, given that it used to be out in the middle. It's a solid looking little structure with lots of ornate decorations and battlements everywhere, even a drawbridge and portcullis. It's like the little forts you used to build as a kid, at least it would be if you had the budget of a King. We climb through the many levels of the Tower, and I manage to make it right to the very top before bumping my head leaving the last door. Damn 16th century midgets!!!

Torre fun exhausted, we head back to where we had seen some buses earlier when we arrived. We are getting quite good at the whole bus timetable thing now and are able to see a bus approaching, and within 10 seconds we know we can catch it to where we want to go. The buses here are quite pleasant, most if not all are air-conditioned and this one is not even too crowded which makes for a pleasant journey.

Dinner this evening is at a nice restaurant that Celina has had her eye on after examining the menu earlier. Celina has salmon and I get the chicken, in the hope that it will have some peri-peri sauce or something to make it portuguese chicken, but am disappointed yet again. The meal is great, although there seems to be some sort of heckler hanging around out the front of the restaurant, having a go at the staff, or the place, or the food, or something. Because the entire dialogue is carried out in Portuguese we have absolutely no idea what is going on, and as such it doesn't disturb us in the slightest, however one of the poor waiters is visibly flustered and is having problems keeping cordial from the looks of things. Eventually the beer the heckler has been sipping on runs out and he slopes off somewhere else to parts unknown.