Last port of call before Southampton

A pretty rough ride all the way from Lanzarote to Lisbon in a heavy swell stirred up by storms much farther north.  Still, we got some sleep, even if not as much as we should have liked: I was awake well before 06:00.  It was a bit cooler when we arrived in Lisbon this morning, so I didn’t hang around on the balcony for too long.  Long enough to be reminded of the growl of the traffic as we passed under the Salazar/25 April bridge.

After a slightly less extravagant breakfast than usual, we were out and about before 09:00, and soon equipped with our day tickets for the buses and trams.  After a bit of trial and error, we found our way up to the castle.  The modern 737 bus follows the same route as the ancient 26 I first met thirty-some years ago, but I suspect it’s a whisker easier to drive.  From the castle we hacked back down again to Figueiras and caught a (modern) tram to Belém, where we soon found the celebrated Pastéis de Belém shop.  Behind the shopfront there is an extensive network of dining space, and we settled in briefly for a toasted sandwich and a pastel per man.  Extra sugar and cinnamon are provided for the latter: I eschewed both, and have to say I’ve never tasted a better one.

After lunch we did a spot of shopping in the Ale-Hop shop next door.  There’s an awful lot of tat in there, but the place brings a smile to one’s face.  We bought some mugs from them on our first trip to Madeira (the crockery at the flat was not nice), and now use them all the time at home.  Thence to the Cais de Sodre for a quick look at the Mercado da Ribeira.  Although the food market had closed by the time we got there, the cafés in the next hall were doing a roaring trade.  I’m told it’s very popular pretty well through the night.  Next, a glass of wine and some people watching in the sun at the kiosk opposite the station before catching a bus back to the cruise terminal.  The day tickets cost us €11 each, which is about the quarter of the price of the hop-on, hop-off buses, and they offer much more people-watching opportunities.  Granted, you need a little bit of local knowledge to make the best of it, and you can still get lost up blind alleys, as we did this morning, thinking that the Lavro funicular would give us a leg-up on the way to the castle.  It didn’t, but walking downhill into the sun could only bring us back towards the river, and we saw some interesting and gritty bits of Lisbon in the process.

Much of Lisbon has been prettified and sanitised since my first visits in pre-EU days, and the place is lousy with Macdonalds, Starbucks and the rest.  But a lot of the third-world feeling remains, and does much to explain our love for the place.