Nicole schreibt...

Lisbon 2006

The last trip of this year took me to the touristically rather neglected Portuguese capital Lisbon. The good news? It's a really nice and welcoming town well worth a visit. The bad news? Not all Portuguese guys look like Figo. After checking into the nice and rather upmarket NH Hotel on the gorgeous Avenida da Liberdade (Lisbon's Champs Elysees minus the tourist hordes) we went for a first walk around the city. The Avenida leads to Praca Dom Pedro IV and across Baixa (the lower town) to Praca do Comercia, right by the River Tejo. Both squares were grand and lovely - but curiously devoid of big city bustle. Apparently most Lisbonians have fled to the suburbs because they couldn't afford to pay the rent in the city anymore and have left it behind rather empty. A crying shame!

We next walked to the Alfama quarter of Lisbon and uphill past the Catedral Se to the Castelo de Sao Jorge which is perched on a hilltop and offers a fantastic view all over Lisbon and the Tejo. And some not so fantastic views, like King Manoel I's Prince Valiant-hairdo (above).The castle itself looks rather gorgeous - but only until you read in the tourist guide that it crumbled to pieces in the great earthquake of 1755 and was rebuilt only in 1938-44. And then they simply built what looks nice and medieval but probably has nothing to do with the original castle whose origins date back to Roman times (Julius Caesar was said to have resided there while he was governor of Lusitania). The Alfama itself with it's many small streets climbing up- and downhill, past old houses completely covered in azulejos (the famous Portuguese-Spanish tiles) is definitely worth a visit though. After a late siesta by the hotel pool and a nap we returned to the Baixa quarter at nightfall for some dinner. Unfortunately the true Fado (Portugal's famous folklore singing) doesn't start till midnight and usually far away from the tourist haunts, so we only had a regular dinner in a nice sidewalk restaurant in the Rua Augusta before returning to the hotel.

The second day took us to Belem, Lisbon's most famous quarter albeit some miles out of town. We got there with one of the lovely antiquated trams that have been running through Lisbon for a hundred years now and have become a tourist attraction in their own right. Along the harbour front are two of the most famous sights - the Padrao dos Descobrimentos (down left), a monument set up in 1940 celebrating the 500th anniversary of Don Enrique the Seafarer, who was behind most of Portugal's famous discoveries of the new world and its colonies. The other one, even more famous, is the Torre de Belem, erected 1515 by King Manoel I (he of the Prince Valiant hairdo), a really lovely building that used to be in the middle of the River Tejo, but is now more or less by the strand. Belem had been completely unaffected by the great earthquake of 1755 that destroyed most of Lisbon and thus offers the only truly medieval places of the town - most importantly the Mosteiro dos Jeronimous, the convent built by Manoel I. in 1502 in thanks to Vasco da Gama's discovery of a sea route to India. The building and accompanying church are one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen with hundreds of little tidbits in the elaborate facades to discover and enjoy.

Funny enough we had arrived on the first Sunday of the month, when the museums of Lisbon offer free entry, so we did not only visit the Maritime Museum(always my first port of call in any country big at Seafaring and this one was truly wonderfully arranged with many interesting exhibits of Portugal's glorious past) but also the Museum of Carriages where many pompous coaches of the royal family are on display as well as old litters and cute little children's carriages, the 17th century equivalent of today's toy model Porsches I assume. But no visit to Belem is complete without eating cream cakes at the Confeitaria dos Pasteis de Belem. Busy like a beehive, this cafe churns out about 15,000 little cream cakes - per day. Eaten hot these little cakes are truly an absolute delight for the tongue and I'm glad I do not live anywhere near Belem or all dieting would be in vain. At last a tourist haunt that truly deserves all the hype.

Stuffed full with cream cake we returned to the city and another siesta by the hotel pool before spending the evening with a long walk around the Bairro Alto, the high quarter(called so because it's on top of a hill and not because it's particularly snobbish) where we found a nice restaurant with al fresco dining overlooking the city. The third and last day were dedicated to shopping since all the popular Spanish chains are available in Lisbon too. The town may not bowl you over with sights and excitement like other Mediterranean cities, but I found it quite charming and definitely worth a visit. After the rather exhausting trips this year with jetlag, bad weather, driving around and horse-riding these few days in Lisbon were the perfect peaceful end to this year's travelling.