It was hot in Lisbon, very hot indeed, everyone kept telling us that Portugal was in the grip of a heat wave and that it was too hot, but we didn’t mind, we were on holiday. We settled into our studio apartment, cranked up the fan and then left and made for the nearby centre of Baixa.
By now it was late afternoon and the heat was beginning to drain away into the deep shadows cast by the tall buildings and the sun was melting into the deep pools of shade of doorways and courtyards so we enjoyed a walk to a shady park where we stopped for a beer and then took a stroll through the elegantly tiled but grotesquely graffiti scarred streets of the town. I was shocked by the urban scrawl which some call art but I call vandalism. I didn’t like it.
In contrast I liked the views from the top of the city even though there was a lot of construction work going on. From a high vantage point we looked across to the castle and the cathedral and down to the river and the commercial centre. We continued to walk down and down, I had no idea that Lisbon was going to be so steep and hilly and it was beginning to make Rome or Valletta seem like Florida in the USA or Lincolnshire in the UK.
Eventually we reached the ruins of a cathedral but it was getting late so we didn’t pay to go inside. Ruined because it was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake which was one of the World’s major catastrophic seismological events – ever!
It occurred before the introduction of the Richter Scale of course (1935) but today it is estimated that the Lisbon earthquake had a magnitude in the range 9.0 to 9.5 which, on a scale of 1 to 10, is just about as big as it is possible to get and makes the event possibly the biggest ever in the history of the World. The resulting Tsunami reached the Caribbean in the west and as far as Greenland to the North. This was one hell of a bang let me tell you!
We were struggling to get our bearings but managed to grope our way back to the apartment passing on the way a restaurant that caught our eye for evening meal. I found a shop for beer and wine and next day breakfast essentials and then we sat and relaxed, changed and wandered back to the restaurant. It was full, really full and no slots left all evening so we booked for the following night and set off to find an alternative.
After a long walk I liked where we found but Kim was still sulking so we didn’t linger long after dining and returned and spent our first night in Portugal in our tiny studio.
The next morning the sky was blue, the sun was rapidly rising in the sky and by the time we had prepared and eaten breakfast, tidied up and left the apartment the mercury was already rising rapidly.
The plan was to make our way down to the River Tagus and then take in some of the sights along the way. Some way along the planned route we took an unnecessary detour and we managed to get sucked into the labyrinth of back streets and got quite lost. I confess that this was entirely my mistake but happily Kim didn’t seem to spot this, or, if she did, she generously chose to overlook it and not mention it. I kept quiet about it.
We eventually emerged from the streets down to the river and some way away we could see the famous 25 de Abril (previously António Salazar) Bridge and we started to walk towards it. It turned out to be further than we estimated and the view wasn’t that special anyway so eventually we abandoned the walk and made our way back up a another steep hill to the city centre.
At the top of the hill we visited the Basilica but I have to agree with Kim on this point, it wasn’t memorable and it looked like any similar church or cathedral in Catholic Europe and as we walked out of the door I immediately forgot all about it.
Back at the river we stopped for a drink and an hour in the sunshine and then we tackled the walk back to the apartment. We passed through the Commercial Centre with its magnificent buildings where it was possible with a bit of imagination to conjure up a vision of a major naval and commercial centre with ships and dockyards where now there are tourist river cruises and ice cream parlours.
Eventually we found our way back to the apartment where we sat and enjoyed the local environment before making our way to the chosen restaurant which turned out to be absolutely excellent.
Later we made plans to visit nearby Sintra the following day.
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Sounds like a great visit to Portugal. Will keep your post in mind for when we go.
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Hope that you enjoy it just as much as we did!
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I love the trams – they look more welcoming than the sleek modern things they are putting in some of our cities here.
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They are lovely I agree but spoilt now by being covered in advertising posters.
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Sometimes getting lost is half the fun! Who knows what you might find? It’s almost always my fault if we get lost, I have a terrible sense of direction.
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Getting lost is ok if you are going in roughly the right direction.
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I wouldn’t manage Lisbon with all those hills…and someone said the trams are limited for sightseeing
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Trams are rubbish for sightseeing (imo) and yes it is seriously hilly!
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I was meaning…would they get me to a few places in the city, from where I could do a short wander, then jump on again, or are they limited as to the areas they cover?
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I am certain that this would be possible but to be honest I wouldn’t recommend Lisbon or Porto to anyone with mobility issues, not only are there a lot of hills and steps but the cobbled streets are a tricky surface.
If you want a flat city then I would recommend Wroclaw and Krakow in Poland.
