Good Friday started off being a lot more promising weather-wise, with brilliant blue skies and moderating temperatures. We boarded the tour bus for Lisbon at the ungodly hour of 5:30 and five hours later, we arrive in Lisbon. This was a much longer trip than we had been led to believe, due to numerous hotel pickups on the way. The trip north took us through savanna-like terrain, with lots of umbrella pines and cork oaks stripped up to the first major branches. It takes a cork tree 27 years before it can produce bark and then it is only harvested every 9 years, but we learned that Portugal produces 30% of the world’s cork, so they’ve got a lot of cork oaks.
At Lisbon the terrain got hilly and in fact Lisbon was built on 9 hills, just like Rome. We entered Lisbon across a Golden Gate type bridge called the Bridge of the 25th of April and our first stop was at a very unique fortification on the Tagus River called the tower of Belem. Because it was Good Friday, it was pretty crazy with tourists, especially Spaniards.
We visited a large church & monastery and then toured the heart of the old city. Since most of the city was destroyed by the earthquake of 1755, a lot of the Moorish influence was lost, but there were still remnants of the ancient city found throughout the downtown. We walked about some of the town’s more picturesque squares and then we took a tram to the top of one of the hills for some great views and a visit to another old church called simply Se. Metropolitan Lisbon is only 2+ million people, but that apparently makes up 20% of Portugal’s population.
After another 5+ hours to get home we found this to a very long day, but were glad that we got to Lisbon.
On Saturday morning we were on the tour bus again but only for 1 ½ hours this time, as we headed off to the inland town of Loule that had a market including a gypsy market on Saturdays. This former Moorish town was quite interesting and both markets allowed us ample opportunity to stock up.
When we could finally carry no more, we returned to Portimao where we had lunch and then got in the car and of to Continente to stock up the larder. Our little fridge now looks just like the one at home – packed. The weather today was mainly sunny but still at little cool, but they are promising better for the next few days. But it’s better than Canada, right?
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See here or here
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