Lisbon – At Leisure – 07-May-2018

A fairly ordinary night’s sleep was had by all. The Eurovision contest, as mentioned previously, bought a huge amount of people to this city, and they were all partying around our hotel, or so it seemed. Needless to say that the ruckus didn’t really stop until the early hours of the morning. Fortunately I think today is a rest day in the ESC, so we just might be able to get a reasonable modicum of sleep tonight. Here’s hoping.

A hearty Breakfast as at the hotel, and then it was back out and exploring this lovely city. This morning the plans were to visit ‘The Elevator’- a construction that has been around since early last century, which was built to take Lisbon’s citizens from the lower reaches of the city centre, up to the higher levels of the neighbouring suburbs. Of course, now it has become a Bona fide tourist attraction so when we went to go on it yesterday, the was a long queue of people waiting, with the wait time extending beyond 90 minutes. This morning, we got to the elevator at around 8:20 and waltzed straight in. The views from the top were outstanding, enhanced by some lovely clear skies.

This morning was also designated for some ‘housekeeping’- chores such as getting some pegs to hang wet clothes, changing some money and sending on some unneeded baggage onto Santiago De Compostela, which we will pick up later when we get there. These activities surprisingly took up the rest of the morning.

In the afternoon we visited a place called Sintra, which is a tourist attraction because of its Artisan offerings – all manner of trinkets, paintings, jewelry …. all very interesting stuff. The real attractions of the place are its stunning surrounds in hilly settings, but very close to the beach. The town is noted for its variety of castles perched up on a hillsides; some of these date back to when the Moors ruled the Iberian peninsula from around 800 AD to about 1400AD (I think), so there is a pronounced influence of middle eastern architecture and culture blended in with Portuguese architecture and culture, which makes for a unique blend.

On the train trip back, we ran into an elderly Portuguese couple who we got talking to and when they found that we were from Australia, their faces lit up and they told the story of their son (now 53) who was so taken by the Australian Skippy TV series that he would always be imploring them to come and live in Australia so that he could have his own Skippy. Funny how some things stick in the mind.

A fairly quiet night with a quick dinner, and then packing for tomorrows commencement of out camino journey.