Ah, Lisboa… I did not do you justice.
There really was no plan in place for Lisbon. I was flirting with the idea of staying aboard, but attended the Port Talk on the ship and heard about how we were going to be docked within minutes of almost everything. In fact, there was an amazing square that was Right There. You got off the ship and you couldn’t possibly miss it.
All I have to say about that is that these people are seriously underestimating my ability to walk right by things that you couldn’t possibly miss. I got off the ship, walked out of the terminal, and was not right in front of a fabulous square. Instead, I was right in front of the white building in the foreground of the above picture.
Well, that is a seriously impressive building, but it is not a square. And it does not enclose a public square, either. That’s okay, I can walk. I turned left and walked for a bit, and came across the Museu do Fado (Fado being a musical style). Okay, that was supposed to be a short walk away from the cruise terminal, so I must have missed the Square-Right-There.
I turned around and went the other direction, and walked until I sighted another museum, this one dedicated to things military. Still no Square-Right-There. I was stubbornly determined NOT to use international roaming for the third time in three days, so I went back to the cruise ship terminal to ask at the tourist information desk.
I didn’t quite make it to the tourist information desk. I ran into a guy who was selling tickets for the hop on – hop off bus, and it turned out there was a bus just leaving on the blue loop. I was already off the ship, the Very Obvious Square was eluding me, what’s a girl to do?
Pay 28 Euro to ride the hop on – hop off bus, obviously.
The Blue Loop was a tour of industrial / commercial Lisbon, with the Expo ’98 venues thrown in for interest. We also went by a tile museum, the largest shopping center in Lisbon, the Zoo – that was tempting, it would have been interesting to see how it compared to my dearly beloved Calgary Zoo – and a couple of public parks. A few tempting hop offs there, but I’d had a late start and then wandered around square-less for a while.
At city center you could changes busses and do the Red Loop. The Red Loop, according to the map, covered more of the riverfront and historical Lisbon, but never looped back to the cruise terminal. A full loop takes about 1 hour 45 minutes, and that’s if you don’t get off. So if I got on the Red Loop I was committed to a minimum of two hours before I could get back on the Blue, which was the ticket back to the ship.
I weighed the options of getting on the Red Loop and listening to more of the canned commentary versus having to swim for the ship when I made it back ten minutes after they closed the gangway and decided to play it safe. I made it back to the ship with a mere 3 hours and 17 minutes to spare (whew!)
As I say, I did not do Lisbon justice.
So here’s a little filler for you – questions from the audience.
What’s the weather been like?
Amsterdam was hot and humid, although not so hot that you wanted to give up and just melt into a puddle right where you were.
Northern Spain was pleasant, as much as I saw of it, being deep into my vacation plague.
Portugal was a very familiar kind of hot, think Calgary in the high 20’s.
How is the knitting going?
So glad you asked!! I have finished the fingerless gloves that I started in Amsterdam!
And this is the shawl I brought with me to work on, on the ship.
You’ll just have to trust me that significant progress has been made.
Did you ever find out what happened to the Right-There-Square?
As it turned out, I didn’t miss the square. There’s a phrase that tourists hear a lot: it’s about a 10 minute walk. In my experience so far, that phrase is used to describe any distance that I can cover in 20 – 25 minutes. The Right-There-Square was actually maybe 5 minutes walk further down the road past the Lado Museum. So, a true 10 minutes walk away.
Today, we are docked in Cadiz (Spain). I am doing the HAL coach tour into Andalusia. There’s a lighthouse… I wonder if it has stairs?