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It’s not so much want as need, now….
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A heatwave in Portugal versus a cold snap in Yorkshire – I know which one I’d choose!! Hiking up those hills though in the sunshine would have been very hard. Agree about the graffiti shocked me too, senseless scrawling that defaced those beautiful buildings was my view.
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It was very hot, Kim had to give up one day as she could walk no further. After Lisbon the temperature became more bearable as we travelled north.
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The Lisbon earthquake had a huge effect on the history of Europe because it started the idea that God might not exist if such things happened. It also produced a tsunami in Penzance if I remember correctly.
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I remember being in Galway in Ireland and the guide book claimed that it hit the city!
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For a moment I thought I was looking at San Francisco with the ‘cable’ cars (trams) and the Golden Gate Bridge. 😀 I think I could fall in love with this locations as well.
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I have never been to SF Gunta but from what I have seen on TV there do seem to be similarities.
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We arrived in Lisbon after a brutal 10 day cycling tour in the Picos de Europa of Spain. After one day of sightseeing I declared that the cycling had just been training for the hiking done on the streets of Lisbon! I totally agree with your description of the hills. However those views can make up for a lot of gasping. Did you find the Beer Museum in the Commercial Square?
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Missed the beer museum, I’m ashamed of myself now!
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Hard to find all the gems in one trip. 🙂
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I remember those hills, Andrew! Up and down. And then to get lost. Although that can sometimes be fun. Clever of you not to take the blame, however. 🙂 –Curt
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We only disagree over a few things Curt but map reading is very close to the top of the list!
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Laughing, Andrew. Wandering in the trackless wilderness of Alaska is great for improving map reading skills. But it is easier to get lost in a city. It’s just that the consequences usually aren’t as serious. –Curt
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Were there any tour buses, Andrew? I don’t mind walking, but if it’s too hot when climbing up and down steep hills in a city centre, then it starts to wear thin on me.
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There were none of those open top bus tours in Sintra Hugh. Lots of coaches piling in full of visitors, taxis and tuk-tuks which were infuriatingly slow and held the traffic up behind.
We took a taxi to the top and walked back down – it is always easier walking down rather than up I find – quicker too!
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True! I’ll only ever walk up a hill on a hot day if there’s a pub at the top of the hill.
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Thanks for sharing, great article 🙂
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Thanks for stopping by.
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Lisbon is a nice place to get to know, but it’s definitely a hard city to go around. It’s filled with mixed vibes and styles. Very diverse lets say. But knowing Lisbon very well, to be careful in not getting lost. It’s all fun until you meet people with less good intentions. Overall, it’s a good place to hangout and keep as memory. Lisbon is Lisbon.
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Never spotted any trouble in Lisbon. Loved the city and the hills. Downside for me perhaps was the graffiti. Thanks for stopping by.
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It’s much better now. I’ve been there this April and they’ve definitely amped up public protection. More police around. This is due to the increased tourism in the Capital. I agree with the graffiti, it’s not nice. Some cities around Lisbon have been under reconstruction and because of that, there’s a lot of concrete exposed like motorway bridges and so on. In those cases they’ve hired artists to do a professional graffiti rather than being vandalised. It turned up to be very good. Unfortunately you only see this in very local locations.
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Local areas that are not common for tourism*
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I read this twice because I wanted to remind myself why Kim was sulking! I’m glad the restaurant proved to be worth the wait.
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Got there in the end.
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The Lisbon earthquake had an enormous effect on the history of Europe too. After the earthquake,which they accepted as God’s punishment, there was an enormous service to tell God they were sorry, to ask for his mercy etc etc and at that service, if I remember rightly, there was a second earthquake. The result was that the clever people of Europe began to think that maybe there wasn’t a God, he didn’t care etc etc and the first steps of the Enlightenment were taken. They would finish with things such as the French Revolution etc etc. (A-level French Literature wasn’t wasted!)
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Thanks for adding the history lesson John.
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Good shots – although you haven’t pictured it, I can’t judge the urban scrawl, but I suspect I would agree with you. I hadn’t known about the Lisbon earthquake
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It does seem a long time since we were in Lisbon, Andrew. I had quite fancied going up there for the Christmas lights but we’re only days away from the UK trip now. If we negotiate that successfully I’ll start to think about next year.
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Let’s hope that we are not in lock down!
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If you are, Andrew, we have all of Portugal. You can’t lockdown indefinitely 🤔💕
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Well, we still have a holiday booked there for next May.
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🤣💗
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