Long weekend in Lisbon

Hey everyone, here is a travelogue for my latest trip.. Back in mid-February (2008), a bunch of us went to Lisbon over the president's day weekend.

In many ways, it was very similar to Spain. Of course, this makes sense because it's next door! Portuguese is actually sort of understandable if you know a bit of Spanish. I was able to pick up words here and there, but once again I didn't really need them. You can really get around very easily in Europe just speaking English, as long as you know the basics of each country (hello, goodbye, please, thank you, etc).  Plus, it didn't hurt to be traveling with bunch of Spanish speakers, since most people seemed to understand Spanish.

Portuguese food is not really my favorite, although I did have a few good meals. Most of the dishes in restaurants were either beef or seafood. If you like chicken, be prepared to adapt. I had some good seafood dishes, in particular one of the national dishes: bacalhau, which is a dish made from dried, salted cod which was baked with vegetables and mashed potatoes. There was also a nice shrimp and rice one, which was kind of like paella.

Overall, Lisbon is a good city for a long weekend trip. It's fairly compact, with good public transport via metro, trams and buses.  There are several good museums, a castle, cathedrals, waterfronts, and pedestrian-only parts. It's very hilly, so you get a good workout walking around (although you can always take a tram).


Anyway, here are the highlights and photos...

Day 1 - Baixa, Alfama, and Castle

We arrived in Lisbon around 11am, so we had most of the afternoon to do some sightseeing. We took the metro over to the Baixa area, which has a lot of shops and pedestrian streets. A lot of the buildings had cool painted tiles on front, which I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Plus there were some good mosaics on the pedestrian streets.







We then crossed over to the Alfama district, which is the oldest part of the city. It has lots of twisty little streets and staircase alleyways, and is the home of Lisbon Cathedral and St. George's Castle (Castelo de Sao Jorge). The cathedral doesn't look like much from the outside, but it was nice inside (sorry no photos, but there was no flash-photography, and my camera sucks in low light). 






We had a couple of hours before it closed, so went into the castle next.  It was on the highest point of ground in the area, so there were some great views of the city. The castle itself is just a shell now, but it was pretty impressive.  There was a guy playing classical guitar in the courtyard, which really added to the ambiance.





Here is a compilation of the day 1 video clips: 

Day 2 -Belém and Parque das Nações

On the morning of the second day, we took the bus over to the Belem district, which was on the western edge of the city. This district is right next to the river/bay, and there is a good walk along the waterfront. Our first stop was the Mosterio dos Jeronimos (another link), or Hieronymites Monastery. We went into the chapel which was very impressive, as well as crowded!  The picture of the tomb below is of Vasco da Gama, the first European explorer to find a sea route to India.






After leaving the monastery, we crossed the street to go see the waterfront and the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries). This monument depicts several famous people from the history of Portugal. There is an educational show inside, and you can pay to go the top, but we decided to move on along the waterfront to the tower.



 


These guys in the sailboat were crazy. I think they were practicing, since they kept going back and forth along the river. But when they turned, the boat looked like it was about to tip over. And none of them were wearing life jackets.





This is the Tower of Belem, which was at the end of the waterfront. This was part of the defensive system of 1500s Lisbon. There's all kinds of nautical themed carvings on the outside, and you can go up to the top for some good views. The armillary spheres were cool.





After heading back downtown for some lunch, our group split up. Some stayed downtown to shop, while a few of us went out to Parque das Nações (Nations Park), which was an area of the city built up in 1998 for a world exhibition. There were some pretty cool buildings, a garden, a space-needle like tower out there, and everything was brand new. There was also a gigantic mall, which was open until midnight most nights of the week (when most of the other stores in town closed at 5pm). This area was also the home of the aquarium, which we went to the next day. The bridge in the picture is the Vasco da Gama bridge, which at nearly 11mi is the longest bridge in Europe. This was actually a nice and mellow place to hang out.






Here are the day 2 video clips:

Day 3 - Gulbenkian museum, Aquarium

The weather definitely took a turn for the worse on Sunday, so it was a good day for indoor stuff. A couple of us went to the Gulbenkian museum, which houses the personal collection of Calouste Gulbenkian, an early oil baron who was absurdly rich and liked art. In his will he stipulated that a foundation and museum be set up to show the collection to the public. I didn't take too many pictures, since I bought the museum book, but there a couple here... I thought the dragonfly lady was really interesting. This is part of jewelry collection from Rene Lalique. It was a nice museum, with a good variety of old stuff to check out.







After collecting the rest of the group, we headed back out to Parque das Nações. It was really raining by this time, so it was a bit of a miserable walk to get out to the aquarium (Lisbon Oceanarium). This was a pretty cool set up for an aquarium, it was a building in the middle of it's own little harbor, so you had to walk onto a bridge to get there. They had lots of cool fish of course, including some massive sunfish, which I hadn't seen before. These are the heaviest fish in the world, and are really odd looking.  They also had a refrigerated habitat for penguins and such, and even a couple of sea otters!




After the aquarium, we headed back over to the megamall for some grub. We decided to split again for a while, so the ladies did some shopping while the guys went and saw Rambo (booyah!). Kind of a ridiculous movie, but still fun.

Later that night, we had dinner at a Fado club, called Clube de Fado, appropriately enough! Fado is traditional Portuguese music, with a singer accompanied by a couple of guitars and a bass. I'd call it sort of cantina music or blues. During dinner, every fifteen minutes or so, the lights would dim and a red spotlight would shine into a corner of the restaurant. Then the band and a singer would come out and do 3 songs or so. We had 4 four different singers that night, three ladies and a REALLY old guy (probably at least 80, and still belting out the songs!)  Two of the artists we saw that I recognize from the website were Tereza Lopes Alves and Joana Amendoeira, who were both pretty good. I actually really enjoyed the music, and will probably buy some. Here is a an interview and singing clip of Ms. Amendoeira (this myspace link also has some song downloads). Yes, I did have a bit of a crush on her ;) It was really an awesome way to end the trip...

So the next day, after a hectic taxi ride through the driving rain, we left Portugal, and therefore.. the end.


Here are final short video clips:


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