LISBON: DAY 13

We had decided to visit Lisbon, staying over one night. Rather than take the car, which we had read could be hazardous to our health, we booked seats on the bus from the nearby town of Lagoa. Before we left we booked into the Hostel Rossio in the centre of Lisbon. This was listed on Hostelworld with very favourable ratings and indeed had been voted the best hostel in the world. We were not disappointed.

The bus took about three hours to get to Lisbon mainly on the toll freeway. All the buses looked practically new and were spick and span inside and out. We took the metro from the bus station managing to successfully buy a day pass for all forms of transport, similar to the Octopus system in Hong Kong and the Oyster Card in London. It made it all much easier. We managed to find the hostel after one false start and found it overlooked one of the main squares, Rossio. We were on the third floor in a pleasant double room. The staff were always more than helpful and we felt fortunate to be in such a nice place to stay the one night.

The view over Rossio Square from our room.

Another view over the square form our window up to the Sao Jorge Castle in Alfama.

Lisbon is built on a series of hills and there can be lots of climbing up and down. To assist there are funiculars and elevators. This funicular took us from the level of the square up into the region called the Bairro Alto.


Again we found narrow cobbled streets in this older part of the city. A good reason to leave the car at home.

Another view of the castle from Bairro Alto.

The intricate design in the Sao Roque Church

Many of the buildings in Portugal are covered in tiles.

The cathedral in Lisbon

The Elevador de Santa Justa

This elevator was designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel to connect the lower and upper parts of the city.

Lisbon is famous for trams that they have preserved over the years. They manoeuvre there way along the narrow cobbled streets and serve the castle and also Belem , more on that later. The trams are well known as havens for pickpockets and there are notices to warn the unwary. One tram goes around a circular route up to the castle and back to the square.

A Typical Lisbon tram

The view over Lisbon from the Castle.

A friendly peacock in the Castle grounds

There was a magical moment as we wandered around the castle grounds. We heard a guitar being played rather well somewhere out of sight. Not Musak but the real thing and we came across a gentleman playing Bach to a crowd of zero, until we arrived. There is no photograph because I took a short video with sound. I can email anyone interested to hear and see it. If you do, forgive the ending which is there because I couldn't find a way to stop the recording for a few seconds.

We took the tram back down to the city centre and ended a very pleasant day.

LISBON: Day 14

On our second day we decided to travel out to the suburb of Belen. Belen has a number of claims to fame, one being it is the home of the Belen custard tart, available all over the country. The first call we made was to the Coach Museum which was established by the Queen of Portugal in 1905 when she saw that the rise of the car would obliterate horse-drawn carriages as a form of transportation. She placed the new museum in the palace's riding school. The result is a collection of more than 70 dazzling carriages lining the elegant old riding room.

One of the amazing old coaches

The spectacle coach

There is a special section on the assassination of the King of Portugal which includes photographs of the significant event plus the actual coach that the King was riding in at the time, including the bullet holes that you can see in the photographs. These can just be seen towards the top of the door.

The assassination coach

The Monastery of Jeronimos



Detail of the roof in the church

One of the stained glass windows in the church

The tomb of Vasco da Gama
In the Cloisters

Our third port of call was the Gulbenkian Museum which was in the northern past of Lisbon. This is reckoned to be the best of Lisbon's 40 museums. Calouste Gulbenkian was an Armenian oil tycoon who gave his art collection to Portugal as an act of gratitude to the country for the hospitality granted to him during WW II. He lived in Lisbon from 1942 until his death in 1955. The collection spans 5,000 years and is housed in a classy modern building and is educational and just plain beautiful. The museum is cool, gorgeously lit, uncrowded and easy to grasp displaying only a few select and exquisite works of art from each epoch. The museum is divided into sections; Egypt, Greece and Rome, the Islamic World, the Far East, Medieval Europe, Renaissance and Baroque painting, Louis XIV, XV, XVI, European Paintings, and a collection of Lalique jewellery. It was as good as the guide books said it would be.








Our time was running out and we made our way back to the Bus Station. We left at 1830 but it took about an hour to clear Lisbon which appears to have a severe traffic problem.

LOULE AND TAVIRA: DAY 15

We chose to drive East to visit Loule and Tavira. Loule has two markets on Saturday, a gypsy market and the regular town market. The former was set up in a large open space and was very busy. The stalls were arranged on the outside of the space and most everything was 5 Euros, or multiples for a few more expensive items (about 4.6 GBP or 8 C$).




There were the usual array of food stalls.


We then moved on to the town market in a permanent building. This was more of a food market with a lot of fish, baked goods and fruit and vegetables.

Dried salted cod

Cheeses

Sausages

More sausages and cheese

The next port of call was Tavira, not that far from the Spanish border. The town is situated on a river that exits to the sea. For once there didn't seem to be the multitude of high rise apartment buildings that were evident everywhere else along the coast.

The waterfront at Tavira

A typical steep cobbled street

View over Tavira. Each room has its own roof

The Church of Santa Maria

The old Roman bridge in Tavira

Another view of the waterfront

Fishing is still an important part of life here

We drove back along the coast road through Faro where we would be back to on Monday to catch the plane home.

FERRAGUDO AND ALVOR: DAY 16/DAY 17

On our final day we stayed local to home and spent some time exploring the nearest fishing village, Ferragudo and Alvor, the other side of Portimao.

Portimao from Ferragudo with the mountains at Monchique in the background

Another lovely beach at Ferragudo

Fishing off the cliffs

Fossils in the rocks

A tile picture in a wall

Cactii in a row


Inside the church at Ferragudo

Decorative tiles outside a house, a common sight

Visible proof

Another tile picture

We then travelled on to Alvor. It had a bustling waterfront and Sunday was clearly a day out for both the tourists and the locals. The harbour was guarded by a long sandspit that was quite crowded.

The church Ingreja Matriz at Alvor

The Manueline door at the church

The waterfront at Alvor

High above the dunes at Alvor

Ready for the tourists

So our time was drawing to a close and we retraced our steps back home to pack and getr eady for the journey home. The flight back was due to leave at 0750 and we were supposed to be there three hours before! We didn't even try but left just before 0500 to drive to Faro Airport.

We handed our little car back and were soon checked in a ready to catch the plane to Toronto.
We then had to wait for the connection to Vancouver, trying for a standby that didn't happen. We tried to get an earlier flight to Comox from Vancouver but that didn't happen either, so we were back home on schedule at 2230 PDT after leaving Portugal at 0750 Portugal time, which was the same as the UK. Quite a long day.

Our visit to Portugal exceeded all of our expectations. The accomodations were excellent, the people friendly, the food interesting and the scenery marvellous. We can recommend the region unreservedly.

We hope that you find something of interest in this account, congratulations if you have read this far.