January 13th - Lisbon Portugal

Our morning started out very foggy.  We couldn’t see anything from our balcony and you could only barely make out the dock on the TV’s bridge cam.

We’ve been to Lisbon before but it was really more of a drive through.  We were on our way north to visit the towns of Cascais and Sentra.  Both are beautiful and we had a great time then but we really wanted to see Lisbon this time around.  We hired a guide to take us on a three-hour walking tour of the city and it was great.  We sampled Portuguese custard tarts and local cheeses and ham while on the tour.  The weather eventually cleared and it warmed up from the low 50’s to the balmy mid 50’s…but it felt great in the sun. 

Our guide Joana was great, very friendly and a wealth of information about Lisbon and Portugal.  Although the metro area has a population of about 2 million with about 500K of that in the city proper, it stills feels like a small city and we covered a lot of ground.  Say hello Joana!

The downtown shopping area is cradled between two very high hills.  Although we had to walk up a lot of stairs on the tour today there are lots of little tricks to get around, some obvious like this elevator that goes up to one of the neighborhoods from downtown to other ‘secret’ elevators stuck in little corners in the city.  One of them was in a supermarket, but it’s considered to be public transportation and open to all. 

Lisbon is a mix of grand squares and small neighborhoods with twisting paths for roads and stairs instead of alleys.  The contrast in the pictures below is between the downtown area and the hilly Alfama neighborhood where we spent the last hour of our day.

Trolley’s still climb these steep streets and are a favorite for tourists. 

Unfortunately, Alfama is changing due to the gentrification of the area.  Lots of houses are being bought up and converted to Air B&Bs and hotels.  It was funny to see people trying to roll their luggage along these streets and up the stairs to find their rental.  Cars are not allowed on many of the streets.  The doorways are also pretty small given they were built at a time when folks were a lot shorter.

Sadly, we really had to scramble around today to see everything we wanted to see.  Lisbon is on a tidal river and for our very tall ship to get under a bridge we have to leave at low tide and so all aboard was at 4:30 PM.  It was probably just as well since the sun was starting to set.  That’s the bad thing about traveling this time of year, short days.  On the other hand, there were very few tourists and no lines anywhere.