Way Over Due Pics from Portugal!

So I have been on a busy track apparently since the new year since I haven't made any posts since Christmas. Part of the reason for that is that I stupidly left my camera on the plane that we took to Lisbon (Portugal) for our post-Christmas-New Years holiday. Other than my temper tantrum at loosing my digital camera it was a great trip. The temps were a bit cooler than we hoped, hovered around 13-16 degrees C most of the time - but that was a good 20 C above the temps in Denmark at the time. In Copenhagen it was the coldest winter in about 15 years, so a welcome escape to Portugal was much needed.

We started off the trip spending a few days in Lisboa (Lisbon). Something about Lisbon reminded me of Roma, so of course I liked it right away. Perhaps it is the cobblestone streets and the hills coupled with the motorinis and the working chaos that caused me to see them as alike. The architecture in downtown Lisbon though is not nearly so historic as much of what you find in Rome. An earthquake in the late 1700s (I think) brought down a lot of old buildings.

We stayed at a small pensione that except for the great view we had of Praca da Figueira I would not recommend. It was in the Baixa and Avenida neighborhood, quite convenient and fit our el-cheap-o budget. We got a room on the fourth (top) floor and had this view of the piazza. You can see there were still a lot of Christmas decorations up.













Here is another pic from the room of our pensione looking up toward Castelo de Sao Jorge. We did walk up and take a tour around the castle on a half-sunny afternoon but unfortunately we were out of film on our disposable camera - which of course I didn't realize until we were already inside the castle grounds! And as with other experiences of going to a place on a hill, on the way up we got lost and took the long way, which took a good 45 minutes, and the walk back down took about 15 - that always seems to happen to me! Those of you who know my story of finding the church of Il Santuario di San Luca in Bologna will know I don't have a good track record with these things...













Admittedly the place we frequented most often in Lisbon was the port wine bar near our room. This place was no bigger than a large closet. There are no seats in these places (there are many scattered around downtown), there is just a counter and there is (I think) only one thing on the menu which they call Licor de Ginja. Here is a pic of the place near where we stayed.

















I can't exactly tell you what it is, except its goooood! My guess is that it is port wine with cherries soaking in it, that you get some of in your 1 euro shot sized plastic cup. The cherries are a bit sour and its 23% alcohol (almost 2 times that of wine) so you feel a bit warm and fuzzy if you are an infrequent drinker like me. These places were always busy and it seemed to me they were open (with customers) from 10 am - 10 pm. We tried to go before dinner most nights, and after dinner too if we weren't too late! The customers hang about the plaza area out front of the bar - thus its a fantastic sight for people watching. Morten must have looked like an hippie or something with his scraggly hair and orange outdoor recreation jacket - that attracted the attention of a whole slew of guys looking to see marijuana, seems pretty easy to get there, but we weren't buying.

Our last full day in Lisbon, before heading southward to Algarve, we went to Belem. This is an area a bit outside of Lisbon proper and it was a pain in the butt to get to. The previous year when we went to Spain my rusty Italian was pretty helpful in getting around and getting the basic info from people. In Portugal this did not help at all. Few people in Lisbon seemed to speak English and finding a bus ticket was like being Indiana Jones searching for the Holy Grail! After 1 hour of trying to ask locals about bus tickets, and finding out finally the word for bus was autocarrios, we ended up basically right across the street from our hotel in a LOOOONG line to buy bus tickets. We didn't know at the time that we could just pay a bit extra and buy them ON the bus - sheesh! The adventures of figuring out a new place, comparatively figuring out the Metro there was far easier. At last we made it to Belem, here is a pic we took at the Tower of Belem, apparently originaly built around 1520.














Like the Castelo de Sao Jorge, Belem and the other older buildings in the area were restored during the Salazar regime which ruled over Portugal for 36 years from 1932 to 1968 (if I read my Danish language guidebook to portugal correctly :-).

Overall I really liked Lisbon and found it to be less expensive than when we went to Seville last year. In general we got more for our money. The added benefit of that is that Morten was not starving after every meal during this trip like he was after meals in Spain last year...and that made ME happy too :-)